Discord will soon deploy ads in their platform according to the Wall Street Journal. They'll be in the form of sponsored "quests" that will reward users and help support game developers.
Discord has recently introduced new ways for developers to earn money from their content on the platform. In September, they added a shop tab to the app, and just this past March, they announced collaborations with games such as Valorant. This allows users to purchase profile decorations that are themed around the different Agents in the game.
In a blog post in early March, Discord senior vice president Peter Sellis stated that Quests will be a way "for players to discover games and earn rewards for playing them on Discord," showing up "tastefully" to avoid feeling intrusive and annoying, disrupting the user experience.
On April 1, speaking to WSJ, Sellis added:
The ads will be targeted to users based on their gameplay, age, and geographic location data, and they will appear in the bottom left corner of users’ screens
The Wall Street Journal also states that the planned introduction of Promotional Quests will start the first week of April. Previously, fans had access to unique activations which served as a test of this feature. Perhaps the most famous one was a Fortnite x Star Wars Discord Quest in May 2023.
Players who want to complete one of these promotional quests will have to stream themselves via Discord playing a game with at least one person watching the broadcast.
Still, despite Discord being clear about the nature of the ads, people are criticising the decision to implement promotional quests on social media, as it could be the first of many changes that could make the platform a nuisance to navigate.
It's worth noting that users will have the ability to opt out of seeing these kinds of ads according to Discord. The full list of games that will be part of the launch period has yet to be revealed.
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