[jorams]

Notably Discord stopped using that format two years ago, moving to globally unique usernames.

Their stated reason[1] for doing so being:

> This lets you have the same username as someone else as long as you have different discriminators or different case letters. However, this also means you have to remember a set of 4-digit numbers and account for case sensitivity to connect with your friends.

[1]: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/12620128861463...

[shadowfiend]

The actual reason here, implied but not stated outright in that one, is that Discord being a public platform, having only numbers to discriminate between users makes it extra-trivial to impersonate someone else. Obviously you can still do some of this with unique usernames (you see slight misspellings, adding harder-to-see characters like periods, etc, as strategies), but these are more complex to execute on at scale and easier to block once and reduce the impact, vs being able to use ~arbitrarily many post-username numbers.

[slashink]

(i work at discord)

Not saying that wasn't ONE of the reasons but the main reason was really that a large chunk of users had no idea that they even had a discriminator, as it was added on top of your chosen username. "add me on discord, my username is slashink" didn't work as people expected and caused more confusion than it was solving. This wasn't universally true either, if you come from a platform like Blizzard's Battle.net that has had discriminators since Battlenet 2.0 came out in 2009 it was a natural part of your identity. End of the day there were more users that expected usernames to be unique the way they are today than expected discriminators.

Addressing that tension was the core reason we made this change. We are almost 3 years past this decision ( https://discord.com/blog/usernames ) and I personally think this change was a positive one.

[juliangmp]

It was honestly a downgrade i ended up just putting the 4 digits I had before at the end of my username cause surprise the name was taken immediately

[ffsm8]

I haven't logged in since . I wonder if they'll delete my account eventually - as I essentially don't have a username because of that

[jorams]

Your account has almost certainly been assigned a new username already. From the same link:

> Starting March 4, 2024, Discord will begin assigning new usernames to users who have not chosen one themselves. If your username still has a discriminator (username*#0000*), Discord will begin assigning you a new, unique username as soon as March 4, 2024. We will try to assign you a unique username that is similar to your current username.

[embedding-shape]

> I wonder if they'll delete my account eventually

Just some days ago I received warning from Discord that they'll delete my account since I haven't logged in for two years.

> Your Discord account has been inactive for over 2 years, and is scheduled to be deleted on $DATE. But don’t worry! Dust off the cobwebs and prevent your account from being deleted just by logging in.

[thaumasiotes]

The stated reason is obviously not able to justify the change; either they have an internal reason they're not willing to admit to, or someone at Discord just went crazy.

Imagine trying to connect with your friends... by telephone.