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Think Twice Before You Use Discord for Your Community

80 points by mangoscribble ↗ HN
I'm here to vent and give a heads-up to you all. It's about my nightmare with Discord as a game developer - the platform where I've been nurturing my game's community for the last 3 years.

Imagine building something from scratch, pouring your heart into it, watching it grow day by day. My server has over 4,000 die-hard players after 3 years, buzzing with ideas, feedback, and some crazy game theories. It was not just a server - it was my lifeline, my nerve center.

Now imagine waking up one morning to find my account disabled. Poof! Because someone out there decided to play a prank and report me for being "underage." I lodged an appeal ASAP, throwing in every proof of identity I had. You'd think that'd be enough, right? Well, guess again.

It's been over 3 days now, and Discord Support is as silent as a graveyard. Their policy says that my account will be dust after 14 days if things don't get sorted. Each tick of the clock is like a stab, knowing my community is sitting there in the dark. It's beyond frustrating, it's crushing. I'm unable to reach them because if I make an alt account to announce this, what's stopping some random strangers from making their own claim that they are the dev?

You might think, "Surely they'll respond before the deadline." And I wish I could believe that. But I've heard enough horror stories about Discord support responding when it's too late, or never responding at all, and the account just disappears into oblivion. That fear is real, folks.

So, here's my two cents. Seriously think over where you're setting up your community. Consider if you have any real control over the platform. This helplessness I'm feeling now, the feeling of seeing something you've worked on for years slipping away... It sucks, big time.

My advice? Don't put all your eggs in one basket, especially if that basket is Discord. I'm learning the hard way and trust me, it's a lesson you don't want to experience.

Any advice or similar horror stories are more than welcome. But more than anything, I hope my painful story can save someone else from this mess. Lastly, I'm not giving away my dev/game name because I heard that its possible for anyone to reach out to discord and claim my server once my disabled account gets deleted after 14 days.

Note: If there's a kind soul from Discord seeing this, I would really appreciate your help. My ticket # is 38363509.

25 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 65.8 ms ] thread
lusus_naturae
I think twitter used to be for getting ad hoc, asap support at one point. Good luck.
bell-cot
Most humans find "free" services irresistible. Until that strategy blows up in their face:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taleb_distribution

On the upside - I don't think that casinos have found a way to use this against humans. Yet.

hitpointdrew
Casinos? There is like 100’s of higher evils to worry about on the conspiracy list well before casinos (WEF, UN, WHO, etc.).

At least casinos are relatively honest about how they are screwing you.

Etrnl_President
Mice fall for traps because they don't understand wht the cheese is free.
Modified3019
Yep. Any platform run by someone else can kick you off for any reason, any time.

You should consider looking into running discourse, which is a modernized forum software: https://github.com/discourse/discourse

Nice examples of what it looks like:

https://discourse.nixos.org/

https://forum.level1techs.com/

As a bonus, the content and community will be accessible to search engines, so it’s easy to find answers to problems that gave been already been addressed.

In general, consider combining the two, where discourse is the anchor of the community that can’t be yanked out from under you, while discord is the one that sells the data from your players in exchange for free voice and text chat.

It’s also possible to enable logging in with discord credentials https://meta.discourse.org/t/configure-discord-login-for-dis...

As well as pushing content from discord to discourse so it’s not hidden and losable: https://blog.discourse.org/2021/05/discord-and-discourse-bet...

quickthrower2
The key point is owning your own domain as well. Without that you are kickoffable by whoever owns the domain you are using.
sdfzguf
Even with an own domain, you're not 100% save. But I agree nevertheless.
quickthrower2
Yes own domain plus self host for communities is necessary to really own it. Either but not both can leave you with an issue.
mangoscribble
the main issue is $$$
quickthrower2
$20/y should be enough. That is a lot for some people though. But for a business it should be no big deal.
Etrnl_President
You can host a simple forum on a RaspberryPi, you can stack a few of them together for better performance.

Just food for thought.

creamyhorror
It's just the cost of doing business with some control. Get a cheap domain and a low-end VPS/VM with a fixed IP (Vultr, DO, Hetzner). You can't really expect to get everything free.
tikkun
To any devs looking for a project: I wish there was something that was vote based like reddit, and open source like discourse, well designed / clear and simple UX, and that required monthly payment (perhaps an indie dev, a startup plan, and an enterprise plan) for any commercial/profit generating deployments, with no payment required for deployments that don't generate any revenue. I think the market is pretty small (it's basically the market size of discourse, plus maybe a bit bigger if you can get some reddit/discord communities to migrate to it), but it'd be neat.
outdig
I had the same issue with Telegram. Used telegram for 7 years, no issues. One day my account is mistakenly banned, and they now ignore me.
streptomycin
> if I make an alt account to announce this, what's stopping some random strangers from making their own claim that they are the dev?

You can connect your Discord account with your social media accounts (Steam, Twitter, Reddit, etc) as proof it's really you.

The bigger concern might be if Discord thinks this is you making an alt to avoid a ban and then bans the 2nd account even harder...

stevenicr
I'd like to suggest that some people may find wordpress + buddypress + wisechat as a self hosted replacement.

Matrix and some of the connector apps like element / fuzzychat? are nice for self hosted replacement as well.

Yes wordpress has needed securing , which is much easier today than it was 5 years ago.. buddypress can get run over with spam signups, but there are plugins and methods for that.. many ways to handle backups easy and the theming is adaptable, but out of the box familiar enough for most users they can do chats, groups, profiles, etc without ever asking how/where things are.

self hostable, and easy for some, but not as easy to deploy and maintain as clicking a link to join a discord.

DoItToMe81
Continually re-open the ticket by responding to it by email and anything else you can and they eventually have a human check it. Discord, ironically, is terrible for gaming chats now, because there are so many basic things, like discussing weapons, killing other players, or ingame suicide, that can get a server taken down. It's basically all automated with a ban first and check later policy.

I can recommend Cinny, one of the most advanced Matrix clients, as a replacement, if your users are willing.

KomoD
> I lodged an appeal ASAP, throwing in every proof of identity I had. You'd think that'd be enough, right? Well, guess again.

It is enough

> It's been over 3 days now

3 days and you're already making a post? There's 11 days left, just relax.

sircastor
If I’m understanding right, this has happened over the weekend, which suggests there are probably fewer people to take care of a request. It may all be resolved by the end of Monday.
sdfzguf
If there're over 4k die-hard players, as you said, a big portion of it will follow. While I have empathy with your situation, I wonder how many times more things have to go south for you people.

Build a good project and make sure you actually own it (have complete control over it).

ohdeegee
Did you try to get Nitro? Their support is faster for paying users. You could create an alt and try to get Nitro just to get the problem fixed (and if you have a server that you really care about, it's a worthy investment).