Guilded

Guilded was a VoIP, instant messaging and content-delivery platform for video game communities, developed by Guilded, Inc. and based in San Francisco. Users communicated through voice calls, video calls, text messaging and shared media and files, either in private chats or in communities called "servers." The product targeted competitive gaming and esports groups, and layered organizational tooling on top of chat: integrated event calendars and scheduling tools, forums, inline events, document uploads and screen captures, Kanban boards, collaborative document editing comparable to Google Docs, and "whisper" groups for nested voice chat. Voice chat could be used while playing, and the platform supported more than 400 game titles as of 2020.

Guilded was released on March 17, 2017 and was available on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS. It was written in Node.js and distributed under a proprietary license. Roblox Corporation acquired the company on August 16, 2021 for $90 million, after which Guilded operated as an independent product group of Roblox and was integrated with the Roblox platform. Roblox announced in September 2025 that Guilded would close by the end of the year, and the platform was discontinued on December 19, 2025, with its website redirecting to Roblox's Communities feature and its apps displaying a sunset notice.

Founding story

Guilded was founded by Eli Brown, who previously worked in full stack and growth engineering at Xbox, Instagram and Facebook and was a Grandmaster StarCraft II player. The company took part in Y Combinator's Summer 2017 batch.

Business model

Guilded operated a group communication platform for gaming communities, offering client applications across desktop and mobile. Free users were provided with relatively high performance specifications, including 1080p/60fps streaming, 256kbps audio bitrate and a 500MB file upload limit. After the 2021 acquisition it functioned as a product group within Roblox Corporation rather than as an independent business.

Traction

The platform supported more than 400 game titles as of May 2020 and had a team size of about 30. Following the 2024 mandate that Guilded accounts be linked to Roblox accounts, a number of non-Roblox gaming communities, including independent MMORPG guilds and FPS clans, migrated back to Discord, citing privacy concerns and a desire for platform neutrality.

Latest developments

Roblox announced on September 29, 2025 that Guilded would shut down by the end of the year as part of consolidating social features into Roblox Communities. Server owners were given an export tool for message history and media, and on December 19, 2025 the service was discontinued: the website now redirects to Roblox Communities and the desktop and mobile apps show a sunset notification.