Discord has announced a new Social SDK to allow developers to integrate Discord-powered communication features directly into their games. This means gamers will be able to message, invite, and voice chat with their friends super easily — even if they don’t have a Discord account.
As reported by The Verge, the company has been testing the SDK with studios like Theorycraft Games, Facepunch Studios, and Elodie Games — and now it’s available to everyone. It’s compatible with C++, Unreal Engine, and Unity, and it supports Windows 11 and macOS. Mobile and console developers can’t use it yet but support is coming.
Discord as a platform exists precisely because it was never easy to chat with all of your friends in one place using in-game tools — and now that it’s so popular, game developers don’t really bother trying to compete with it. This new SDK will hopefully result in even smoother experiences for players without requiring too much effort from the developers, which sounds like a win-win for everyone.
It’s no surprise for PC support to come first but the planned support for mobile and console is where things will get really interesting — because these limited platforms are where direct integration is essential for smooth communication. You can’t just tab in and out of different windows on your phone or your PS5 like you can on a PC.
Before Discord was directly integrated with PS5, for example, I used to have to sit with my laptop next to me running Discord. It was always awkward because you had to choose between the limited privacy of voice-activated chat, or use push-to-talk and take your hand off the controller to press a button on your keyboard every time you wanted to talk. It was far from ideal. Now, I can quickly press the mute button on my DualSense controller whenever I don’t want to be heard.
The easier it is to chat with friends, the more people will do it — which will be great for the industry as a whole since it makes games so much more fun to play.
