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Microsoft is in talks to acquire Discord, a video-game chat community, for more than $10 billion

DrAspirino

Banned
$10 Billion seems VERY high, in all honesty, but a lot of the big tech companies have similar mindsets. Why take months and months, maybe even years, to crate your own version of something when you can just buy existing technology/established brand? There's no guarantee it will succeed, but it seems preferable to putting in the time and effort to create your own version of it.

Some ppl in here will cheer "just buy it... yesssssss!" but then look down on others that create their own version of something. It seems preferable to just buy something up versus trying to create something similar but "maybe" better. The mental gymnastics is amazing, I guess fanboys will fanboy.

Edit: Actually, $10 Billion seems like a good price for Discord. But, I swear there were rumors that Discord was looking to go public. If they did, they'd probably make more than that $10 Billion. It would be interesting if they sold to MS, it would be interesting to hear the thinking behind it. Versus going public and potential raising valuation above $10B. Discord is a very very popular platform.
They (Discord) actually WANTED to be bought by Microsoft.

Microsoft Said to Discuss Discord Bid for Over $10 Billion - Bloomberg
Discord reached out to Microsoft to gauge interest, and Xbox chief Phil Spencer has been talking to the company...

They even talked with EPIC and Amazon, but none of them responded.

So... is this good? Is this bad? only time will tell.
 
They (Discord) actually WANTED to be bought by Microsoft.

Microsoft Said to Discuss Discord Bid for Over $10 Billion - Bloomberg


They even talked with EPIC and Amazon, but none of them responded.

So... is this good? Is this bad? only time will tell.
That is surprising to read. I'm going to have to start rethinking the sources I'm looking at for info. I wonder what happened to make them do a 180 like that 🤔 I don't usually buy into IPO's when they launch, but Discord was one that I was really thinking hard about. Roblox was the other one, but I didn't pull the trigger on that one.

Thanks for the article link!
 

Gatox

Banned
That's a bit surprising to me. We use Teams every day in our software development team, it always runs in the background on our PCs, and every morning for our morning meetings via vpn, and our 4000+ employee-sized business uses it for company wide meetings and all-hands-on monthly, can't remember even a single time it had a hiccup.
The meeting I was on earlier had 7 different companies dialling in on Teams, from 4 different countries, sharing all kinds of files across Teams etc with zero problems, same as each of the same meetings for the past 5 or 6 weeks. And my resources were nowhere near what he shows, nothing has ever slowed down.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
I use advertising and user-data interchangeably; and we're not talking about "some data" here. If anything, the past year has demonstrated that Discord conversations go well beyond min-maxing Path of Exile builds.
Wow that's quite a goal post move lol But either way you don't spend $10 billion to scrape chat data. Even Facebook who is far more data/advertising driven doesn't use Messenger like that.. or Instagram.. and they spent loads of money to buy WhatsApp, which is end to end encrypted and they also aren't scraping chats for data.

The value of Discord is blatantly obvious when it comes to MS; access to users.. not their "data." And those users using a product w/ a huge focus on videogames.
 
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Arachnid

Member
Sure, buying bethesda and discord is clearly the move of someone who doesn't feel pressure from the other big vg companies who did better in the past gen...

I often spend almost 20 billion dollars just to buy some food where i'm not hungry.
Xbox generates a tenth of Microsoft's total revenue. The Zenimax acquisition is gaming competition driven, of course, but discord has more application and a huge userbase already. I think there's more to this acquisition than Playstation.
 

Three

Member
1.5 trillion dollars in revenue in the past twenty years. 350 billion in profits. What a fucking failure, amirite :messenger_winking:

I would love to fail like ms, getting billions of dollars every quarter should allow me to cope with it
It's pretty obvious that person means failure in the games industry. Anybody with half a brain can pick up the context.
 

Arachnid

Member
It's pretty obvious that person means failure in the games industry. Anybody with half a brain can pick up the context.
How so? Characterizing the original Xbox or the 360 as failures seems like a stretch. Hell, the One didn't fail either. It didn't thrive as well as the PS4 did, but I see failing as a net loss with the console being discontinued.

The statement "20 years of failure" seems like fanboying, in which case pointing him to Microsoft profits (and their being ultimately more successful on the whole than Sony) is an appropriate response.
 
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Stuart360

Member
How so? Characterizing the original Xbox or the 360 as failures seems like a stretch. Hell, the One didn't fail either. It didn't thrive as well as the PS4 did, but I see failing as a net loss with the console being discontinued.

The statement "20 years of failure" seems like fanboying, in which case pointing him to Microsoft being ultimately more successful on the whole than Sony is an appropriate response.
It is fanboying. They sold 160mil consoles over 3 generations. If that is 'failing' then cool, i'm sure they wont mind 'failing' with XSX/XSS as well.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
What does discord do, or more importantly earn, to be worth 10 billion?
You can pay to "boost" your server, or a server you are on, which improves the featureset of that server.

They are estimated at 9 figure yearly revenue (over $100 million.)
 

ethomaz

Banned
Not sure how the platform availability makes a difference really.

Also WhatsApp was probably great value at 19m.
I believe the number of users defines the market price not the features or platform.
Whatsapp value more because it has way more users.
If I'm not wrong Discord has over 300 million users being 140 million monthly active ones.

It is valued in $7 billion so a purchase around $10b is not out of the maths.

 
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Again discord acquisition it would not happen with the idea of Xbox it would certainly help the division with a probable integration as a side effect...but this would be 'ms looking for companies that can strengthen the offer of azure

This. In light of the recent Zenimax acquisition some folks are forgetting that Microsoft is more than just the Xbox division; I was questioning the reason for pursuing a purchase at first but then I remembered about their other services and Azure and have seen several good examples listed showing how it'd be pretty lucrative for those in terms of branding and services integration, but not necessarily in terms of revenue (i.e not pushing ads as that would probably drive away users).

It brings tangible benefits for Xbox as well (if it happens), but it serves usage outside of that division.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Imaging spending 10 billion on a chat program
Did you have the same reactik. When Sony bought a weeb network for 1. 2 billion?
Or Sony buying a dying esport network Evo.

It's about expanding your business.
At least discord has a shitload of users
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
I mean. They have so much money that they can just buy up almost everyone they can’t compete with. Who needs to actually compete when you can flash fat stacks to make the problem go away?
Microsoft rn:

EbuQ895.jpg
 

Three

Member
How so? Characterizing the original Xbox or the 360 as failures seems like a stretch. Hell, the One didn't fail either. It didn't thrive as well as the PS4 did, but I see failing as a net loss with the console being discontinued.

The statement "20 years of failure" seems like fanboying, in which case pointing him to Microsoft profits (and their being ultimately more successful on the whole than Sony) is an appropriate response.
Yes it is fanboying but you have to be delusional not to pick up that MS did not succeed with some things in the games industry. The original xbox and 360 were not successful and ended up third. Original xbox actually cost MS a lot. They didn't actually turn a profit until Mattrick had huge success with the Kinect. The xbox one did not succeed or meet Microsofts expectations and again ended up 3rd. Now they are on a different path with gamepass. My point being yes it is fanboying to say 20yrs of failure but clearly by the fact that he said 20 years (MS are much older) and "failure" it's pretty obvious they are talking about MS in the games industry so if you are going to use profit or revenue as a measure of success use whatever you think is the profit they have made from xbox.

It's like saying MS failed in the mobile industry so tried to buy their way into it with Nokia then somebody saying well look at MS's overall profit I'd love to fail like that. You know full well somebody saying they failed in mobile has a legitimate point regardless of their overall profits from other industries.

Trying to beat your chest about MS profits as a whole when called a failure in a particular industry is just as much fanboying and corporate ball licking if not more so.
 
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Deanington

Member
Discord is actually great. Its great for forum discussions as far as scope of servers and what they contain on specific subjects, hobbies, group buys etc (downside is that its not a static discussion). It haves Twitch like possibilities, in the sense of able to stream or screen share with what you're doing. Photo sharing, gifs, emojis etc anytime you want to post/comment. Music sharing, twitch, Spotify, game client, etc integration. Also of course there is voice and video communication. Modded servers. All free to use by the way. It really is a great all around client. It would be a pretty good purchase. Of course MS will integrate MS things most likely, but as long as they dont ruin what it is and let it to continually grow organically it should remain fine. Damn I am shilling hard for Discord, LOL. Ah well *shrugs* I like it.
 

Alright

Banned
DAMN there is so much hate in here lol...just calm down everyone, Sony will eventually maybe acquire something maybe, one day, something meaningful.
When a company is churning out exclusives after exclusives that sell in the millions, i don't think they need to worry about acquisitions.
 
lol I like how Sony and MS are out here buying anything that even has a heartbeat.

10 billion is a crazy amount of money, but we've seen some crazy shit so lol I never knew Discord was worth so much, I knew lots of people used it, but never to the tune of $10 billion worth.
We just started using it for my job lol
 

EDMIX

Member
We just started using it for my job lol

True. When I used to do IT stuff from home, we used Spark. So many companies used it, that when I'd get laid off from one job, many of my friends who also got laid off would still PM me from Spark and I'd see them go from Apple, to Google, to Amazon lol

So Discord likely is the program that is replacing it for many companies.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Xbox team really getting hard carried by Daddy Microsoft holy shit. Would be a huge acquisition.
Sitting on cash right not not seen as a good move; a lot of this is just what big companies are doing because of that. (high inflation, low interest rates)

Not to mention everyone making decisions wants the stock to keep going up, and growth is the only way to do that..
 
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Three

Member
True. When I used to do IT stuff from home, we used Spark. So many companies used it, that when I'd get laid off from one job, many of my friends who also got laid off would still PM me from Spark and I'd see them go from Apple, to Google, to Amazon lol

So Discord likely is the program that is replacing it for many companies.
Slack is what's taking off for corporate IT jobs. At least in this country.
 
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This is so overpriced. You would think Skype and Mixer of all the business in world would benefit from a pandemic. They have the touch of death.
 

YukiOnna

Member
How does Discord make money?
Nitro Subscriptions (4.99/9.99 Plans and Annual Option) & Server Boosting. Allows you custom emotes, personalized profiles, animated icons, and more. Then Server Boosting has its own specialized customization options and I see plenty of server members boosting.
 
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