Discord expands its Social SDK with native mobile linking and focus on friends

• Discord's Social SDK now has fully native mobile linking on iOS and Android.
• Linked players are said to have 16% longer play sessions.

Discord is offering new ways for developers to reduce friction in communication and play.

After launching its Social SDK last year, allowing studios to connect a player’s Discord account to their in-game account, a new update now lets players link accounts from within Discord itself. Prompts show when friends are playing a linked game, and mobile linking is now fully native on iOS and Android.

Furthermore, new activity categories like listening, competing, or watching mean a user’s status in-game is also reflected on Discord - rather than simply displaying that a user is playing a game.

Discord said that across its early integration partners, linked players had 16% longer play sessions than non-linked players and also showed a median 25% increase in active game days.

Games, gifts and coordination

At the same time, Discord has expanded its native gift-giving service. Previously, players were able to buy in-game items and give them to friends without leaving their DMs for select games like Marvel Rivals. Now, the list of compatible games is expanding.

Users already shared gifts daily, which Discord claimed encourages players to return to a lapsed game, as the update overall aims to reduce friction between play and the social platform.

The list of game dev partners remains limited for now, but Discord is open to communication with interested parties.

"A great mechanic or content drop matters, but friends are what makes it stick. When even one friend is present on Discord, players on PC spend a median of 6 times longer in a game. With three friends, it’s 8 times. Players in voice channels play games an estimated 66% more days. The more friends in the mix, the more players keep coming back," said Discord CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy.

"With activity sharing turned on, players’ friends can see what they’re playing. Jumping into a game doesn't start with a text message. The coordination cost drops low enough that playing together starts to just happen."

At Pocket Gamer Connects Summit San Francisco this week, Discord senior developer advocate Anthony Tešija shared the platform's plans for acquisition, retention and monetisation.