Discord has game design and development servers for getting career advice, feedback on portfolios, discussing the development process, or just making friends in the community. Finding a path through game dev is hard enough, so don’t make it harder by going it alone. Find friends to help with your game development journey at these 15 servers I recommend checking out.
The servers at the top of the list target all disciplines and types of game developers. The communities further down the list become increasingly narrow in scope. Work with Indies, Indie Games, and IndieGameBusiness all give indie designers places to look for work and build their career outside of AAA. While focused on indie devs, the resources are useful for anyone thinking about the business and promotion side of development. The Unity Developer Community, Unreal Source, and Microsoft Game Dev servers get developers in touch with experts on specific tools. The last servers don’t have something for everyone, but they’re deep resources for developers using those tools.
1. Funsmith Club Discord
The Funsmith Club is a place for devs to talk about game design and participate in the Game Design Skills community. A unique aspect of the community is the set of courses and challenges it offers. The Build a Game Challenge takes members through the process of creating a prototype in six days, a tabletop game in this case (no code required). Funsmith Club members are happy to help each step of the way, and it’s usually easy to find playtesters for the prototype. No need to join the challenge to get feedback on other projects, though. The community hosts regular peer playtest sessions and is a place for discussion and feedback on any project. Here’s an example of some of the playtest sessions.
The Funsmith Club is a community of 7,000 members and growing. We created the server on Slack for our Game Design Skills community in 2021, and it remains a vibrant and active place to this day. At the time of writing, there’s a talk scheduled, regular job listings, and an updated list of game design resources, not to mention all the courses and bootcamps on our website.
2. Game Dev League Discord
The Game Dev League is a huge server for game developers to share their work and meet other developers. Channels are available for specific game engines, VR development, game design discussion, and the different art disciplines. The community hosts weekly art jams for getting work in front of other artists, but the #show-off-your-work channel is another place for feedback on work unrelated to the art jam. Any work from full games to music to combat encounters is welcome.
The community has been active for a decade and has grown to 120,000 members. The server was started in August 2017 by the user known as Crumble. Crumble is an Australian developer who’s earned his bachelor’s in game design and wanted to create a space for devs to help each other out. Join their server and see what their community’s about!
3. IGDA Discord
The IGDA (International Game Developer’s Association) is an organization that promotes the careers of game developers from all disciplines, from design to art to QA. Membership gives full access to their resources. The organization offers discounts on events, such as the DICE summit and the GDC. The IGDA hosts an extensive library including resources for marketing, promotion, legal concerns, publishing, and game design itself.
The Discord server has resources for networking and building a career. The jobs channel autopulls postings from around the world, serving the many communities within the IGDA. There are channels for each of the major chapters of the organization: the USA, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Oceania.
The IGDA created their Discord server in 2017, and they have grown the community to about 10,000 members. The community has much more to offer than there’s room to mention here: marketing advice, tutorials, links to assets, and playtesting solutions.
4. D3v Central Station Discord
D3v Central Station is a Discord-only community where devs hang out and network. The server is a place for designers to discuss the industry, share news, review each other’s portfolios, and find jobs. The server includes numerous channels for getting information the other Discord servers don’t cover: visas, salary information, and news about unionization.
D3v Central Station started in Fall 2022, currently has 2,300 members, and continues to be an active social community. The server has channels for sharing about family, fitness, books, hobbies, and building relationships with the other members beyond game design.
5. Game Dev Network Discord
The Game Dev Network is a Discord with similar resources as the previous ones but in a server with tens of thousands of members. The network has resources for devs just looking for help: channels for advice about game design, coding, art, and writing. Game Dev Network has an active devlog channel for sharing updates on projects and seeing what other devs are working on. Job postings are available, as well as channels where game devs advertise their services.
The Game Dev Network server is run by Liam Sorta, a developer who started the indie studio Acureus in 2021. He created the server in 2017 to share his knowledge with new developers. The community is large, with 61,000 total members and over 10,000 active during the day in the US. Monthly subscribers who contribute to the server get the ability to post jobs in career channels. The price is lowered for indie studios and solo users, and the contributions go toward maintaining the community and hosting events.
6. Amir Satvat’s Games Community Discord
Amir Satvat’s slogan “We help gamers get hired” sums up the purpose of his community. Amir Satvat has become well-known in the gaming community in the past few years and won accolades at The Game Awards for his resources. He hosts aggregated job listings, lists of job seekers, mock interviews, and portfolio reviews. The resources include a list of senior devs, their discipline, and their contact information for getting targeted advice.
Amir Satvat began hosting a spreadsheet of job listings on his LinkedIn in 2022 and has since grown his community. The Discord started in 2024 and now has 14,000 members. The server includes channels with job-seeking resources, career advice, and places to network with subdisciplines of game development. Production, HR, IT, QA, marketing, and other development disciplines outside design have dedicated channels for getting advice.
7. Work with Indies Discord
Work with Indies is a job board site for indie developers to focus their search on postings by indie studios. The big sites like Indeed and Zip Recruiter are full of AAA jobs and indie postings with dubious credibility. The job board works directly with indie devs and pulls updated postings from their websites to build a list of accurate, legitimate postings. The Discord server adds another avenue for networking with other indie devs.
Nathan Bosia founded the site in March 2020. Nathan’s background was in the business side of game development. He made deals between publishers and studios, helping ship games, consoles, and digital marketplaces. The fact that indie jobs were so scattered when he looked to transition from AAA encouraged him to start the job board.
The active Discord community of over 42,000 devs hosts monthly and weekly events. The community hosts a games showcase each month where designers gather to play and give feedback on each other’s games. The weekly streams range from playing indie games to a live Q&A with developers as they build a game.
8. Indie Games Discord
The r/indiegames subreddit hosts the Indie Games Discord server, which is a community for discussing all things indie games. Discussions, game promotion, and portfolio reviews take place in their server. Designers in the community get access to advice on marketing, a place to put out LFW (looking for work) ads, and to network with other devs, in this case devs outside the AAA space.
The community is active with 13,400 members and 70,000 weekly visitors to the subreddit. Indie Games had their first game jam this year in 2025, showing how they’ve kept growing over the years. They have regular streams where they interview indie game developers. Their channel has recently interviewed games business consultant Jason Della Rocca and Thomas Mahler from Ori and the Blind Forest.
9. IndieGameBusiness Discord
The Indie Game Business Discord is a place to talk with other indie devs about the aspects of development that aren’t so fun: production, marketing, publishing, licensing, and finances. The community hosts podcasts, talks, pitch deck reviews, and a job board. Their Masterclasses bring in experienced senior developers to talk about running game studios as businesses. The IP consultant Christian Fonnesbech came on recently to share his decades of experience building games, films, and marketable IPs. Veda Cruz is a games lawyer who came on to discuss common legal issues, another field that’s easy to miss out on as a solo dev or small team.
The community is active with weekly events and has grown to 10,200 members. Jay Powell started the server in 2018. Powell began with streams on Twitch, where he talked about how to promote and grow a studio. The community has since spread to the Discord server and now includes a website with its own resources. Listed on the website are classes on finding a publisher, creating effective pitches, and reading contracts.
10. Design Den Discord
The Design Den is different from the other servers in its focus on game design. The server has channels for level design, narrative design, general game design, and career resources. Design Den has an especially active community of level designers, so join up if you’re looking to talk to people within that subdiscipline. The mod team includes two level designers: Kolbe Payne, a level design alum of Halo Infinite, and Ryan Cullum, a level designer at Airship Syndicate.
Ryan Smith from Blizzard created the Design Den in summer 2020 to bring experienced designers together with novices. The lack of learning resources out there makes this community important for building up the careers of the next generation. The community has grown to 8,400 members. Designers post in the portfolio review and get comments every week. The server also runs its own game jam and keeps the community engaged with design community challenges, like in the case of Blocktober at the time of writing.
11. Microsoft Game Dev Discord
Microsoft Game Dev is the suite of tools Microsoft provides for developing games, and the Discord server brings together the developers using them. The tools range from software like the .NET framework and Azure DevOps to their Xbox marketplace. The Xbox Store run by Microsoft has had a part to play in launching indie games since the Xbox Live Arcade, where titles like Braid and Castle Crashers got published.
The Microsoft Game Dev Discord offers direct access to the people behind Microsoft’s funding and education efforts. The server hosts weekly office hours with Microsoft staff, including Xbox developers. Developers answer questions on topics like engagement, feedback on the Xbox Game Development Kit, or just how developers got into the industry. They most recently brought on the head of the ID@Xbox program, which gets indie games published on their store.
The server is an active community of 10,500 members that Microsoft started in July 2024. The community has art jams and a #share-your-stuff channel which members post in nearly every day.
12. Unity Developer Community Discord
The Unity Developer Community is a community-run server for all things Unity. Unity is a game engine with a huge amount of community resources, and this server is the place to access advice on anything from development to publishing. The server has tens of thousands of members ready to help, and the channels break down to specific features for targeted help. Users always have a specific channel to go to with questions about programming, netcode, shaders, AI, art, and other discipline-specific topics. The community regularly hosts their own game jam, so check out their next one to earn prizes and get work in front of other developers.
The community has been active since 2018 with 30,000 members. Joining the community means gaining access to all the resources and knowledge stored in one of the largest Unity servers.
13. Unreal Source Discord
Unreal Source is an independent community of Unreal devs created for beginner and experienced Unreal devs. Beginner and advanced users of the Unreal game engine have something to gain from joining. General channels are available for each version of the engine, for specific features like blueprints, Datasmith, Lumen and Niagara, for dev ops, and for customizing the engine. The server features job postings for devs looking to get hired as well.
Nick Pfisterer created the community in 2015 on Slack with the name Unreal Slackers. Unreal Source later rebranded and has since become a huge community, with 124,000 total members. Tens of thousands of users tend to be active at a given time. Users share art, show projects they’ve released in the FAB store, and participate in the Epic MegaJam. Every week, there are new job postings for users seeking freelance work, salaried positions, or collaboration with other members.
14. Ion Game Design Discord
Ion Game Design is a board game developer from Sweden that created this server to connect the community with its designers. A unique feature of the company is that the publisher partners with independent designers to help advise, design, and publish games by independent developers. The server is primarily aimed at fans of the company’s board games, but the server provides weekly updates on behind-the-scenes work in a forum where users are able to get in direct contact with the creators.
Ion Game Design started the server in 2024, and it has reached 2,600 members. The community isn’t for game designers in general, though: know that you’re getting into a community for a specific company. Make sure to join if you’re curious about what’s going on in the board game world or looking to learn about their partnership programs.
15. Daniel Mullins Games Discord
Daniel Mullins is an indie developer who got his start turning his game jam title Pony Island into a commercial success. The Discord follows his career as a prominent indie dev and offers advice from the indie community. The #i-designed-this channel is a place to freely promote games in front of other devs on a channel with tens of thousands of members. Daniel Mullins Games also includes channels for sharing fan creations and links to the modding community around his most recent release.
Daniel Mullins started the server in 2019 after the release of his second game. The server has built up to 37,000 members, with a mix of fans and content creators. The server isn’t a career advancement or advice server, so make sure to check other servers for job-related help and advice.
