> Shumaker’s answer made it clear that Discord is taking steps to maintain its core identity as a gaming-centric platform
The thing is, I'm pretty sure the biggest Discord server (Midjourney) is actually not gaming-centric at all.
And I'm seeing more and more companies that are using Discord as their internal and/or external communication tool.
AFAIK, the only way to unlock power features is through Boosts.
So companies that are not into gaming probably have a worker who's job is to maintain Nitro subscriptions & upgraded Boosts just to keep the server working as intended.
And they must think it's stupid, since all the other software they are paying for are just a regular sub directly billed based on the level they of service they chose.
They probably already have some kind of account manager for companies like Midjourney (I can't imagine the company relying on an external tool with which they don't have a direct contract), but they could probably extend this with providing an actuall "Discord Business" offer for the big bucks; while still offering their Nitro/Ads-based offer for all the other less-serious, shallower-pockets users.
According to Discord's public server list [1], Midjourney has over 21M members, making it the largest server. Discord published a technical blog post [2] detailing the infrastructure work needed to support Midjourney's unprecedented scale with 1M+ concurrent users.
As a followup, I just want to point out that I use slack at work, but it’s price per user makes it impossible to use at any non-profit, for any open source project, or simply to use with a large association of people.
I’m not sure how Discord can continue on the hopes that a few people will pay a large monthly fee and you can have this for free.
