Discord, the voice and text chat app for gamers, is moving towards unique identifiers that resemble Twitter-style “@” handles. This means that their old four-digit-appended names will no longer be accepted. Discord has historically handled usernames with a numeric suffix system, adding a four-digit code known as a “discriminator” to duplicate names.
Reason for Change
However, Discord is now requiring everyone to take up a new common platform-wide handle to improve user experience. Co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy acknowledged that the discriminators had proven too confusing. Over 40% of users don’t know their discriminator number, which leads to “almost half” of all friend requests failing to connect people to the right person, largely due to mistyped numbers. The new handles won’t show up in the interface that often since Discord will allow users to set a separate display name that’s not unique.
Change Process and Potential Problems
During the change, Discord users will have to navigate a process that’s fraught with uncertainty and cutthroat competition. Users will need to wait for an in-app prompt for when it’s their turn to select a new username, which will eventually roll out to all users over the course of “several months.” The company will assign priority to users based on their Discord registration dates, so people who have had their name “for quite a while” will have a better chance to get a desired name. Depending on who gets to set their usernames first, there’s a possibility of people taking over a particularly popular creator’s distinctive name. Discord is trying to navigate the change gracefully for its best-known users. Users with a standing business relationship with Discord who manage certain partner, verified, or creator servers will be able to pick a username before other users in order to reduce the risk of impersonation for their accounts.
Users’ Response
Many Discord users will fall outside those boundaries, and they have expressed concerns about security and the potential downsides of a centralized identity. Avid gamers and content creators are worried about username sniping, swatting, and threats to give up desirable names. Discord’s old username style made it a different kind of social network, and to many users, that was a part of the appeal.
Discord is making a big change to its online identity, and there’s no great way to do that without friction. However, this move towards unique identifiers is a step towards mainstream social network conventions, and it aims to improve user experience by reducing confusion and errors in friend requests. The change is a shift that’s as much about culture as technology, and it raises a lot of obvious fears and thorny questions. Nonetheless, Discord is trying to navigate the change gracefully for its best-known users while ensuring that the transition is as smooth as possible for everyone.
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