Jason Citron who co-founded Discord announced his departure from the CEO position so Humam Sakhnini from Activision Blizzard took over while Citron stays on as a board member. The co-founder Jason Citron will stay at Discord’s board of directors while Stanislav Vishnevskiy continues his role as the company’s chief technology officer.
The Discord mission began with the fundamental purpose of uniting people for their gaming experiences according to CEO Jason Citron in his statement. Since my career began I have pledged myself to this purpose and believe Humam Sakhnini represents the best choice to lead Discord’s path forward. Since its launch as a communication tool for game interactions between friends Discord has developed into a platform with extensive social features which now leads to over 200 million worldwide monthly users according to the company statistics.
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Citron’s financial situation requires contributors to rethink their company leadership. Discord pursued investor meetings for its initial public offering process during March this year according to The New York Times coverage. Sakhnini brings leadership experience from working as the head of a public company. As the President of King Digital he led the development of Candy Crush and other mobile games until Activision Blizzard purchased the company. An executive with corporate leadership experience would practically become the best candidate to guide Discord through its initial public offering. GamesBeat interviewed Citron about a potential public offering and he replied “As you can imagine hiring Humam represents a step toward future public listing opportunities.”
Discord underwent discussions for a Microsoft acquisition some years back as an Alliance with the Xbox brand appeared obvious. A $10 billion acquisition between Microsoft and Discord failed although both Xbox and PlayStation managed to integrate the Discord platform.
