If you’re a regular member of a competitive community on PC, or happen to watch streams with any regularity, chances are you might have heard talk about a new app called Discord. It’s positioning itself as an all-in-one replacement for Skype, Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Mumble and just about every other third-party VOIP offering you can think of.
It’s growing, and it’s only set to get even bigger thanks to an injection of nearly US$20 million from investors.
Discord announced the news on their blog, adding that the investment had come from those “with experience building great companies like Riot, Snapchat and Twitter”. The funds will help further feature development for the platform, with the most requested features being video chat, the ability to share your screen, customisable user statuses, sub chat channels, a search feature, and more.
Discord also announced that more than 3 million users have tried the application, with growth of around one million users a month. It’s a staggering trajectory for a program that launched in May last year into a segment that already had plenty of alternatives.
The lack of features has opened up a niche for Discord to occupy, however. The company’s clearly having success doing so, and their proposed model of always being “completely free” with cosmetic paid-for skins works with gamers already accustomed to the model (courtesy of League, Dota 2, Path of Exile and other free-to-play games).
Hopefully it’ll result in more advancements and growth among Discord’s competition. TeamSpeak, Ventrilo and Mumble have been around for years for a reason, and it’ll be interesting to see the development in this sector of software development that many gamers (especially on PC) simply can’t live without.
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5 responses to “The Latest App For Third-Party Voice Chat Just Raised Almost US$20 Million”
Been using discord for about 3 months now..
Great ui and features. I highley recommend it to any one looking for a change of mumble or team speak.
What features distinguish it from Mumble in the sense of being considered as a replacement for Mumble? For that matter, are there features in Mumble that aren’t present in Discord? For example, Mumble has an excellent auto-balancing system for volume, and has a very strong focus on on-time delivery of voice above all else.
For what I use Mumble for, I have no interest in video chat or screen sharing. I have other programs I can use to do that and I believe software should follow the principle of ‘do one thing and do it well’ rather than ‘do fifty things mediocrely’.
Fair enough. I havn’t used or updated my mumbe client in aeons so i may be outdated.
Ill dot point it off thetop of my head:
Discord pros: drag image links, you tube links, file ect into chat to upload the contents. Very handy for sharing imgur pics or jpgs off your desktop.
It’s free.
Good voice quality for talking (never really tried to play music through it).
A nice little noice to know if your push to activated and de activated.
A web link option for non client guests.
Dank memes as the loading text.
Its free.
Thatsvall i can think of at the moment.
Thanks for the info! It sounds like Discord is positioning to be a Skype replacement moreso than Mumble/Vent/TS but I’ll take some time to look at its features at some point.
one of the main points for me was the infinite board for text and images similar to skype, can have multiple boards and multiple voice channels, file uploading too,each persons volume can be adjusted per client for that client, super easy to get new people to try it (browser version) as well as telling you who is online and what they are playing. oh and my personal favourite, a button to toggle between ppt and voice activity.
Another voice product Gamevox.com updated today with a persistent chat