Discord wants its Nitro premium product to become a default subscription for gamers.
Today, November 5, Discord published a new blog post intended to break down the range of changes and updates to Nitro in 2026, backing them up with new stats intended to show the growth of the subscription product and gifting activity around it. GamesBeat spoke with Discord senior director of marketing Nico Maurette, who leads the team developing Nitro, about some of the key changes to the product over the past year — and the November 3 launch of Discord gift cards at retailers like Walmart and Target.
Here are some of the key takeaways.
The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
On the organic growth of gifting activity on Discord
Nico Maurette: “Just this year to date, more than 5 million Nitro memberships were gifted. It’s our highest number yet, and that shows you like the scale of gifting on the platform. For us, it’s a natural step to just add more ways in which people can can gift on Discord and unlock this new type of gifting behavior.”
GamesBeat: Maurette tied this increase in gifting activity to Discord’s decision to launch physical gift cards this week, describing the cards as “giving people another way to gift.” He said Discord was gearing up for gifting activity on its platform to hit another peak during the winter holidays: In 2025, Christmas Day was Discord’s biggest gifting day of the year, according to numbers shared by a company representative, with roughly 3.5 times more expenditures than a normal day that year.
On the expansion of Nitro beyond on-platform Discord benefits
Nico Maurette: “Our goal with Nitro is to make it the must-have membership in gaming. That’s our ambition and our goal, and we’re working really hard to get there. The reason for that is that if you look at our place in the gaming ecosystem, we’re at the intersection of what people play, how they play it, and how they connect while playing. So, when we think about how to make Nitro more valuable for players on the Discord platform, it’s natural that we want to improve the on-platform experience, but also those other gaming experiences our users care about.”
GamesBeat: When I asked whether Maurette envisioned gamers making the jump over to Nitro from popular subscription products like Xbox Game Pass or Fortnite Crew, he said he viewed Nitro has having a “very different value proposition” than more traditional gaming subscriptions, framing it as an additive or compatible subscription rather than a replacement for other subscription products. It’s worth noting, however, that Xbox Game Pass is currently directly baked into Nitro, making Nitro effectively a replacement for a direct Game Pass subscription.
On the value of Nitro and its audience to game makers
Nico Maurette: “Developers win, players win, and Discord wins as well. Because, when you look at the Nitro audience, they’re extremely engaged — some of the most engaged players in the world, I daresay. They’re very influential with their friends and with gaming communities as well. And they, of course, have willingness to pay. So they are people that, if they like something, they understand the value of paying. As a developer, if you have the opportunity to put your game in front of Nitro users, you know that if they like it, they’re going to pay for it.”
GamesBeat: Maurette’s answer to this question connected Discord’s Nitro product to players’ ability to influence their friends’ purchasing behavior — and the rise of player-generated marketing content, such as short-form clips of games. In 2026, Discord users gained early access to Discord’s built-in Clips tool.
Discord’s decision to expand Nitro users’ file upload size limit from 500 MB to 1 GB was also motivated by the rise of clipping activity on the platform, per Mourette.
“Fun fact: it became the number one benefit we launched this year,” Maurette said, referring to the file size expansion. “We ran a survey, and 75 percent of users told us that was their favorite one. It really shows the importance of that utility.”