discordapp Discord CEO steps down

[m4a2000]

Summary

Discord CEO Jason Citron has stepped down after 10 years - with Activision Blizzard vice chairman Humam Sakhnini replacing.

 

Quotes

Quote

He's (Jason Citron) been replaced with former King president and Activision Blizzard vice chairman Humam Sakhnini, who will officially start on April 28th. Citron will continue on as a member of the board of directors and advisor to the new chief exec.

Discord has been linked with an IPO, with one recent report stating it could happen as soon as this year. Citron notably stated that Sakhnini helped with “substantially growing the King business in the public market”.

 

My thoughts

Between a Discord IPO, a Blizard CSO, and current talk about ID verification for Discord itself all of this could lead to Discord going to the dustbin of history within the year.

 

Sources

https://www.pocketgamer.biz/discord-ceo-steps-down/

[TempestCatto]

 

[Mark Kaine]

Wow that blows... blizzard...??? 

LMAO

I really liked discord... The last "free" chat platform. Rip.

 

 

[CatTNT]

Blizzard? Always a sign of a complete and total, irreversible fuck up about to happen. I don't know how they manage to do it. I can't quite describe them with the words  I already know, like "fucking worthless", "utterly incompetent", "retarded beyond comprehension", and so on. Maybe somebody can invent the words to describe Blizzard. 

[Spotty]

Discord's statements: 

https://discord.com/blog/discord-appoints-new-ceo-humam-sakhnini

https://discord.com/blog/passing-the-torch

Quote

We have hired a new CEO to lead Discord through our next chapter of growth and someday becoming a public company.

Seems like Discord has plans of going public. That could be a big part of the reason why they brought in a new CEO.

 

Quote

Sakhnini brings over 15 years of gaming industry experience to Discord. Most recently he was Vice Chairman at Activision Blizzard, managing a multi-billion dollar portfolio including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush. Prior to that, as President of King Digital Entertainment, Sakhnini succeeded the founding CEO and led the company to record performance after it was acquired by Activision Blizzard. 

New CEO has a mobile gaming background. Discord possibly going public and bringing in somebody with experience running a mobile gaming company... Brace yourself for the enshitification of Discord that is coming. I can't wait until everything is nickle and dimed to the point where it pops up "You've already sent your 30 free messages today. Unlock more messages to continue chatting. 200 messages $1.99, 500 messages $4.99, 1,000 messages $8.99 (10% discount!!! BEST DEAL!!)"

[Taf the Ghost]

11 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Discord's statements: 

https://discord.com/blog/discord-appoints-new-ceo-humam-sakhnini

https://discord.com/blog/passing-the-torch

Seems like Discord has plans of going public. That could be a big part of the reason why they brought in a new CEO.

 

New CEO has a mobile gaming background. Discord possibly going public and bringing in somebody with experiencing running a mobile gaming company... Brace yourself for the enshitification of Discord that is coming. I can't wait until everything is nickle and dimed to the point where it pops up "You've already sent your 30 free messages today. Unlock more messages to continue chatting. 200 messages $1.99, 500 messages $4.99, 1,000 messages $8.99 (10% discount!!! BEST DEAL!!)"

It's less the Activision-Blizzard part that's a worry and far more the "King" section. That's their mobile gaming division that actually makes most of money and why MS bought it for so much. But that also means they're bringing in an outside exec that's comfortable running a heavy monetization scheme set of platforms. If they're going IPO and not being bought out by a tech giant, they're going to need to find some real revenue to work with. It's long had a wildly unsustainable bandwidth cost, but I believe they've resisted some massive offers in the past. This is probably going the way of GroupOn, which while the let the people that got out make a good bit of money, destroyed anyone that invested in it.

 

No profit after 2 years. Was checking the IPO price because they rejected an offer from Google to sell at around 6 Billion. If that was a stock deal, the value would be 10x at this point.  Anyway, best of luck to them, but it's probably going to get to be a pretty terrible experience here in the near future.

[TudorF]

10 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

discord... The last "free" chat platform. Rip.

 

 

Huh. They had "analytics" scripts going through whatever you posted there.

It was "free" as long as they could extract something from your data.

[TudorF]

Chat apps peaked

Can't go further than instant messaging, unless you make everyone tune in to the collective consciousness app.

[Doobeedoo]

I can see it, Discord integrated in Battle.net yup.

[porina]

We've seen the pattern with many apps before. Great when free and new. They concentrate more on growth. Once they reach the "must have" status with everyone using it, they turn on monetisation and it is downhill from there. Some time later a new app appears from someone else, and the cycle begins again.

[starsmine]

Discords issue has always been money flow.
I have always sympathized and due to my heavy use of discord since launch (at the time playing both league and FFXIV, aka the two games discord was made explicitly for), I have zero regrets buying nitro in 2021. But there have not been enough users like me to make discord monetarily viable in the last 8 years.

That said I have very deep deep concerns about the new CEO and the future viability of discord for the end user. Especially as discord in the last 4 years has grown so well outside of the gamer space, being used for school hubs, family gatherings, and clubs. (though fuck everyone that used it to replace a forum). Discord is now in a place where they have enough inertia that it would be hard to move off of. We moved to discord because of how much of a pain IRC and Teamspeak and Ventrilo (and skype) were. 

The mentaility of activision c-suit are not ones I trust in the slightest. 

[Quackers101]

when teamspeak joins the battle.

also will the ceo nuke the reputation like with unity and other companies like that? very gaming, much win, a lot of gamble.

[Fnige]

Quote

Sakhnini definitely seems like a fellow who knows his way around bankers and boardrooms. His LinkedIn page says he spent eight years at business consulting firm McKinsey and Co. before joining Activision Blizzard as chief strategy and talent officer in 2009. In 2016, following Activision's acquisition of King, he became that company's chief financial officer and then president (Link)

McKinsey and King? Oh boy this ceo is going to be a fun one