Discord launches SDK to help developers enhance social experiences in their games

Discord on Monday announced the launch of its Discord Social SDK, a free toolkit that allows developers to leverage the platform’s social infrastructure to enhance their games’ social and multiplayer experiences. The toolkit allows developers to improve their in-game experiences, whether players have a Discord account or not.

Social integrations include a unified friends list that allows players to access their Discord friends in-game and their in-game friends on Discord, making it easier to stay connected both in and out of the game. Plus, the SDK offers deep-linked game invites that enable players to invite their friends to directly join their party or lobby.

Communication features include cross-platform messaging to allow players to keep conversing across desktop, console, and mobile. Other features include the ability to link in-game chats to specific Discord channels in their servers, and voice chat.

“For game creators from indie to AAA, Discord is where you can connect with the world’s largest and most engaged community of players to fuel the growth of your game before, during, and after launch,” Discord co-founder and CTO  Stan Vishnevskiy, said in a press release. “Game discovery and retention have never been so critical, and we’re excited to help developers grow their games by reaching gamers where they are.”

Discord says the toolkit is already being used by many developers, including  Theorycraft Games, Facepunch Studios,1047 Games, Scopely, Mainframe Industries, Elodie Games, Tencent Games, and others. 

Discord Social SDK is compatible with C++, Unreal Engine, and Unity, and supports Windows 11+ and macOS. Support for console and mobile is coming soon, the company says.

The platform boasts more than 200 million monthly active users who spend a combined 1.5+ billion hours playing games each month on PC alone.