Discord appears to have accidentally inflated the view count for its 2024 April Fools’ joke video, boosting it by millions of views.
The video, as reported by IGN, the video garnered 628 million views in just 17 hours. It broke the previous record set by the GTA 6 trailer for a 24-hour debut of a non-music video. The video itself is a short clip advertising the fake addition of loot boxes to the social platform. It only got so many views because it was “viewbotted,” apparently by accident.
Software developer and Discord dataminer Marvin Witt posted on Twitter/X that Discord implemented the video into its own app in a toast notification, meaning the video played on loop across many different devices. Because the video was directly integrated, it accumulated views without anyone actually watching it on YouTube. Witt also claimed that this was an accident, posting a screenshot from a developer expressing bewilderment at the view count.
I should mention they presumably did this accidentally, even one of the high up developers at Discord was confused as to how this was happening pic.twitter.com/0uRLQRRzSq
— Marvin Witt (@NurM4rvin) April 2, 2024
GameSpot has reached out to Discord for clarification on what led to the increase in views.
In other Discord news, the app will start implementing ads, possibly in the next week. Discord users can complete “sponsored quests” by playing games and streaming to friends to earn in-app cosmetics. Discord previously had a strong anti-ad stance, opting for subscription revenue instead. The company laid off 17% of its workforce in January.
