Discord adds new Games tab

Just last week, Steam challenged Discord by adding Steam Chat to its services. Discord appears to be firing back by adding a Games tab to its interface, which looks awfully similar to a Steam profile home-page and has many of the same features.

The Games tab is currently live for all Discord users. It appears just above the Friends list on the Discord Home button, making it the first thing seen on login. The immediate visual effect is to turn Discord into part gaming chat app and part homepage for games and some apps (such as Spotify), spanning across Xbox, Steam, Battle.net, mobile, and anything else Discord can detect.

Discord already allowed users to display what games they were playing in its Online Users sections, but seeing those games or learning about them was contingent on viewing the Discord channel that user was in and noticing the icon in the corner. The Games tab shows collectively what all people on a user's friend list are playing at the moment, and also has a handy button to request to join the game.

Most notably, the tab has added a Quick Launcher feature enabling users to launch games directly from Discord. Though it still requires the game's normal launcher (Steam, Battle.net, or similar) to be logged into where applicable, those who typically keep themselves logged in and closed into the system tray will bypass opening the Steam library page or similar for the given game.

For avid Discord users, the Quick Launcher allows the Discord games page to keep audience eyes on its third feature, a news feed that includes sales, updates for certain partnered games, and announcements for events (at the time of this writing, the Hearthstone Summer Championship was being promoted).

The Games tab's features work across all devices where Discord is installed, including desktop, mobile, and Xbox One, which recently integrated Discord into its Xbox Live service.