IMO, the main worrying thing is that Discord is propped up entirely by VC money right now, and there's absolutely no telling how the hell they're going to monet

IMO, the main worrying thing is that Discord is propped up entirely by VC money right now, and there's absolutely no telling how the hell they're going to monetize it. Slack at least has the obvious "pay us money" model, so they can survive on that even with competitors. IRC (decentralized) and Skype (Microsoft, unlimited money) could practically survive nuclear apocalypse, by comparison. They promise the core features will remain free, but I don't trust that when investors come knocking for a return, and I expect unless they find a very suitable model, it will slowly start to get worse at some point. I seriously doubt their core audience (people playing games) is going to throw money at them for things, like, skins, or something. Maybe they plan on more "B2B" style profitability where they do deep integration with partners like Youtube, Twitch etc behind the scenes? FWIW: I say this as someone who's extremely happy with Discord since I switched me and my friends over to it for playing games, and as someone who thinks they really do have a solid product. And as someone who'd hate to see it go into the shitter just because of the above. It's wonderfully stable for its youth, and it's light years ahead of Skype, Vent, Mumble in terms of "Just Works", and has every feature we've needed, and more (the moderation/ACL, and external service features keep getting better, for example). Maybe my only complaint with Discord is that, because it's so feature rich, it's actually a bit confusing to initially wrap your head around, in terms of UI/UX. I had to guide a few of my more non-technical friends through the UI when they first used it. Things like, non-obvious buttons and stuff like that.