Who says we require it now ;)

Says the founder of Discord :)

You're replying to the CTO and co-founder of Discord.

I don't know about everyone else, but I also seem to be moving to different chat ecosystems every two or three years. From Campfire to Hangouts to Slack to Discord.

I miss IRC.

Definitely feels like it has stopped in gaming, and that is why I would argue that Discord has won.

That's a title tweak, even as "Why Discord is Winning" would be the same interesting content.

It's a winner for the early investors. A winner for later stage investors including the IPO ones? Who knows. People love moving from one social platform to another. Discord might just disappear in a few years just like ICQ disappeared.

They have the market and the network effects, so the game is over, regardless of how profitable they are, if they get acquired, etc.

What network effects?

A user would have a difficult time leaving the platform, even if they preferred an alternative, unless all of their friends and communicates also left, similar to why leaving a platform like Facebook or Reddit can be so difficult.

Discord is mostly small groups, which aren't strongly coupled to each other. It's pretty easy to move a small group. I am part of a couple of small groups which have migrated between platforms several times. I don't think Discord has a network effect anything like Facebook's.

Honestly, I think you would be surprised. Talk to some males aged 14-18 that play video games, and you may find that almost their entire social life and graph is on Discord.