[15] Their first product was Fates Forever, released in 2014, which Citron anticipated to be the first multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game on mobile platforms, but it did not become commercially successful.

[16] According to Citron, during the development process, he noticed how difficult it was for his team to work out tactics in games like Final Fantasy XIV and League of Legends using available voice over IP (VoIP) software.

The round was led by Greenoaks Capital with participation from Firstmark, Tencent, IVP, Index Ventures and Technology Opportunity Partners.

[26] Starting in June 2020, Discord announced it was shifting focus away from video gaming specifically to a more all-purpose communication and chat client for all functions, revealing its new slogan "Your place to talk", along with a revised website.

Among other planned changes was to reduce the number of gaming in-jokes it used within the client, improving the user onboarding experience, and increasing server capacity and reliability.

[28] The same month, Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal reported that several companies were looking to purchase Discord, with Microsoft named as the likely lead buyer at a value estimated at $10 billion.

[37] Ahead of a funding round in August 2021, Discord had reported $130 million in 2020 revenues, triple from the prior year, and had an estimated valuation of $15 billion.

[39] In September 2021, Google sent cease and desist notices to the developers of two of the most popular music bots used on Discord–Groovy and Rythm–which were used on an estimated 36 million servers in total.

[41] Citron posted mockup images of Discord around the proposed Web3 principles with integrated cryptocurrency and non-fungible token support in November 2021, leading to criticism from its user base.

"[42] The CNIL fined Discord €800,000 in November 2022 for being in violation of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Communication tools such as voice and video calls, persistent chat rooms, and integrations with other gamer-focused services along with the general ability to send direct messages and create personal groups are present.

Users selected their new usernames in priority based on how early they registered for Discord, Nitro status, and ownership of partner and verified servers.

[77] Also in March 2019, Discord removed the digital storefront, instead choosing to focus on the Nitro subscription and having direct sales be done through developer's own servers.

[90] The desktop client is built on the Electron software framework using web technologies, which allows it to be multi-platform and operate as an installed application on personal computers.

[91] The software is supported by Google Cloud Platform's infrastructure in more than thirty data centres located in thirteen regions[92] to keep latency with clients low.

For a monthly subscription fee of $4.99, users can get an animated avatar, use custom and/or animated[95] emojis across all servers (non-Nitro users can only use custom emoji on the server they were added to), an increased maximum file size on file uploads (from 8 MB to 50 MB), the ability to screen share in higher resolutions, the ability to choose their own discriminator (from #0001 to #9999) and a unique profile badge.

[106][107] The company observed that while the bulk of its servers are used for gaming-related purposes, a small number have been created by users for non-gaming activities, like stock trading, fantasy football, and other shared interest groups.

[113] A study published in New Media & Society criticized Discord's offloading of server search functions to unmoderated third-party apps, saying that it facilitates hateful communities to find new audience.

[113] In January 2018, The Daily Beast reported that it found several Discord servers that were specifically engaged in distributing revenge porn and facilitating real-world harassment of the victims of these images and videos.

[114] In September 2024, the Federal Trade Commission released a report summarizing 9 company responses (including from Discord) to orders made by the agency pursuant to Section 6(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 to provide information about user and non-user data collection (including of children and teenagers) and data use by the companies that found that the companies' user and non-user data practices put individuals vulnerable to identity theft, stalking, unlawful discrimination, emotional distress and mental health issues, social stigma, and reputational harm.

Analyst Keegan Hankes from the Southern Poverty Law Center stated:It's pretty unavoidable to be a leader in this [alt-right] movement without participating in Discord.

[118][119] Citron stated that servers found to be engaged in illegal activities or violations of the terms of service would be shut down, but would not disclose any examples.

[124] Unicorn Riot has since published member lists and contents of several dozen servers connected to alt-right, white supremacist, and other such movements.

In January 2021, two days after the U.S. Capitol attack, Discord deleted the pro-Donald Trump server The Donald, "due to its overt connection to an online forum used to incite violence, plan an armed insurrection in the United States, and spread harmful misinformation related to 2020 U.S. election fraud", while stating that there was no evidence the server was used to organize the attack on the Capitol building.

[125] In January 2022, the British anti-disinformation organization Logically reported that Holocaust denial, neo-Nazism and other forms of hate speech were flourishing on the Discord and Telegram groups of the German website Disclose.tv.

[130] Some Discord users subsequently criticized the moderation staff for selectively allowing "cub" content, or underage pornographic furry artwork, under the same guidelines.

[131] In June 2023, NBC News reported that they had identified 35 cases of adults being charged with "kidnapping, grooming, or sexual assault" that allegedly involved the platform.

[132] In March 2024, a joint investigation by The Washington Post, Wired, Der Spiegel and Recorder outlined the extensive child grooming, sexual abuse (including sextortion) and murder conducted by a group known as 764 on Discord.

[133][134] On January 27, 2021, Discord banned the r/WallStreetBets server during the GameStop short squeeze, citing "hateful and discriminatory content", which users found contentious.

[137] Russian regulator Roskomnadzor demanded that the platform remove 947 posts containing illegal content and imposed a 3.5 million roubles (USD$37,493) fine.