Discord will start showing advertisements to everyone starting next week, marking a change to their long-standing policy of avoiding their use for revenue.

According to an article published by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the VoIP platform will target its advertisements based on users’ age, location data, and game play. Users will have the choice to opt out of personalized promotions for Quests. Additionally, Discord plans to hire more than a dozen individuals to fill advertisement sales positions, despite the platform’s previous stance of resisting sponsored advertisements.

In a blog post released in March 2024, the senior vice president of Discord, Peter Sellis, revealed their plans to implement a new form of advertisements called “Sponsored Quests.” These quests offer PC gamers in-game rewards for getting friends to watch them play through Discord. The goal of these quests is to leverage the power of live streaming to increase the reach of video games and act as an effective marketing platform.

This development follows a successful trial period with Epic Games and Lucasfilm Games, which took place in May 2023. During this period, users could acquire a Star Wars-themed weapon skin by streaming Fortnite to at least one friend for 15 minutes.

WSJ also reported that it viewed a slide from a slideshow that Discord presents to game developers. This slide specifically highlights the advertising strategy that the company plans to adopt. It states: “We will get you in front of players. And these players will then get you into their friend groups.”

The advertisements will be displayed on the bottom-left corner of the screen, allowing users to opt out of personalized promotions for Quests based on their activity or data shared with Discord.