Those of you who played online-heavy games like World of Warcraft in the last decade and a half will no doubt remember Teamspeak. For a long time it, Ventrilo, and Mumble were in a head-to-head battle for dominance in the battle to be gaming’s top VOIP client. (Ventrilo clearly won on the meme front.) While these programs – sans Ventrilo – still find modern use, their userbase is baby numbers compared to the rise and rise of Discord.
You already know what Discord is, don’t you lie to me. The now-dominant VOIP client was released in 2015, and only grew larger by the day – It was valued at $1.65 billion in April. Its ease of function, social features, and high-quality audio left some dumbfounded. How could such a fantastic product be free? The suspicious and the nosy had an answer: Selling your data. Probably. Maybe. Even without foundation, this conspiracy theory simply keeps sticking around. Neverless, the dominance of Discord cannot be denied. As more and more companies seek ties with it, other VOIP clients are (sadly) left in the dust.
Mumble’s still the go-to in the competitive scene of my beloved Team Fortress 2, though, so that’s comforting.
Teamspeak, however, has decided that enough is enough. They’re back with a new look, and ready to rumble in advance of its Teamspeak 5 client. They’re not playing around this time either, taking a very 90s approach to advertising: Teamspeak does what Discord don’t. There are shirts and everything.
The rebranding, announced today, was focused on a website redesign and a renewed advertising drive. The reveal also reminded us of what Teamspeak 3 brings to the table: “military-grade security”, offline functionality, anonymity, minimal CPU usage, you get the idea. One boast that sticks out like a sore thumb is this, from the Teamspeak website:
What really makes TeamSpeak different, is that YOU are in complete control.
Unlike other solutions, we don’t force you to use our centralized servers. We don’t harvest your data, then sell it on. We don’t tell you how things should work or look.
Like I said, no punches pulled. Discord and Skype are even called out by name in their feature comparison chart for selling user data – a claim that Discord has fervently denied in the past. Even if Discord doesn’t sell data (yet), the aggressive marketing speaks to the service that Teamspeak has spend more than a decade building. Teamspeak 5 is set to launch in the later months of 2018, with more features “built on the foundation of Teamspeak 3”. Yeah, they’re skipping 4. Because they’re too cool for four! Or it could be an attempt to avoid Chinese symbols of death. Hey, it’s a huge market – can’t hurt.
Personally, I’m pumped. While Discord is fantastic at what it does, I’ve gone through enough services over the years for just about everything to learn one very important lesson: The better something is, the worse it gets. That said, Discord’s share of the market only gets more unfair by the day. I’ll be rooting for good ol’ TS, but I won’t be reinstalling until the aged TS3 is upgraded.
You can check out the new Teamspeak website here.
Story sourced from Dustin Bailey (PCGamesN.com)
