Discord is working on a new 'Game Mode' designed to lessen the communication app's impact on system resources while players are gaming. Early reports indicate this feature will primarily focus on reducing CPU and GPU usage, with no explicit mention of tackling Discord's significant memory consumption.
The upcoming Game Mode was first surfaced by the unofficial Discord Previews X account and later confirmed by Discord. The feature is intended to automatically disable animations and effects when a game is detected, thereby freeing up CPU and GPU resources to potentially improve game performance.
However, the core of Discord's resource usage stems from its use of Electron, a framework that incorporates Chromium. This underlying technology is also used by Google Chrome, a browser known for its substantial memory requirements. Observers have noted that the new Game Mode does not appear to address this fundamental aspect of the application's architecture.
Discord has previously experimented with mitigating its high memory usage. Late last year, the company implemented an experimental feature that would restart the app if its memory footprint exceeded 4 GB. While initially presented as a temporary measure, the feature reportedly remains active.
Previous investigations into Discord's impact on gaming performance, including an internal test by PC Gamer, found that the application's default process priorities did not present significant issues for most users. While it was suggested that manually lowering Discord's process priority in Task Manager could alleviate minor stuttering, the primary concern for many users, especially in the current climate of rising memory prices, remains Discord's substantial RAM usage. The new Game Mode's focus on CPU and GPU does not seem to offer a solution to this particular problem.
Discord's announcement did offer a glimmer of hope, stating that the company is "aiming to add more resource-saving features over time." It remains to be seen whether reducing the application's memory footprint will become a priority.