Almost a decade after its arrival, Discord, the chat platform popular among gamers, will reportedly begin showing ads and paid promotions. According to WSJ, the reason for its move away from an ad-free stance is simple: to boost revenue.
In this case, Discord plans on using paid promotions from video game makers, as well as offering gifts to players who complete in-game tasks, while their friends watch on Discord. To that end, the platform will be expanding its workforce by hiring more than a dozen individuals for ad-sales positions.
Currently, Discord also offers a tiered but not mandatory subscription program called Nitro, where users can pay a monthly fee of RM31.99 for the full suite, or RM13.90 for Nitro Basic. As you’d expect, subscribing to Nitro means extra perks such bigger size uploads of up to 500MB, access to custom emojis, up to two Server Boost, and of course, access to HD video streaming and in turn, the ability to stream videos using the AV1 codec.
The move is certainly a bit of a surprise, given Discord’s initial stance about having ads on the platform, as well as how its founders famously promoted it to be so. Ads, especially targetted ads, can be considered intrusive, raising questions about a user’s privacy as well. However, Discord says that users will still be given the option of turning off some personalised ads but may still them popping up elsewhere on the platform.
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