Twitch veteran to lead publisher relations for Discord

Gaming chat app Discord, which recently celebrated 45 million registered users on the platform (up from 11 million a year ago), has hired Twitch veteran Andy Swanson to be its new head of publisher relations. Swanson has been in the games business for nearly two decades and was a launch member of the Twitch Media Group. At Twitch, he educated publishers and developers on how to leverage the quickly growing live streaming space, and he helped ease non-gaming brands into the burgeoning eSports market. Now at Discord, he'll look to inform publishers and developers about how to utilize the company's voice and text chat across the gaming ecosystem.

"Discord has a rapidly growing community of gamers who are voracious users and fans of the product," said Swanson. "My goal is to educate and connect the game creator ecosystem, encompassing publishers and developers of all shapes and sizes, to Discord and their authentic and passionate player community to make even more connections through gaming."

Jason Citron, founder and CEO of Discord added, "As Discord has grown, we've continuously had publishers and game developers asking us how to best interact with our community of 45 million gamers. Working with these publishers is a critical part of our vision to help players connect with their friends through gaming. Andy's experience working with game creators will allow us to make sure that our voice and text SDK and community server best practices reach the right people and help them tap into and engage the best gaming communities."

Swanson's career dates back to 1998 when he worked in advertising sales at Future US, eventually becoming publisher of gaming magazines PC Gamer, the Official Xbox Magazine and PSM. More recently, in 2010 he was VP of Digital Business Development at Gamefly and aided with the company's digital expansion. He's also held roles as Senior Director of Strategic Sales and Partnerships at Ubisoft, overseeing things like ecommerce, licensing and in-game advertising.

Discord can be run as an app or directly in the browswer with no downloads. The chat service hosts group servers dedicated to top games like World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Rocket League, League of Legends and Clash Royale. The company's largest server hosts more than 81,000 members.