Discord Nitro Games to shut down next month due to lack of players

By Aaron Mamiit Published September 15, 2019

Discord will shut down its Nitro Games catalog next month, as there are not enough players taking advantage of the library of free games.

Discord Nitro is the platform’s monthly subscription, and the Nitro Games catalog was one of the perks of membership. The library was launched nearly a year ago with ambitions to challenge Steam, for which Discord secured $150 million in funding.

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Nitro Games currently offers more than 100 titles, including Paladins, System Shock, Torchlight II, Super Meat Boy, and Psychonauts. The collection, however, was not good enough to attract a huge following among Discord Nitro subscribers.

“Through your valuable feedback, it became clear that while we and some of you love these games, the truth is the vast majority of Nitro subscribers didn’t play them,” said Discord in a blog post.

The contracts concerning Nitro Games are up for renewal, but Discord has decided that it will not proceed with the catalog, which will be shut down on October 15. Discord Nitro subscribers will have access to the games until that date. The change will only affect the free titles though, as purchased games will remain on the platform.

Discord confirmed that Discord Nitro subscribers who want to cancel their membership because of the pending discontinuation of Nitro Games will be able to request a refund.

The free games are just one aspect of Discord Nitro though, as it also provides users with new customization options, access to animated emojis and an expanded upload limit that was just doubled to 100MB. The subscription, which goes for $10 per month, also recently launched Go Live, which makes it easy to stream gameplay to friends. Discord also renewed its commitment to keeping the platform’s core feature free. In addition, because the app does not make money from advertisements, its only customers are the platform’s users, which means that the service will be further improved with the user experience in mind.

Discord has grown as a chat and voice program that is favored within the video game community. Anybody can join Discord servers based on their favorite topics, but making new Discord bots does not take too much of an effort.

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