Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation • Hacker News Board

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#181

Post by foepys » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:08 AM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #165

ineedasername wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what bar you're using for "mainstream", but if it doesn't include videogames in the late 80's/early 90's, it's too high. If being more popular than any other single toy short of a ball isn't mainstream, nothing is. Sure, they're even more popular now, and they may be more popular still in some areas of the world, but that doesn't make them not mainstream 25 years ago. as reference, according to wiktionar…

To add to this: Skyrim sold 30 million copies. That's more than all but 7 music albums ever made. Wii Sports (12 years old) sold 80 million copies. That's more than any album ever. Individual videogames regularly sell more than MUSIC and have done so for well over a decade. I don't know what definition of mainstream there is where something sells 80 million copies and still isn't mainstream.

You cannot compare games to music unless you include all licensing revenue for radio stations, films etc. I don't own a single Beatles album but I still know a lot of their songs.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#182

Post by foepys » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:18 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #179

legionof7 wrote: post #139

I've used Discord for a long time and my previous startup was even part of the Hypesquad program. However, I'm really concerned with their views around E2E encryption. We've asked many times for an end-to-end encryption service. This became the #3 most upvoted request ( https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600... ). Unfortunately, their "rejection" and user comments were deleted after they switche…

It's extremely hard to get e2e right and still have great UX when your product revolves around semipublic group chats.

I'd argue that it's actually impossible if the target group is not technically skilled. Discord has too many different clients, just the key exchange would be a nightmare for the average person. TeamSpeak tried to use keys for their profile management but everybody I know just simply regenerates their keys when they freshly install TeamSpeak, so it's effectively useless when combined with E2E encryption.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#183

Post by japanoise » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:22 AM UTC

buckysock wrote: post #149

nostrademons wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in middle/high school in the mid-late 90s, I was addicted to the precursors of today MMORPGs (back when everything was text-based), and my career plan consisted of founding a gaming company. My mother successfully (for a time) dissuaded me, saying "Who has time to play games? Once you have money to pay for games, you'll be working at a job for most of your waking hours." A couple years out of college, I ac…

Huxley : soma soma soma

The only thing more pretentious than a spurious 1984 reference is a spurious Brave New World reference.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#184

Post by SpaceManNabs » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:24 AM UTC

dvt wrote: post #16

I'm bearish on Discord. Unlike Slack, it targets a price-averse demographic and is attempting to enter spaces that are very saturated (Steam, Origin, Epic, Ubisoft are already crushing the digital distribution medium), so then it's basically an IRC replacement for gamers. I understand Slack's valuation as it targets huge companies with up to decades-long contracts and has projected revenues > $1B for this year, but I…

On steam, most people don't want to use the in-game friends client even though it looks a lot like discord in style (when you get to the chat rooms). Not sure why that is, but Steam Chat most definitely lost to discord.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#185

Post by tlear » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:35 AM UTC

starshadowx2 wrote: post #31

discorded wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is already considered uncool among a pretty influential crowd of users, people are sick of how laggy it is compared to other services and it is now a product no one asked for with the new store. The fact it is also a gigantic datamining operation also is not going over so well.

I'm a pretty big discord user, early supporter/nitro/hypesquad and all that, and I have never heard of this "influential crowd" calling it uncool. All I've seen is servers getting larger and more servers popping up. Discord themselves just ran a Snowsgiving server which raised 100k for charity in under a week and had ~10k people in it at any time I checked chatting. I don't have any lag on any devices nor do I hear o…

Data mining operation..? ask yourself what was their response to the end to end encryption requests? There is your answer.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#186

Post by freddie_mercury » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #171

freddie_mercury wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this: Skyrim sold 30 million copies. That's more than all but 7 music albums ever made. Wii Sports (12 years old) sold 80 million copies. That's more than any album ever. Individual videogames regularly sell more than MUSIC and have done so for well over a decade. I don't know what definition of mainstream there is where something sells 80 million copies and still isn't mainstream.

Wii Sports was one of the first mainstream games. That's pretty much the boundary of the two eras. Everyone at the time was talking about how the Wii was penetrating all these "mainstream" markets that gaming had never managed to touch before, remember?

Tetris has sold 170 million copies.

Super Mario Bros sold over 40 million copies.

Both of those games are 30 years old. Wii Sports was not even close to being one of the first mainstream games.

The original Pokemon games sold over 30 million copies, inspired a massive worldwide TV show, and that was over 20 years ago.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#187

Post by ascar » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 8:07 AM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #133

freddie_mercury wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Mainstream" as in something that you could have a reasonable expectation of having a coherent conversation about with any/every human being on the planet. (For example, "baseball" is relatively mainstream. "The Beatles", or "Elvis", slightly moreso.) This doesn't strike me as a useful definition of mainstream. I live in Vietnam and I guarantee you that no one here could tell you a single thing about baseball, The…

Games became mainstream within the last 20 years or so. It wasnt mainstream in the 90’ies which is where i predicted that one say you would be able to score girls by being a famous gamer.

That's still a feat today, maybe albeit of scoring with girls that are your fans in the first place.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#188

Post by Cypher » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 8:13 AM UTC

Meanwhile... who here has updated skype recently?

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#189

Post by freddie_mercury » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 8:33 AM UTC

foepys wrote: post #181

freddie_mercury wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this: Skyrim sold 30 million copies. That's more than all but 7 music albums ever made. Wii Sports (12 years old) sold 80 million copies. That's more than any album ever. Individual videogames regularly sell more than MUSIC and have done so for well over a decade. I don't know what definition of mainstream there is where something sells 80 million copies and still isn't mainstream.

You cannot compare games to music unless you include all licensing revenue for radio stations, films etc. I don't own a single Beatles album but I still know a lot of their songs.

Videogame revenue surpassed the U.S. movie and music industry in 2005 and 2007 respectively, including all licensing.

Re: Discord raises $150M, surpassing $2B valuation

#190

Post by keerthiko » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 8:38 AM UTC

dyarosla wrote: post #128

keerthiko wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it targets a price-averse demographic and is attempting to enter spaces that are very saturated This is accurately the current state of affairs, but these are presented like conclusions you make on an industry that's a half century old at least. Gaming was a tiny niche not 15 years ago. It's entered the mainstream less than 10 years ago. It surpassed the film industry not 2 years ago in revenue. Pirated games almos…

Amazon bought Twitch for $1B I believe, not $2B. How accurate are the the other figures you cited? If possible, please do provide links for figures you cite- it’s incredibly useful.

Good catch. They were all off the top of my head based on a lifetime of studying the game industry but not having the time to dig out citations for everything. They're mostly google-able, a few GDC "year in numbers" slides can show you the trends you're interested in. I'm probably off by a few years here and there. It was all just to illustrate the point that things are changing fast and not stopping, which I'm confident will stand.