Discord has laid off several dozen people from its marketing and entertainment partnerships teams.
The entertainment partnerships team was responsible for Discord’s push into courting larger communities, including celebrity- and content creator-led servers.
Discord–which has 150 million monthly users–launched in 2015 as a voice and text chat platform largely aimed at gamers. As such, its core functionality is private person-to-person chat, but it also allows users to create servers around any topic they want, and invite other users to join them. Servers can have thousands upon thousands of members, and over years became popular with people like musicians, indie game developers, and creators as a way to connect with their audiences.
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In 2021, Discord began courting the owners responsible for larger servers. It introduced server subscriptions, where owners could paywall access to entire servers or specific channels, and would keep 90% of the revenue they earned doing so. It also established partnerships with celebrities and creators who weren’t on Discord, like longtime YouTubers Colin and Samir, to get them to make servers for their audiences.
But, considering these cuts, it seems that initiative may not have gone as well as Discord anticipated. The partnerships team was led by former VidCon Director of Talent Partnerships and WME agent Kenny Layton, who joined Discord in 2020. He and most of his team were among those let go.
“Just got laid off from my role at Discord, along with many amazing colleagues from the marketing org and a majority of the Entertainment Partnerships team,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
At least two other people impacted by the layoffs have tweeted publicly about the situation:
Hey. After 4+ years at Discord, I was impacted by their recent marketing layoffs along w/ many talented creatives on my team. Taking the day to process, but if you know any job openings for Sr. Graphic Designers/mid-level Product Designers, please reach out! Appreciate the RTs ❤️
— jackie ✨ (@squimshed) August 3, 2023
Discord just did a large artist layoff, and at least one person needs work soon to keep their work visa. Please spread the word for companies recruiting creative work! Layoffs were random and these people are incredibly competent artists and leaders. Who needs artists?!
— Kelsey Borch (@KelseyBorchie) August 3, 2023
Mhm, marketing/art depts it seems. Those two were hiring so much before now, I don’t get it
— Angel ✨ (@AngelRosePetals) August 3, 2023
Discord has not released a statement about the layoffs. If it does, we’ll update this story with any new information.
