Discord increases its screenshare limit to help people isolated by the coronavirus
For remote school, work, and socialising
To help folks using Discord as a substitute for in-person contact during these Covid-19 days, the gaming communication software has helpfully raised limits on screensharing. Discord may be designed for video games but is one of the text, voice, and video chat tools growing popular for remotely replacing classes, workplaces, and just plain human contact as schools and workplaces start shutting down and people start self-isolating. In recognition of this, Discord's makers have temporarily raised the limit on how many people can watch someone's screen view from 10 to 50. "We want to help make your world a little less stressful," they say.
Discord's Go Live feature lets you stream your desktop or games to other people on the server, similar to Twitch but private. With people increasingly turning to Discord for non-gaming needs, this is also handy for things like school and business presentations or just lookin' at stuff together.
"We know a lot of you around the world are currently using Discord to keep in touch and perform daily tasks from keeping up with classes to working from home," Discord's statement said. "We want to help make your world a little less stressful."
So "while it's most critically needed," they've bumped the Go Live limit from 10 people to 50. They note big streams might have performance problems but hey, I'll take it
If you want a go, see this support page for more instructions.
"While we created Discord to bring people together around games, we're thrilled that so many of you are using it in so many different ways," Discord CEO Jason Citron said in a blog post. "We'll maintain the higher user limit as long as it's critically needed — we hope it makes peoples' lives just a little easier and a little less stressful day-to-day."
I really do recommend reading Alexis Ong's report on the Chinese indie developers working under the coronavirus quarantine. That's a situation we may be seeing in more places. A number of big games studios are shifting to working from home, including Destiny devs Bungie. And the impact on games events is already clear - this week, E3 was cancelled, joining a list of events from esports championships to the Game Developers Conference.
You can get Discord over here. There is an RPS Discord server, by the by.