Is it time to press “F” to pay your respects to Skype? Perhaps.
It’s been a massive year for Discord, a communications app that embedded itself within gaming community when it first began, and now boasts 25 million users according to its most recent news release. Today Discord announced some new features to be rolled out in 2017, with video chat being the big ticket item that many users have been anticipating.
According to the company, users will soon be able to share their screens and cameras with their Discord groups. The setup looking pretty typical of most video chat programs, but in their “Year End Teaser”, Discord boasted the feature will have a certain “secret sauce” to make the feature more unique.
The video chat appears to be reminiscent of Microsoft’s Skype, which has come under fire in recent years for some security issues and spam. The app has long been a part of the online gaming scene, and while other voice chat apps like Curse Voice, Teamspeak, and Ventrilo have carved out a place for themselves in some gaming communities, Skype still remains a widely used choice for players thanks to its video calling feature. Microsoft appears to be focused on developing tools for business and personal calls, unveiling Skype Translator for voice calls and also teasing a new look for the app in their year-end announcements.
In addition to the video chat feature, Discord also announced Search and Audit functions are coming to their app. The Search will allow users to browse through old conversations for specific words and phrases, and the Audit button will let mods filter their logs so they can get a clearer picture of what activity is happening on their server.
