Discord is testing a new feature that allows server owners to gate channels behind premium subscriptions

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Popular game-centric chatting app Discord is testing out a new feature designed to allow fans to support creators directly on Discord. Called Premium Memberships, this function lets Discord server owners lock certain group channels or even the entire server behind a paywall. According to the announcement post, this has been a highly requested addition to Discord from content creators, and adds upon previous perk-related updates, such as being able to "boost" servers by buying separate server-related perks for $4.99 a month. These paid tiers would be customizable by the server owners, adding bonuses for subscribing users that include custom roles with a specific color, access to channels, and other perks that people can come up with, at variously priced tiers. Right now, the feature is in private testing, as a "closed experiment".

Today, we’re excited to announce a brand-new feature that we’re currently testing with a small group of communities: Premium Memberships. Yep, you read that right! With Premium Memberships, creators and community owners will have the ability to gate part or all of their server behind a paid subscription. This is one of the most requested features from creators and we’re already seeing many of our communities offering this type of experience through third parties. We’re excited to now allow a select handful to test this experience natively on Discord.

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Julie_Pilgrim

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you know, for once, i dont completely hate a change that discord made, this was already kinda being done with stuff like channels only being available if you have a booster role and for example, cavetown's discord server is patreon only(ok, it's not officially patreon, he called it "cave club" or something but my general point stands)
 

Karones

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It's an interesting way to monetize and not rely on investors so much, but considering how most paid features never go to the server owners/maintainers, it leaves a sour taste
 
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OkazakiTheOtaku

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Man I sure love how Discord just entirely centralized IRC, TeamSpeak, Mumble, and more into a proprietary protocol. Really great outcome of all this.

Also, I love how many enthusiast groups and communities exclusively use Discord as their repository of knowledge and information. Really great to do that, I think.

This will go very well for niche hobbyists in the coming years.
 

Julie_Pilgrim

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free money for discord
and if discord gets more money
they're gonna slowly do more and more...
discord became shit a while ago, people just stay on it because we really dont have that great of an alternative yet(yes there are alternatives, but there isn't one great alternative, everyone seems to have a different answer)
 

Jayro

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discord became shit a while ago, people just stay on it because we really dont have that great of an alternative yet(no, im NOT using guilded btw, shit is owned by roblox, one of the biggest companies)
Of cringe.
 

Julie_Pilgrim

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Julie_Pilgrim

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This will go very well for niche hobbyists in the coming years.
god reminds me of the fact that a niche game i play pretty much has all info and discussions on discord only, if that server goes down we are so fucked
(the game has forums but no one really uses them)
 

Chary

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The fact that content creators are using Discord is fine, but there are so many resources and documentation and incredibly useful information locked behind the doors of servers that are locked behind invites, let alone existing tenuously given Discord scams, hackers, trolls, and it being a general drama pit that could get so easily deleted in an instant because of a little rage.
 

MaxToTheMax

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This is really discord trying to compete against patreon. Most patreons use a private discord as a reward. That's discord providing a service to content creators and patreon that they aren't seeing any profit from other than API calls. I would hella just support creators directly through discord instead of going through the middle man of patreon.
 

Julie_Pilgrim

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The fact that content creators are using Discord is fine, but there are so many resources and documentation and incredibly useful information locked behind the doors of servers that are locked behind invites, let alone existing tenuously given Discord scams, hackers, trolls, and it being a general drama pit that could get so easily deleted in an instant because of a little rage.
yknow, ive noticed that it's always the somewhat newer communities that seem to be discord-only
 

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