Microsoft Corp. is in talks to acquire Discord Inc., a video-game chat community, for more than $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
Discord reached out to potential buyers, and Microsoft is in the running, but no deal is imminent, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.
https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/22/discord-exploring-sale-that-could-be-worth-more-than-10-billion/
Oh man I hope they buy them. I really don’t want discord to die.
Same.
When did Microsoft buying anything go really well? I’m struggling here.
This article says Discord may just go public instead.
To be clear, Discord is in talks with a few other companies, too. Not just Microsoft.
And as @divedivedive points out, they may just go public instead.
At least it’s not Facebook.
LinkedIn and GitHub seem to have turned out well, but they’re being run pretty independently. Seems like the same approach should work for Discord. If they try to integrate it tightly to their ecosystems, they’ll be flushing those billions down the toilet.
This would make Microsoft’s messaging app story even more ludicrous though. They must be up to a dozen 12 distinct ones + plenty of rebrands on top of that.
Discord has critical mass already, they don’t need to sell.
Discord is so much better than Slack IMO, having used both- though my experience with Slack was a bunch of decrepit Dem party operatives who bungled things.
This is when they should sell, really. Everything about them I’ve ever read says they can’t figure out how to monetize Discord.
If they can lever $10b out of someone, they should take the money and run.
Yeah, didn’t Discord get an investment a couple years ago to try and monetize the site by turning into a potential Steam competitor? Didn’t seem to go anywhere, though.
The association with gaming may not make it as sexy as Zoom or Slack.
Yup. They did
They had a $2 billion valuation after that deal. If MS is offering $10B, take the money and run
Why take money if it doesn’t make you happy?
I guess if running a successful platform/failing business is their dream, they can keep running it into the ground.
Personally, I’d prefer to take the money and go start another business…or, more likely, buy an island and sleep in.
Investors probably wanting to see a return.
Options are go public. Maybe they don’t see a clear business plan. They’ve been hunting for one.
Sell for billions and move on to new business or aforementioned island and beds of money.
I still fondly remember my Microsoft (ex-Nokia) smartphone. So good in theory! haha
Why take happiness if it doesn’t make you money?
If I was in charge of Discord, I’d try to get into non-gaming as well.
Discord is used for non-gaming stuff already, I know of webcomic discords, and political ones (mostly leftists though).
Don’t abandon the core mission, but try to make it useful for more stuff. I know the Dem meetings I did in COVID time - I was wishing it was on Discord instead of Slack, Slack is so much worse IMO.
Thats what they are trying to do anyway.
Here’s an interesting article on discords history:
Discord, and the Calibur group I’m part of the past 2 years changed a lot of things for me, in a very positive way. Part of a string of things that of all things, came down to the rise of a pro wrestler getting me back into competitive fighting games because I wanted to see Japanese wrestlers in person.