Before there was Discord, there was TeamSpeak. I never partook in it myself, but I remember my college boyfriend being a die-hard TeamSpeak loyalist before reluctantly jumping ship to the newer, shinier, and crucially more user-friendly gamer platform.
But TeamSpeak never went away, and it looks like 2025 may be the year of its triumphant return. Or at the very least, a very good attempt to give Discord a run for its money. The TeamSpeak X account has been doing some pretty cryptic posts since the beginning of the year, like "Man I love January, such a great month, not saying anything is going to happen this January, but wow, it's great. January btw."
Vagueposting has now turned into just straight-up posting, however, with TeamSpeak slowly unveiling its new look. In its own typical TeamSpeak way, of course. The new UI is looking a lot friendlier to use, putting itself just close enough to Discord's that it'll be nice and familiar if anyone does end up moving over. It looks like there are group chats, servers, and bookmarks for easy navigation.
A follow-up image shows off a little bit more, with community servers for a bunch of different games like Minecraft, Diablo 4, and Overwatch 2. TeamSpeak says the new design overhaul will include screen sharing, camera sharing, 1440p streaming, multi-streaming, all in 60 FPS. Oh, and one secret final thing apparently, though we'll have to wait a little longer to find out what it is.
I say the unveiling has been in TeamSpeak's own unique way, because anyone who's followed the X account knows that the company isn't afraid of throwing a bit of shade at Discord… pretty much all the time. It's been following up each post with a link pointing towards Discord's support site: One link on how to delete your Discord account, and another on how to cancel your Nitro subscription.
I'm all here for a little bit of brand-on-brand violence, and honestly I hope TeamSpeak manages to throw itself back into the limelight a little. Competition is always a good thing, and I've not exactly been quiet about my growing frustration with Discord and its assortment of unnecessary features and changes. But I do wonder how on board folks will be with the whole 'paying to run a server' thing that it has. Unless that's the huge final change that's coming, mind you. We'll have to wait and see.
