Discord is an application used by many in the gaming community for chatting and communicating with each other. There are also a fair number of people who do not game using it, but it’s traditionally been a gamers app. Now, rumor has it that Microsoft may be purchasing the company for a cool US$10 billion.
According to Ars Technica and Bloomberg, “named people familiar with the matter” have confirmed the sale of Discord to Microsoft. Anonymous sources can be sketchy, so we’ve decided to label this report as a rumor.
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Reportedly, Epic Games and Amazon were also in the fray and considering the purchase of Discord. VentureBeat has also reported that the company had been discussing sale options with “multiple parties.”
First launched in 2015, Discord lets individual users create public or private servers that allow members to chat with others in that server via text, images, voice, and video live streaming. The service now reportedly has 6.7 million such servers, which serve as centralized communication hubs for everything from official news and discussion from game publishers and multiplayer match organization among small groups of friends to a chaotic gathering place for people betting on the stock market—and everything in between.
Ars Technica
Discord is said to have over 140 million users and 300 million registered accounts, while The Wall Street Journal says the company brought in US$130 million last year. That revenue mostly comes from the company’s Nitro premium service.
Microsoft itself is involved heavily in the gaming industry, considering it owns Xbox and everything that goes with it. So it makes sense that they would want to acquire the platform. It will be interesting to see what they do with it, if these rumors are true.
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