Discord announced yesterday a suite of new updates to help games acquire players, increase engagement, and grow revenue.
It’s part of Discord’s effort to ensure its social layer is fueling the gaming ecosystem, said Stan Vishnevskiy, CTO of Discord, in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat. Discord has grown to more than 90 million daily active users, and 90% of its users play weekly.
The social engagement features are further helping Discord to monetize, as players that stick around longer are more likely to subscribe to Nitro (Discord’s premium service) and engage with ads more.
“Discord has been on a journey. For the longest time, it was very much a super consumer facing platform. And then the last couple years, we really like what Discord has become in the game industry,” said Stan Vishnevskiy, CTO of Discord, in an interview with GamesBeat. “We realized we can also help game developers — actually both the consumer and the developer side — because, the game industry is really facing various challenges right now.”
Vishnevskiy added, “There’s just so much stuff being created, and so many live ops games. Discovery and rediscovery is a pain point. There’s friction getting into [new] games. And even if you don’t have friction, convincing your friends that they should try something new is [hard].”
Discord Social Commerce
Discord is announcing it is expanding the availability of its Discord Social Commerce solution, a native, socially powered commerce capability that enables game developers to unlock incremental revenue from the highly engaged audience of players on the platform. Following a successful first pilot with Marvel Rivals, Discord is now opening access to more developer partners.
Discord Social Commerce is built for the platform’s highly engaged community of users. Developers will have the opportunity to sell in-game items directly within their official Discord servers where their engaged players already gather.
From there, Discord seamlessly integrates these in-game items across social surfaces, including player profiles, Wishlists, direct messages, and voice chats. By reaching players where they already connect before, during, and after gameplay, Discord Social Commerce expands the number of potential purchasers, helps re-engage lapsed players, and unlocks new monetization opportunities beyond traditional in-game commerce.
The expansion of Discord Social Commerce follows a successful early pilot with Marvel Rivals in December 2025, which demonstrated how native Discord behaviors like gifting can unlock new buyers and re-engage lapsed players.
According to an internal study conducted by Discord in December 2025, results from the pilot revealed that 41% of purchases were gifts and 25% of gift buyers were lapsed players or non-players, highlighting how socially powered commerce on Discord can grow a game’s purchasing audience. Based on these results, Discord Social Commerce is now opening by invitation to new partners like Facepunch Studios to help scale it further.
Discord Social Commerce is the latest offering in the company’s growing suite of tools that help developers grow their businesses. Selling in-game items on Discord empowers developers of all sizes – from indie studios to triple-A publishers – to extend their reach beyond their owned channels and tap into the social layer on Discord where gaming culture already lives.
A tale of two games
So Discord has focused on convincing developers to use its tools so they can better hang on to their existing players and get more players coming back to its platform. The more players socialize, the more they use Discord, and the more they play games on Discord.
I’ve been playing a lot of ARC Raiders lately and Discord has been essential as a communications tool for that purpose. Using the social SDK of Discord, Embark Studios has been able to make it easier to connect with friends in the game and jump in a match together and talk with each other during and after matches.
“I’m really excited that over the last year we’ve improved how we integrate with those games. And the cool thing of that is it exceeded our wildest expectations,” Vishnevskiy said. “We’ve launched on mobile as well as consoles. We’ve been getting this going. ARC Raiders is one of those games, but also Marvel Rivals. That’s been really exciting for us, and we’re doubling down on that.”
I asked whether an incumbent popular game like ARC Raiders could use Discord’s help with re-engagement of fans, or if a new challenge like Bungie could use Discord to help break through the opposition to get more users for Marathon.
“That’s actually a great question. I think it ties back to that discovery/rediscovery mechanism. But also, Who are your core players? And how do you get more people to engage because you’re able to retain everyone?”
Vishnevskiy said the two games are both extraction shooters, but they serve very different audiences at the core. There will be some overlap of players who may go back and forth between the games. Discord’s job is to make it as easy as possible to play.
“You want to make sure the players who are the most engaged stay with your game because they are what drives the longevity of the game,” Vishnevskiy said.
Discord Social Layer impact
This year marks the one-year milestone since Discord opened the ability for games to integrate the Social SDK to power their social layer, enabling players to carry their social presence and connections from Discord directly into gameplay through account linking. By connecting player accounts across Discord and in-game, developers are seeing measurable impact, with 100% of games with the Social SDK integration seeing an increase in daily active users.
About 40% of Discord players on PCs played the same game in the next hour after watching it stream. Vishnevskiy said that players with voice channels play 66% more days than people who don’t.
“That’s a massive difference. How do you reach that audience? How do you get to get them to interact with you?” Vishnevskiy said.
Discord isn’t sharing the exact size of its ad business. But the terms are very favorable to developers, in he said.
“I’m just so proud of the way we’ve come from the social SDK, that major game launches go from not having something to having major games like Marvel Rivals and ARC Raiders and Battlefield and Rust and many others adopting it and players being so excited for the Quest business we’ve launched,” Vishnevskiy said.
Based on a causal study focused on outcomes after Social SDK integration for more than 15 games launched since December 2024, linked players had a median increase of 25% in game launch days, and play sessions showed a median increase of 16%. About 20% of Discord Shop purchases are gifted.
Vishnevskiy said that when people stream on Discord, the people watching them are more likely to jump into the same game. That can help increase the session length and the number of games played.
“We’re making sure to shorten the path to reengage with the game and reengage with your friends,” he said. Your friends are going to be the best influencers of what you guys do together, and they are giving you a reason to play longer.”
Official Game Profiles
Developers can now claim their official game profile on Discord and verify their official community server, giving them greater control over their game’s identity on the platform. This allows developers to customize how their game appears across Discord, from core game details to seasonal brand assets, as well as have a place to promote as the one true home of their game’s community.
Players can discover a game’s official profile through their friend’s shared activity, making it easier to find new games, while developers benefit from increased visibility that can support organic discovery to help them grow their communities.
Regarding the size of the ad business, Discord is not sharing the exact details of the
financials of it because it’s still in earlier phases. But they’re very favorable to developers, and he added, “We’re actually working with the developers to define them.”
He added, “We’re looking for a win, win, win.” That is, Discord asks what is a win for players? What is a win for developers? And what is a win for Discord?
“If Discord is selling in-game items, that translates to revenue for Discord. So these are all tied to our win, win, win. That’s how we think about it,” he said. “If we can find the intersection of the three, that’s like a bullseye for us.”
Instant Play Quests
Discord is continuing to evolve its advertising offering with the introduction of its latest Quests format, Instant Play Quests. Powered by cloud streaming technology, Instant Play Quests are the next iteration of Play Quests, offering a new way for players to instantly try games directly on the platform while removing the purchase, download, and installation barriers that are often the biggest friction to game trial.
Players can launch a full game trial in seconds with no installs, no storage requirements, and no friction. Vischnevskiy said Discord is expanding its Instant Play Quests, which is related to Quests, an advertising product. Quests helped drive much higher engagement from both new and lapsed players.
Instant Play Quests combine instant play, rewards, and Discord’s social graph to turn curiosity into trial and engagement. Early tests show Instant Play Quests can drive up to four times higher new user trial rates, with stronger completion among new and lapsed players versus standard formats. Instant Play Quests are available for games on Nvidia GeForce Now or Amazon GameLift.
Quests are Discord’s rewarded ad format designed to feel like gameplay while delivering meaningful value to users by authentically connecting with their gaming interests. With a 96% median ad completion rate, Quests deliver meaningful lift for game advertisers leveraging the format to bolster game discovery, Vishnevskiy said.
In addition to expanding its Quests formats, Discord advertising is scaling into a measurable performance engine that drives engagement and return on investment through advanced targeting and expanded measurement capabilities. Combined with Discord Social Commerce and official communities, Quests offer a complete loop of discovery, play, and reward on the platform.
I noted that Discord has a knack for avoiding annoying and extractive moves when it comes to its monetization practices.
“It goes back to the win win win. If any of those parties are not getting the right experience, it doesn’t work very good,” Vishnevskiy said.
“We’re just really excited to be on this journey of working more with game developers,” Vishnevskiy said. “It’s almost two GDCs ago when we refocused a a company on gaming and made developers into a second primary customer.”