Discord is a mess. That’s not the opinion of one dumb tech writer, it’s actually the official word of Discord itself. In an effort to become simpler and more user-friendly, chat and VOIP platforms are reworking their username systems and ditching “differentiators”. A standard universal username. Unfortunately that means everyone needs a new one.
“Current usernames are often too complex or ambiguous for people to easily remember and share,” says Discord co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy. In a blog post (via The Verge), he stated that the discriminator’s original purpose was to allow users to quickly navigate to different chat and voice servers without seeing the dreaded “Your desired username has been used” message. But after 8 years and hundreds of millions of users, Discord has become a different place and is intimidating and confusing to new users. According to the post, nearly half of friend requests fail due to missing identifiers and/or incorrect letter case.
Of course, we are talking about tools that are popular with gamers, so many gamers actually great that way. “The current username format has been one of the things that makes Discord unique, and this change has made usernames a lot more like usernames on other platforms,” said Vishnevskiy. You can imagine many Discord users obsessing over their current system with a kind of communication that amounts to a “git gud” attitude.
Regardless, Discord will be moving towards a more traditional system whether gamers like it or not. Users will be prompted to update their username “in the next few weeks.” By default, your current Discord username (without pound signs and numbers) will be your new display name, regardless of your new standard username (case insensitive). Your server nickname will remain the same.
Discord’s play on easier user experience and broader appeal is hardly unique. Mastodon, a decentralized short message platform gaining popularity as an alternative to the rapidly exploding Twitter, recently unveiled a more traditional and simpler onboarding experience for new users.