Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
A race to reserve usernames is kicking off on Discord.
Starting in the next couple of weeks, millions of Discord users will be forced to say goodbye to their old four-digit-appended names. Discord is requiring everyone to take up a new common platform-wide handle. For Discord, it’s a move toward mainstream social network conventions. For some users, though, it’s a change to the basics of what Discord is — a shift that’s as much about culture as technology.
Discord has historically handled usernames with a numeric suffix system. Inste...
