You Can (Mostly) Block Discord's New Advertisements

Unfortunately, as you might have heard, things are shifting: Discord is introducing "Sponsored Quests," a new feature allowing developers to subtly promote their games to Discord users. While these don’t function like typical online ads, they are still advertisements. Fortunately, there’s a method to turn them off—at least for the time being.

Understanding Discord Sponsored Quests

As Discord explains in its announcement, Sponsored Quests let PC gamers earn rewards by live streaming their gameplay to friends or engaging in in-app activities. Developers can create Quests for users to participate in. For instance, during last year’s May the 4th Star Wars celebration, Epic Games and Lucasfilm Games launched Quests: Fortnite players could unlock both an in-game Fortnite Wrap and a Coruscant Pride Wrap by streaming their gameplay to a friend or accessing an app within a Fortnite Discord server.

While this might seem innocuous—simply avoid the Quest if you’re not interested in the in-game reward—the broader concern with Quests is that Discord intends to leverage them as promotional tools for games, employing traditional online advertising strategies to target gamers. The platform will display Quest notifications to users based on factors like age, location, and gaming behavior. So, when a Quest pop-up appears in the bottom-left corner of your Discord screen, understand that it was tailored to you using these specific data points.

How to Disable Discord Ads

Discord doesn’t explicitly highlight this, but there’s a method to turn off these in-game reward promotions and the associated tracking. To do so, launch Discord and navigate to Settings > Privacy & Safety. From there, switch off the toggle beside In-game rewards (also known as Quests).

However, even after opting out, you might still encounter Quest ads. These could appear in your Gift Inventory or when a friend is actively participating in one. Fortunately, for now, the Quest system remains relatively unobtrusive. Let’s hope it stays that way—there are already very few welcoming spaces left on the internet.