The Discord Social SDK enables developers to tap into Discord’s social infrastructure at no cost

Discord, the communications for games company, has launched the Discord Social SDK, a toolkit that enables developers of all sizes to tap into Discord’s social infrastructure to drive their game’s social and multiplayer experiences for all their players.

Developers can tap into this toolkit, with or without a Discord account, at no cost. Developers can not only harness the SDK to power in-game communication and connectivity for all players, but they can also
provide an even more integrated and engaging experience for their Discord-connected players while further benefiting from Discord’s social features to drive discovery and growth for their games.

Already rolling out in games from early partners, Discord Social SDK streamlines player connections and increases engagement while also making it possible to extend reach beyond the game itself to Discord’s highly engaged community of 200+ million monthly active users who spend a combined 1.5+ billion hours each month playing across thousands of titles on PC alone, said Jason Citron, CEO of Discord, in an interview with GamesBeat.

Social integrations include a unified friends list that serves as the foundation for the in-game social experience, deep-linked game invites that enable players to invite their friends to directly join their party or lobby, and communications features such as cross-platform messaging and voice chat.

“For game creators from indie to triple-A, Discord is where you can connect with the world’s largest and most engaged community of players to fuel the growth of your game before, during, and after launch. Game discovery and retention have never been so critical, and we’re excited to help developers grow their games by reaching gamers where they are,” said Stan Vishnevskiy, cofounder and CTO at Discord, in a statement.

The struggle of game discovery

Game discovery faces intense competition today. Just five major franchises now account for over 30% of total playtime, while the top 15 dominate 60% of all gaming hours [source: Newzoo, “The PC & Console Gaming Report 2024”]. With 20,000 new games launching annually, developers struggle for visibility in a crowded market.

Yet 50% of Discord’s active player base discovers and plays a new game each month. The social dimension of gaming has become crucial for discovery. As players gravitate toward Discord – today’s digital living room designed for gaming – they seek active connections where real friendships thrive.

Research shows 72% of Discord users play games with friends weekly, 50% stream their gameplay to friends, and 28% launch the same game within an hour of watching a friend stream [Source: Discord 2024 Internal Data]. When users play with at least one friend, gameplay sessions increase 7x, highlighting the power of friend-to-friend influence and Discord’s unique ecosystem.

Back in 2017, in early Discord days, the company had a version of this available that it called the Discord Game Bridge. The feature set was different, and the company was smaller. Discord branched into new markets during the pandemic and then regrouped around gaming in the post-pandemic era.

Solving the discovery problem and fueling ecosystem growth

Citron said that Discord was reflecting on all the conversations it has had with developers over the last year or so and the challenges that are really facing them.

“The big thing that comes through loud and clear to us when we talk to folks is how game discovery is just like broken. It’s brutal right now,” Citron said. “So many games are failing to reach the market. The top franchises are really sticky now. So 60% of the play time that we see, from, external industry data and mixed with our own stuff, goes to the top 15 games.”

He said there are tens of thousands of games launching every year, so there’s a lot of competition for that last 40%. And some of Discord’s 870 employees are working to address this problem.

“We’ve been thinking about how we can help developers, given that players come to Discord as the home to spend time with their friends before, during and after playing games,” Citron said. “Our social SDK, which is kind of taking Discord’s social features — our social network and infrastructure — and letting developers take it into their game. So instead of having to rebuild text chat, voice chat, friends list, and that stuff that every game needs, they can use our tech to power it for all of their players, whether they have Discord accounts or not.”

Before today, game devs have to use other off-the-shelf apps or develop their own in-game chat.

For those who connect their Discord account, the SDK lights up and brings in their Friends List from Discord and then shows what they’re playing in Discord in a more interesting and rich way. It allows you to text chat from the game directly into Discord and back.

“So it helps players get into games faster with their friends, which should increase adoption for developers who are building multiplayer games, and then they can spend less time on this undifferentiated stuff that they need to have and more time on their differentiated creativity to hopefully help them break through,” Citron said. “What we’re offering is this so developers can integrate voice chat for almost like the stranger matchmaking experience inside their game that they still want to offer. And then for for Discord users, we expect that they will still start in their Discord. And so that’s how I expect the voice chat will kind of play out from a usability standpoint.”

Growing support

Early developers leveraging Discord Social SDK include Theorycraft Games, Facepunch Studios,1047 Games, Scopely, Mainframe Industries, Elodie Games, and more.

“We worked with some early partners to really make sure that the API was designed in a way that really made sense for how developers really wanted to use it,” Citron said. “Our team has a lot of experience, from the game development world, but we really wanted to sit with some developers who are excited to co-develop the APIs with us. And so that’s what those partners did.”

Discord Social SDK is compatible with C++, both Unreal Engine and Unity, and supports Windows 11+ and macOS. Support for console and mobile is coming soon.

“We’ve bet big on Discord – from organizing our fully-remote office to nurturing our playtesting community – because we believe it’s such a unique platform. Discord Social SDK is a valuable tool to make our social features like direct messaging, lobbies, and session invites absolutely seamless for Supervive players,” said Joe Tung, CEO of Theorycraft Games, in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be an early partner for Discord Social SDK and look forward to bolstering our in-game communication by tapping into Discord’s massive social graph and innovative social tools.”

“At Scopely, strong player communities are the heart of our games and core to everything we do. Our Marvel Strike Force players are already coming together on Discord to strategize, strengthen their alliances and connect with one another,” said Ryan Jacobson, general manager of Marvel Strike Force at Scopely, in a statement. “With the upcoming integration of Discord’s social connectivity directly into Marvel Strike Force, we’re looking forward to creating a more engaging, immersive and seamless way for players to communicate, enhancing how they play together and deepening their collaboration.”

Bringing players together, in and out of game

Discord Social SDK provides a social infrastructure layer for developers, unlocking access to Discord’s
naturally social communities to enable highly engaged players to connect, play, and build relationships. With Discord-powered features available directly in games, players spend less time planning and more time playing – whether they’re teaming up in the same game, coordinating across different games, or just keeping the conversation going after a match.

Game devs will have an option to change or customize the user interface of how the Discord communication looks inside the game. You can see how it looks in some games already inside game chat. You can use it to message someone who is offline via Discord from inside the game.

Discord Social SDK offers a suite of features that enhance connectivity and player engagement, including:

• Unified Friends List: Players can access their Discord friends list in-game and their in-game friends list in Discord, enabling players to stay connected in and out of game.
• Deeplink Game Invites: Players can send invites directly from their in-game unified friends list to their Discord friends that drop them into the exact party/lobby/session, increasing player retention and engagement.
• Rich Presence: Players spread the word about a game just by playing it. Now available for PC, console, and mobile, rich presence lets a player surface their gaming activity in Discord as they are playing and can be configured to enable one-click game joins from player profiles. This leads to more discovery and exposure for the game, as well as more multiplayer gaming sessions.
• Flexible Account Requirements: A Discord account is not required for players to enjoy a unified social experience within the game, but account linking is available for those who wish to connect their in-game experience to their Discord for an even more engaging experience that keeps the conversation around the game going even when they are not actively playing.

Additionally, Discord is releasing features in a closed beta to support in-game communications:

• Cross-Platform Messaging: Players can keep the conversation around the game going across desktop, console, and mobile.
• Linked Channels: Players can link their in-game chat to specific Discord channels in their servers, providing a space for guilds, groups, and squads of all sizes to connect that’s persistent across both in-game and Discord.
• Voice Chat: Players can enjoy some of the highest quality audio chat available today, powered by the same technology behind Discord’s voice tools that has made it the gold standard for video game comms. Developers can request expanded access to these available features via the closed beta.

Getting started with Discord Social SDK

The launch of Discord Social SDK builds on the company’s broader developer support initiatives, including Quests that drive game discovery through rewards and Activities that allow game developers to build, launch, distribute, get discovered, and monetize natively on Discord.

For the social SDK, Citron views this as an enhancement for engagement and user expansion.

“We’re not charging directly for it, but from a business side, the way we think about this is that if we can create more value for Discord users by bringing Discord into their games and making the games that have Discord integrated more fun and more social for them, that will ultimately benefit us,” Citron said. “It also benefits the players and the developers. So we view it as a win, win that we monetize primarily today through our Nitro subscription. The more people use discord, the more likely they are to buy Nitro. And that’s kind of how it all sorts together for us.”

Discord also has some news coming later during GDC, Citron said.

As for the Discord Social SDK, he said, “We’re pretty confident that that developers will find it easy to use, easy to integrate, and it’ll work for them. And that’s what we’re doing now with the voice and text chat and closed beta. We’re still co-developing those APIs to make sure that they’re really seamless to use and easy to integrate for devs.”

I brought up whether players have to worry about the performance of Discord if it is integrated into the game. Citron said the company pays a lot of attention to the performance of Discord. The Discord team is always trying to reduce the memory consumption. But Citron notes the team has been reducing internet latency for a decade and you can see that in the performance of the product.

“You’ll see similar performance” as with the standalone app versus the integrated app, he said. And if the game runs Discord, it’s only running the voice app and not the entire Discord app and so it can perform better.

Inside a game, you can connect with strangers in your squad through the Discord SDK app, but you don’t have to give those strangers your Discord identity. In that way, your privacy is respected.