Discord is a great chat application for gaming that allows groups of players to get together and chat as they play It has become so popular that it is used for all kinds of group chats outside of gaming However, its popularity makes it difficult for the company to generate revenue

Discord offers a subscription-based model that unlocks additional features for avid users, but it does not appear to be enough to keep the company profitable In an effort to combat this and generate more revenue, the Wall Street Journal discovered (through a source familiar with the plans) that Discord plans to introduce advertising into its app in the very near future

This transition may be difficult for some users, as Discord was released in 2015 and has been ad-free all along; Discord has promised to continue to serve relevant ads to game-centric users, and at the very least, frequent users of the app Players who frequent the app will not see ads that are outside of their comfort zone

Outside of traditional advertising, Discord is set up to offer rewards to players who stream certain games to friends or complete certain in-game tasks, and gaming companies can pay to have their software pushed through Discord can do so

For ad pushes, the WSJ claims that Discord is in the process of hiring a dozen people who will be responsible for implementing ads in the app and selling ads to game companies jobs like Engineering Manager-Revenue Growth but this could be related to advertising revenue generation

Users have the option to turn off personalized ads within the settings, but according to the company the ads are displayed within the app Users have the option to hide ads (or what Discord calls quests) that they are not interested in, regardless of whether they are subscribers to Discord Nitro

While it is clear that companies need to make money, it will be interesting to see if Discord can maintain its large user base while introducing advertising If the company can introduce advertising in a less obtrusive way, it may not be a major problem On the other hand, if advertising becomes an issue, it could hurt Discord's long-term prospects; will Discord users return to an app like TeamSpeak for game communication? Only time will tell