The Latest App For Third-Party Voice Chat Just Raised Almost US$20 Million

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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