Discord has Changed?

As some of you might have noticed, Discord has lately been changing their branding. Most notably, they seem to be trying to escape the confines of being the "funny gamer app" and trying to move on to something new and shiny to appeal to a more mature crowd.

The first to go was the name. They changed their main domain from discordapp.com to discord.com. Seems harmless enough, right? What started scaring people was how they announced the change. "We've grown up" is what they said. This change gave the negative implication, to many users, that they were calling gaming "immature".

I, among many others, brushed this off as bad wording. Sadly, we're starting to see what they mean about "growing up." Soon after, we got a completely redesigned home page that removed many "cute gaming elements." Overall, the page looks much more appealing to a broader crowd than just the edgy teenagers who love anime and memes. This move is undoubtedly their goal, and they said as much in an update message shortly after.

The video and message they sent made it clear; Discord isn't just a place for gamers anymore. It's a place for anyone and everyone of all ages. Overall, it's not a bad idea. After all, the potential for new users will grow dramatically if they appeal to more than just teenagers and young-minded adults. However, I feel there is a significant downside here to be found for those of us who fell in love with Discord as it was.

While Discord is undoubtedly the best chat platform on the market to date, I feel we're losing an essential part of what made a lot of us love the app. I and many others found the "memey" and "fun" parts of the app very appealing when moving over from the near-corporate feeling Skype. (Yes that's right kids, we used to use Skype in the exact way you use Discord)

I saw a reasonably decent suggestion on /r/discordapp by users SuperSupermario24, danbulant, and AnimatorGuy1 that would have us getting a "language setting" similar to what Minecraft has with the every funny "lolcat", where you can change the "language" in the app back to "classic Discord" which is inherently memey and fun.

I know myself, and many others are going to miss the small strings found throughout the app that reminded us how young and fun Discord was. Personally, most of all, I miss the "table flip" options in server settings, which would dictate how strict your server security was. It has been reduced to simple (yet easy to understand) words in place of the previously hilarious emotes.

RIP memey Discord; I hope this isn't the last we'll hear from you.