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Wow Teamspeak is still around and looks like they are succeeding again. Teamspeak and Ventrilo used to be such a mainstay of the video game community. I was cur

Wow Teamspeak is still around and looks like they are succeeding again. Teamspeak and Ventrilo used to be such a mainstay of the video game community. I was curious why so many younger people were getting Discords instead of starting up Vent or Teamspeak servers like we used to. It does look like Teamspeak has taken a note out of discord and slacks notebook and have gotten more advanced chat room options now.

m4rtink 8mo ago
I think the main reason was Discord basically doumping free server hosting with VC money to eliminate competition. Now that money has finally run out, it looks like things are reverting back to normal.
- SchemaLoad 8mo ago
  Has the money run out? I still have yet to spend a single dollar on discord.
  - m4rtink 8mo ago
    Reportedly they are plan in IPO & the latest identity verification crap they are pushing seems to be related. So yes, it looks like the money has run out and rather than pushing for direct monetization they try to turn to shadier stuff - get as much personal data as possible to either make the company look juicier for either an IPO or an acquisition.
    - SchemaLoad 8mo ago
      Age verification doesn't seem like money raising at all. More pressure from regulaters.
Aurornis 8mo ago
> I was curious why so many younger people were getting Discords instead of starting up Vent or Teamspeak servers like we used to. Discord did a great job of making it easy and free to get all of your friends into a group together. Everything just works. You don’t need to have an IT person in the group to set up the server and walk everyone through connecting. In the early days of gaming it seemed like every gaming group had at least one person who worked in tech and didn’t mind setting up a server. Now gaming is mainstream and the average gaming group doesn’t have a person who can host a server for them. Even when they do, that person would rather spend their gaming time on playing the games instead of playing the IT person for the group.
- zadikian 8mo ago
  Yeah and even some of us IT people weren't enough into video games to care about hosting voice chat. Like I ran the middle school Minecraft server but not a Teamspeak for it.
- nehal3m 8mo ago
  As that IT person I’ve set up a few alternatives over the years (and they’re still up, certs and all). Matrix stuck with a decent group of people, but the group I hung out on Discord with refused to move. I definitively bailed after the ID news but the guys didn’t follow (to Matrix, or Jitsi, or TeamSpeak, or Mumble). I’m kind of salty about making a fruitless effort I’ll admit, but I feel like unless there’s an effortless, perfect, free program that replicates the (voice) channel functionality and screen sharing features people are not going to leave Discord. Even if it does treat its users like shit. I miss those guys but I refuse to take part in that abuse, and I’m angry about it.
- m4rtink 8mo ago
  Its just works to get your groups of friends together - up until the point the damned thing starts to asking them "papers please!" a they start leaving.
zadikian 8mo ago
Because a Discord server is very easy and free to set up, and has nice features like screensharing that weren't commonly handled well at the time. Before that, we used Skype or AIM or iChat if we even wanted audio at all; Teamspeak was more for "serious gamers."
miki123211 8mo ago
Many reasons: 1. To DeDoS a Teamspeak server, it's enough to DeDoS a single server. You may not even need to do that, it may be enough to be such a nuisance that their host kicks them out. To DeDoS a Discord server, it's necessary to DeDoS the entirety of Discord, which is much, much harder, and also much more likely to put you in legal hot water. Discord is the Cloudflare of gaming. 2. Discord servers aren't real servers, they're tenants in an application, effectively "rows in an SQL table", not standalone containers requiring their own tech stack. This means they can be offered for free. You also can't abuse them for E.G. crypto mining, like you can with a VPS where a Teamspeak server can be hosted. Free increases adoption, which makes people a lot more likely to pay for extra features. It's the standard "the rich subsidize the poor" model, common to so many web applications. 3. No technical expertise necessary to set a server up. Bus factor is basically equal to infinity. 4. One service, one account, one interface, many servers, many groups, many people. There's no weird workspace switching and per-workspace DMs like in Slack (not sure how TS does this). If you log in once on a new device, all your server memberships are there, and everything just works. You may be in dozens of servers, and they're all behind the same single login. Those 4 features are table stakes now, like it or not. If you want to be a real, long-term Discord competitor and attract real users, you have to figure out how to get those 4.
- general_reveal 8mo ago
  Isn’t solving cost effective voice hosting the only issue here? I’d compete if I could affordably scale rooms.
  - literalAardvark 8mo ago
    The main issue is that Discord is a fantastic tool that does everything right except the stuff people really don't care about. (Even if a vocal minority says they do). If you want to run a community with SUPER easy access to everything from live video chats with a hundred members to forums, excellent access controls, integrations for absolutely anything especially if you also use bots from the marketplace, Discord is there and it's free, and it always works. It's really rough to compete with that.
- 8mo ago
ndiddy 8mo ago
It looks like Teamspeak covers the "group of friends who voice chat each other" use case (Discord DM groups) but not the "IRC replacement" use case (Discord servers). As far as I can tell, the licensing for Teamspeak 6 (the version that tries to be competitive with Discord) is set up such that anybody who joins the server (as opposed to anybody actively using it) uses up a slot, so the licensing fees for larger servers would be cost prohibitive. Additionally, the text chat functionality is way worse than on Discord. There's no way to just have a chat channel, you can only view and use the text chat when you're in a voice call in a voice channel.
- httpsterio 8mo ago
  Server admin can set the voice privileges on a channel basis, limiting effectively channels to text only.
- tcfhgj 8mo ago
  > There's no way to just have a chat channel, you can only view and use the text chat when you're in a voice call in a voice channel. Yes there is
Longlius 8mo ago
Discord offered more features. Voice chat was part of the initial sell for the platform, but these days most users don't even use the voice functionality and instead use it for long-running hypermedia chats with retained history.
sunaookami 8mo ago
Younger people don't know how to operate a computer anymore. Even back then a lot of teens had no problem hosting Minecraft or TeamSpeak servers but we regressed so much thanks to locked-down computing like smartphones that this knowledge is now lost and teens will pick Discord because you can just click yourself "a server" in a minute (doesn't help that "server" is false advertising and Discord knows it themselves because they don't call them "server" in their developer docs).

m4rtink 8mo ago

I think the main reason was Discord basically doumping free server hosting with VC money to eliminate competition. Now that money has finally run out, it looks like things are reverting back to normal.

SchemaLoad 8mo ago
Has the money run out? I still have yet to spend a single dollar on discord.
- m4rtink 8mo ago
  Reportedly they are plan in IPO & the latest identity verification crap they are pushing seems to be related. So yes, it looks like the money has run out and rather than pushing for direct monetization they try to turn to shadier stuff - get as much personal data as possible to either make the company look juicier for either an IPO or an acquisition.
  - SchemaLoad 8mo ago
    Age verification doesn't seem like money raising at all. More pressure from regulaters.

Aurornis 8mo ago

> I was curious why so many younger people were getting Discords instead of starting up Vent or Teamspeak servers like we used to. Discord did a great job of making it easy and free to get all of your friends into a group together. Everything just works. You don’t need to have an IT person in the group to set up the server and walk everyone through connecting. In the early days of gaming it seemed like every gaming group had at least one person who worked in tech and didn’t mind setting up a server. Now gaming is mainstream and the average gaming group doesn’t have a person who can host a server for them. Even when they do, that person would rather spend their gaming time on playing the games instead of playing the IT person for the group.

zadikian 8mo ago
Yeah and even some of us IT people weren't enough into video games to care about hosting voice chat. Like I ran the middle school Minecraft server but not a Teamspeak for it.
nehal3m 8mo ago
As that IT person I’ve set up a few alternatives over the years (and they’re still up, certs and all). Matrix stuck with a decent group of people, but the group I hung out on Discord with refused to move. I definitively bailed after the ID news but the guys didn’t follow (to Matrix, or Jitsi, or TeamSpeak, or Mumble). I’m kind of salty about making a fruitless effort I’ll admit, but I feel like unless there’s an effortless, perfect, free program that replicates the (voice) channel functionality and screen sharing features people are not going to leave Discord. Even if it does treat its users like shit. I miss those guys but I refuse to take part in that abuse, and I’m angry about it.
m4rtink 8mo ago
Its just works to get your groups of friends together - up until the point the damned thing starts to asking them "papers please!" a they start leaving.

zadikian 8mo ago

Because a Discord server is very easy and free to set up, and has nice features like screensharing that weren't commonly handled well at the time. Before that, we used Skype or AIM or iChat if we even wanted audio at all; Teamspeak was more for "serious gamers."

miki123211 8mo ago

Many reasons: 1. To DeDoS a Teamspeak server, it's enough to DeDoS a single server. You may not even need to do that, it may be enough to be such a nuisance that their host kicks them out. To DeDoS a Discord server, it's necessary to DeDoS the entirety of Discord, which is much, much harder, and also much more likely to put you in legal hot water. Discord is the Cloudflare of gaming. 2. Discord servers aren't real servers, they're tenants in an application, effectively "rows in an SQL table", not standalone containers requiring their own tech stack. This means they can be offered for free. You also can't abuse them for E.G. crypto mining, like you can with a VPS where a Teamspeak server can be hosted. Free increases adoption, which makes people a lot more likely to pay for extra features. It's the standard "the rich subsidize the poor" model, common to so many web applications. 3. No technical expertise necessary to set a server up. Bus factor is basically equal to infinity. 4. One service, one account, one interface, many servers, many groups, many people. There's no weird workspace switching and per-workspace DMs like in Slack (not sure how TS does this). If you log in once on a new device, all your server memberships are there, and everything just works. You may be in dozens of servers, and they're all behind the same single login. Those 4 features are table stakes now, like it or not. If you want to be a real, long-term Discord competitor and attract real users, you have to figure out how to get those 4.

general_reveal 8mo ago
Isn’t solving cost effective voice hosting the only issue here? I’d compete if I could affordably scale rooms.
- literalAardvark 8mo ago
  The main issue is that Discord is a fantastic tool that does everything right except the stuff people really don't care about. (Even if a vocal minority says they do). If you want to run a community with SUPER easy access to everything from live video chats with a hundred members to forums, excellent access controls, integrations for absolutely anything especially if you also use bots from the marketplace, Discord is there and it's free, and it always works. It's really rough to compete with that.
8mo ago

ndiddy 8mo ago

It looks like Teamspeak covers the "group of friends who voice chat each other" use case (Discord DM groups) but not the "IRC replacement" use case (Discord servers). As far as I can tell, the licensing for Teamspeak 6 (the version that tries to be competitive with Discord) is set up such that anybody who joins the server (as opposed to anybody actively using it) uses up a slot, so the licensing fees for larger servers would be cost prohibitive. Additionally, the text chat functionality is way worse than on Discord. There's no way to just have a chat channel, you can only view and use the text chat when you're in a voice call in a voice channel.

httpsterio 8mo ago
Server admin can set the voice privileges on a channel basis, limiting effectively channels to text only.
tcfhgj 8mo ago
> There's no way to just have a chat channel, you can only view and use the text chat when you're in a voice call in a voice channel. Yes there is

Longlius 8mo ago

Discord offered more features. Voice chat was part of the initial sell for the platform, but these days most users don't even use the voice functionality and instead use it for long-running hypermedia chats with retained history.

sunaookami 8mo ago

Younger people don't know how to operate a computer anymore. Even back then a lot of teens had no problem hosting Minecraft or TeamSpeak servers but we regressed so much thanks to locked-down computing like smartphones that this knowledge is now lost and teens will pick Discord because you can just click yourself "a server" in a minute (doesn't help that "server" is false advertising and Discord knows it themselves because they don't call them "server" in their developer docs).