Discord is forcing everyone to change their usernames

You better start planning your new Discord username now.

That's because the popular gaming-centric chat app is undergoing a major change over the coming weeks, per a Discord blog post. Specifically, the four-digit "discriminator" code at the end of every username is going away. As a result of this, every user will have to pick a new username that will be unique to them.

Discord's blog post acknowledged that the point of this was to make the app more like other social platforms. It will most resemble Twitter after the change, as users will have unique back-end usernames (starting with an @, of course) with public display names that aren't unique. In other words, you can't share your username with another person anymore (the four-digit code allowed for that), but display names aren't subject to that restriction.

There are all sorts of valid reasons given for this in the blog post. Over the years, it's become difficult so quickly share your Discord username with another person if you don't have the four-digit code memorized. Even if you do, usernames are case-sensitive, so someone could find the wrong person by not factoring that in.

That said, this change has certainly ruffled the feathers of those in my social circle, whose main complaint is that now it might be too easy to find people. Lots of folks use Discord as a private, intimate chat client and may not want to be findable on there. Unfortunately, they'll have to think of new ways to make that happen going forward.