Discord has launched additional safety protections for teens globally, expanding age-appropriate protections for teens across privacy, content and settings meant for adults, messaging, and spending.
This launch is primarily a platform-level Trust & Safety update, rather than a change to Discord's developer platform. Ahead of the rollout, Discord completed a comprehensive technical audit across SDK integrations, Apps & Bots, Activities, and Commerce to understand what these changes could mean for developers and their existing integrations.
For most developers, nothing changes: existing apps, bots, games, Activities, and Social SDK integrations continue to work as is.
There are four behaviors you may observe as these protections roll out. These are things your app might encounter at runtime, not changes you need to implement.
| Area | What you may observe | What you need to do |
|---|---|---|
Apps & Bots: Private Profiles may limit custom status visibility Bots using GUILD_PRESENCES in servers with 200+ members
|
For users in the teen age group using Private Profiles, PRESENCE_UPDATE and GUILD_CREATE presences may arrive without custom_status. Online status, voice states, and streams are unchanged. Friends-scoped surfaces are unaffected. |
No integration changes required. If your experience uses custom_status, account for cases where it may not be available. |
| Activities: Age-gated Activities may require users to confirm their age group Activities with the Developer Portal Age Gate enabled or an ADULT classification | Some users may need to confirm their age group before accessing an age-gated Activity. Until they do, they may be unable to launch the Activity or see it in the Activity shelf. A blocked launch returns 403 / error code 50165. | No integration changes required. Account for users who may not be eligible to launch the Activity. When testing age-gated experiences, use a non-development-team account, as development team accounts may bypass the age gate. |
| Commerce: Parent-set spending limits may prevent some purchases Third-party application SKUs and Activity in-app purchases | If a user in the teen age group has a linked parent or guardian who has set a spending limit, a blocked purchase ends as PURCHASE_CANCELED. No entitlement is granted and no purchase webhook is sent. Subscription renewals and Orbs-paid purchases are exempt.
|
No integration changes required. Continue treating PURCHASE_CANCELED as a normal purchase outcome and only grant entitlements following a successful purchase. |
| Social SDK: DMs may encounter Message Requests more frequently Games using Social SDK messaging | As existing Message Request protections apply more broadly, developers may see more DMs routed through the Message Request experience. As a result, some messages may be less likely to be accepted or surfaced to the recipient. | No integration changes required. Continue to account for the possibility that a DM may not be accepted or surfaced to the recipient. |
Why you may see these behaviors
This launch expands how existing age, privacy, messaging, and spending protections are applied globally.
As a result, your underlying integration can continue working as it does today, while some users may experience additional protections based on their age group or settings.
We'll continue to provide technical guidance in our developer documentation for cases where these protections affect specific API or SDK behavior. If you encounter unexpected behavior or have questions about your integration, please reach out through Discord's developer support channels.