Discord Locks In

Good Morning. It was nice to have all the showcases in one spot over several news-packed days, but we are curious: are you missing E3?

—Tim

MAIN QUEST: Discord doubles back to gaming

Discord’s CEO, Jason Citron, announced the company will shift its focus from being a broad community chat app and instead go back to its gaming roots. This move follows their original reason for creating the product and reinforces the fact that 90% of their 200m MAU plays 1.5 billion hours of video games every month.

Their new goal aims to be the “place that helps people deepen their friendships around games and shared interests.” They will do this by focusing on three core areas: quick and easy conversations, expanding cross-platform experiences, and opening up more publisher & developer initiatives. Alluding to the latter being initiatives similar to Quests and Embedded App SDK.

Step Back: Discord isn’t following the trend of companies launching games within their larger products like LinkedIn News and even YouTube’s Playables, which came out of its 8-month beta this week. Discord was gaming-focused from day one, it was acquired with that focus, and it only strayed for a few years before locking it in on this original focus.

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HUD

• Riot Games’s Valorant Studio Head Anna Donlon is working hard to push the toxic behaviors out of the Valorant community. She stated in a dev update she believed the studio and herself have failed in the responsibility of protecting players from toxic behavior saying players should not be exposed to “evil statements under the guise of shit talk.”

• Epic Games is changing its creator payout formula effective July 1st. The primary change will benefit creators who bring new players to Fortnite. The UEFN creator environment has made 80k+ games, 100m+ players, and paid out $320 million to creators.

MAJOR W

• Nintendo is doubling its retail presence in the US in 2025!

• Toys for Bob announced Xbox will be publishing their next new game. Toys for Bob went independent in February following Microsoft’s layoffs cutting their staff by more than half.

F IN THE CHAT

• Little Nightmares III is officially delayed to 2025. Developers cited they “want to make sure we give the game the care and love it deserves.”

• Hope Destiny 2 players are ready to clean out their hard drives. The Final Shape expansion will require anywhere from 130GB (PS4) to 300GB for Steam users.

CAREER CORNER

• Digital Gaming Operations Project Manager — Wizards of the Coast (Renton, WA)

• Sr. Community Manager — Netflix (Los Angeles, CA)

• Game Design Director, Incubation Team — EA (Remote, US or Canada)

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