Bot artwork designs by the lovely Tom Waterhouse (@2dforever)

 

Every great video game Discord community has thought, care, love and attention invested in it. Every great video game Discord community also has great community design.

Community design comes in many forms. Lore-based storytelling and role-based factions. In-jokes, banter, and dank memes. Stage events, status signals, and bots and automations, too.

But what’s right for you? Here’s the golden rule.

Your community should be an extension of your core game experience.

The games industry, with its boundless optimism and limitless creativity, is uniquely positioned to create novel spaces to please and delight audiences, and foster wholesome, engaged communities.

It’s worth thinking outside the box.

Nevertheless, not everybody is able to script their own novelty experiences.

So with that in mind, we are rounding up the best Discord bots available off-the-shelf for your official video game communities.

We’ll cover many aspects of community management and health, game production and promotion, and include a few extras at the end.

 

Top Discord Bots for Game Developers

8. Pronoun Picker

Pronoun Picker is an official Discord bot – yes, made by Discord! – that allows members to choose their pronouns from a selection. He/him, She/her, They/them – or choose multiple, whatever goes. Members get a named role (e.g. they/them) after choosing.

Making pronouns explicit and visible makes your space more welcoming for non-binary, trans and genderfluid folks. Language matters.

Pricing

Completely free. Install now!

 

7. EasyPoll

EasyPoll is a Discord Bot that enables you to poll members quickly and easily, using emoji-based reactions.

You can set up regular polls, time-limited polls and even anonymous polls for those delicate questions when members wouldn’t want to be singled out.

Pricing

Free tier. Subscription-based Premium tier, from ~$3.29 monthly.

 

6. GiveawayBot

GiveawayBot is a Discord bot that lets you run giveaway campaigns quickly and easily.

Do you want to get more members into your Discord? Or fulfill existing members with unique digital or physical rewards? Perhaps gift your members Nitro, Xbox Gamepass, Amazon vouchers, or keys for your game? This bot lets you do just that.

Giveaway campaigns can be super effective in the short-term, but they can be a double-edge sword too.

If you’re running a campaign specifically for growth, the quality of new members may be lower. Many will just join for the free swag.

For maximum effect, run a campaign aimed specifically for your current / target audience.

Pricing

Free. Donation based – consider supporting!

 

5. ModMail

ModMail is a Discord bot that enables community members to easily contact server staff.

As more people play your game, and as your server gets more members, you will inevitably get more customer support requests there. If you haven’t established a customer-support process, for example providing support via email with tools like Helpwise, then ModMail may just be for you.

Let’s face it, people are going to message your server moderators anyway. Even out of office hours. So ModMail lets you lock down your DMs, and provide streamlined support to your community in dedicated private support channels. It’s excellent.

Pricing

Free tier. One-time purchase for Premium tier, from $30 per server.

 

4. Statbot

Statbot is a Discord bot that gives you access to advanced server stats and community metrics.

As the business management adage goes, ”if you don’t measure it, you can’t manage / improve it”. This is also true of your community health.

It’s important to regularly check your top-line metrics such as active member counts, and messages per engaged member (per time-period).

Without actively monitoring these, you won’t be able to tell if your community-based marketing efforts are finding success. And likewise, whether your community is happy and growing, or actively… dying. /tumbleweed

So Statbot is great for this, and goes way beyond the built-in Discord Insights. Lastly, Statbot lets you assign roles based on user activity, so if you want to boost your most active and engaged members with an elevated status in the role list, that’s a lovely little extra.

Pricing

Free tier. Premium tier from $8.99 monthly.

 

3. Coverage Bot

Coverage Bot is a Discord bot that notifies you in real-time when Twitch streamers play your game! It also tracks YouTube and gaming press mentions.

During your game’s launch window, as part of your influencer marketing strategy, it’s essential that you engage with streamers and gaming content creators.

Building and nurturing influencer relationships earns you reputation and memorability. And jumping into streams whilst they’re live lets you engage with and delight the streamer and their audience – i.e. your potential audience! Grow your Discord, earn a few extra wishlists or sales. Up to you!

In addition, Coverage Bot can also track other game titles so you can use it for competitive analysis, and for building lists for PR outreach campaigns.

Full disclosure: we made this one!

Pricing

Premium, subscription-based, from $24 monthly.

 

2. Decky & Steamy

Decky is a Discord bot that gives your community access to your game’s development roadmap!

Firmly routed in the games industry, Decky is part of the playful project management platform Codecks. Think Trello cards and Toggl time tracking, but built specifically for game projects.

Featuring unique design paradigms, tight community-integrations and in-engine API support, Codecks is an outstanding product for our industry. Definitely worth signing up!

As an extra, Codecks provide Steamy, a bot integration that notifies you when you receive new player reviews on Steam. Neat!

Pricing

Free tier includes most essential features. Subscription-based Premium tier, from $5 per user, per month.

 

1. Dyno vs Carl Bot vs MEE3

Collectively, these are fully-customisable Discord bots that help you moderate your server. Set up auto responders and ‘starboards’, assign roles from emoji reactions, and even add custom commands.

Selecting one of these bots for auto-moderation can be a difficult decision. However, for us, it was easy.

MEE6 is the most popular choice, but recently joined the Web3 / NFT craze to sell NFT avatars, and this doesn't align with our climate-positive values. While it has additional social features, actions speak louder than words, so we rule it out. Carl-bot, with a friendly feel and a cute-as-hell turtle mascot, is our choice for supporting the underdog. However, being fully command-based means there is a learning curve to set it up. Dyno is our #1 choice. It has extensive documentation, is used more widely in professional contexts, and can be fully managed through a web dashboard. It supports all features of the previous two, and comes in at the cheapest on the annual plan.

Pricing

MEE6: Free tier. Subscription-based Premium tier, cheapest at ~$49.99 annually. Lifetime plan available at $89.90.

Carl-bot: Free tier. Subscription-based Premium tier through Patreon, starting at ~$5.30 monthly.

Dyno: Free tier. Subscription-based Premium tier, cheapest at $49.99 annually.

 

Conclusion

That’s it! The very best Discord bots for your video game communities. Lots of them have free tiers, so go give them a try!

If you’d like to learn more about Discord bot automation, community management or video game marketing, consider subscribing to our newsletter, joining our very own Discord community, or signing up for Coverage Bot!

Oh. and please share this with an indie dev who you would think would benefit! 😇

Until next time, - Ashley

 

FAQ

What is a Discord Bot?

A Discord Bot is a “AI” (artificial intelligence) bot, with a set of pre-programmed control commands that you can interact with on the community platform Discord.

These commands can do anything. From starting an interactive quiz, playing music in a voice channel, kicking / banning / auto-moderating, and posting dank memes.

The bot-ecosystem is your oyster!

Why Discord Bots for your video game community?

Discord Bots are beneficial for indie game developers and publishers in so many use cases.

From measuring community health metrics, integrating with project management tools and support systems, to running feedback polls and driving engagement (aka hype!), there’s so much that automation can do to help.

Bring your server to life, fill it with positivity, and achieve your goals!

How to add a Discord Bot to your server?

Discord Bots can be added by finding and clicking the “invite bot” button on the bot developer’s website. You can also, if the bot is public, find it on another Discord server in the role list, and click the “Add to Server” button.

Where to find Discord Bots?

Until Discord release their “Bot Discovery” marketplace, you can find Discord bots on third-party listing sites such as top.gg, Void Bots and Discord Bot List.