The long-rumored $10 billion deal between Microsoft and Discord has reportedly been axed.
That's according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. Earlier this year, reports from VentureBeat and Bloomberg indicated that multiple companies were interested in buying Discord. Microsoft was said to be the leading bidder with a $10 billion offer, with talks between the two companies apparently nearing the end as of late March. However, according to the WSJ's sources, Discord has now halted all buyout talks on the grounds that it "is performing well and prefers to stay independent at this time." The phrase "at this time" is putting in some real work there, and it's possible that Discord will reopen these talks in the future.
Microsoft and Discord never publicly discussed this deal or its projected timeline – which could've closed as early as this month, had talks not fallen through – so the specifics of it will likely remain a mystery.
We can also only speculate as to what Microsoft, which has been on a buying spree since long before it snapped up Bethesda for a cool $7.5 billion last September, was hoping to accomplish with Discord. The company's other acquisitions suggest that, beyond games, it's also looking to flesh out the services and features of the Xbox network it's been building for years, and it's probable that Discord, as a go-to platform for online communication, would've been folded into those plans.
Acquisitions aside, we're still curious if Microsoft is working on something with Nintendo, if only because it won't stop putting the Nintendo Switch in the background of its videos.
