Hey everyone, Bit here. Guilded (a Discord rival owned by Roblox), is being shut down on December 19, 2025. It's really sad to see this happen since Guilded had many features that gave it great potential.

Yes. Guilded had many features that gave it greater functionality than Discord ever had.

• 10 channel types with completely distinct functionality

  1. Chat - just your basic text channel, like Discord.

  2. Voice - also standard, but it's upgraded as I'll explain later.

  3. Stream - A dedicated room for video chat or screensharing.

  4. Calendar - Plan events for your community.

  5. Schedule - Know when people are available; especially useful for esports teams.

  6. Announcements - Like the name suggests, a place for admins to make announcements to the community. The Server Overview page has a built-in announcement area too.

  7. Forums - The only Guilded channel type that Discord now has. Create topics and reply to them. Guilded's forums feature has a better structure, similar to traditional forum software like Discourse.

  8. List - A to-do list. You can ping members to assign them to tasks. Each task gets its own chat thread.

  9. Docs - A place to write long documents that others can read and comment on.

  10. Media - A card-based view where people can upload images or videos. This channel type is replicated by Discord using a forum channel set to Gallery View.

• Nested servers - create smaller communities within your community for different games and such, to keep channel lists concise.

• Nested voice channels - separate voice channels within a main voice channel (for example, limited-count channels for games) to keep channel lists even more concise.

• Most paywalled Discord features (like advanced role colors or custom emoji sharing) were free.

• Any server could be public, and every server had a vanity link.

The main groundbreaking features for me were the server and voice channel nesting. It was nice to be able to have a server with many sections for games while keeping each channel list easy to navigate.

Before you comment or spam my messages: I already know of Roblox's continued lapses in judgment when it comes to child safety. After a recent corporate speak-sounding statement from Roblox CEO David Baszucki, I took the move of privating all of my games. It's sad that this company can't seem to do anything right.

Anyway, Roblox acquired Guilded in 2021 (TechCrunch article). For the time after that until now, people have been able to continue to use Guilded as it was. However, there have been trends of so-called "killer acquisitions" which is when a big company acquires a smaller (sometimes struggling) company either to just shut them down or to poach their talent. There's even an academic paper about the phenomenon. I think this "killer acquisition" phenomenon is what happened to Guilded; Roblox acquired it to bolster the talent for upgrades to their Groups (now Communities) feature and possibly the platform's chat features.

There are still companies or communities trying to create platforms that try to rival Discord, if not in features or market share, in niche areas that make them appeal to certain communities.

• Stoat (formerly Revolt) - A FOSS chat app designed to be similar to Discord in every way. Same server hierarchies, same friend list and DMs, but in an open and privacy-respecting experience with no paywalls in sight.

• Matrix - Not an app in itself, but an open chat protocol decentralized by federation (like Mastodon). The main app for interacting with Matrix is Element, but there are other clients available. The Matrix Foundation also operates a homeserver (a possible home for you on the Matrix network), but there are other homeservers you can join (and advanced users with a domain can host their own). My Matrix username is @littlebit670:matrix.org if you want to chat with me.

I haven't seen many people use Stoat (even when it was still called Revolt), but Matrix is popular among open-source projects (such as Linux distros) and people who enjoy open-source technology in general. If you're looking for a space on Matrix to join and you're a gamer who wants to try Linux, you should consider joining the Friendly Linux Players at #community:flip.earth. I'm not affiliated with FLiP's admins, but I've enjoyed chatting in their rooms.

Well, it was nice to see what innovations Guilded had to offer. If only the Roblox acquisition hadn't happened we could have seen Guilded grow. Goodbye, Guilded. It was nice seeing what you had to offer. Anyway, this has been Bit, and I'll see you next time.