Is This The End For Fake Active Developers...?
Discord recently launched a new badge, and they are now cracking down on people who deceived and "cheated" their way to badgehood...
Recommended Reading
Before continuing to read this article, I would recommend that you read our article from last month - written by @Scemer Jr - that effectively discusses the basics of this new Discord badge.
Make sure to come back and finish this article once you are done!
When the Active Developer badge launched on Discord at the start of November, many users rushed to get it.
So many users rushed to GitHub or to websites designed to help you get this badge. Many of them were not developers...
People were sucked in by the appeal of a new Discord badge to flex on their profile that they simply downloaded a bot from GitHub and got it running for the sake of being able to claim the badge. While Discord claimed that "getting the badge this way is valid and should be encouraged! Everyone starts learning programming in different ways.", they are now beginning to change their stance...
Discord has previously claimed that using a bot from GitHub was a perfectly valid way of beginning to pick up some basic coding skills that you can improve upon. Discord are now beginning to crack down on these people though, and from January 2023, your bot must have had at least one slash command executed in the last 30 days to keep you eligible for the badge.
When signing up for the Active Developer badge, you are prompted to designate a channel in your support server for official developer related announcements from Discord. They sent out their first message the other day, and it looks a little something like this:
It seems Discord are trying to switch up the Active Developer programme. Instead of being able to run a slash command once, and in return, receive a profile badge forever, you could now be required to activate your bot once a month and send a slash command to it. This will take action from the 10th January 2023.
Why these sudden changes, you may ask? Well, I couldn't find any clear-cut information (yet...). In my opinion, I think this may have just been an oversight by Discord. They may have trusted people's honesty in only claiming the badge if they're a developer, and I think they may have looked at the uptake of the badge, and seen that something needed to be changed.
Well, what do I think of these changes?
Personally, I think that Discord are doing this to passively push people into creating a bot that will function itself. The Active Developer program was always designed to encourage people to get into coding, and I believe these changes are a step in that direction. Discord could be seen to be encouraging people to learn coding, take up a new hobby, and build a Discord bot to improve their server for the better.
Resources
Before this article is finished, I found some great resources when conducting my research for this article that I think are worth sharing, as they may provide some value to you, or may just generally interest you.
No Text To Speech - YouTube Video
No Text To Speech has made a great video on his YouTube channel that helps to summarise the changes made by Discord and shows you how to maintain your badge after these new changes come into effect in the next few weeks.
Well, that's it for today's article. I hope you found it interesting and enjoyed reading it. Make sure to join the Netcord HQ Discord server where you can discuss today's article further, or even suggest new topics for us to write about in the near future.
From myself, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and I'll see you all in 2023! For the final time of 2022, Epic out ✌
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