Yup, I’m pretty active on the game dev server on stoat. Anyone lurking here, come check it out!

EDIT>> And apparently I’m not the only one who may have issues with their current methodologies for using docker compose: https://github.com/stoatchat/self-hosted/issues/176

EDIT 2>> I tried Stoat using their hosted service (not self-hosting), and it leaves a lot to be desired as it relates to roles/permissions. I figure it’s a good six months or more away from being a viable alternative to Discord. It’s a good start, though.

Thanks for the reminder of that!

I’ve heard of it, but hadn’t yet looked into it much. I see this: https://github.com/stoatchat/self-hosted . It seems promising, I just wish it was a simple docker compose file with parameters (such as domain name/config file volume path/etc), so I can easily run it on UnRAID. But it’s requesting I run a shell script to generate some configuration file which could have been simple docker compose parameters. Therefore, in its current form, it requires I run docker compose via a shell that has the repo cloned.

And in order to do it a more proper way, in my opinion, I’d have to alter the compose file to change the “volumes” for many of the defined services to point to UnRAID’s appdata location. Every bit of this could have simply been environment variables within the compose file. And it would be ideal if the compose file could be set up to allow for external docker services that already exist (such as mongodb, redis, and rabbitmq). And it should expect reverse proxy hosting by default, not be the exception, again in my opinion.

I get that it’s open source and I could submit a pull request to do all I’d want, I’m just looking for a quick alternative to Discord without this level of effort. None seem to exist currently, at least for self-hosting. So I’ll continue looking into this when I decide to put in the effort for it. But I do appreciate your suggestion and may indeed go down this path soon.

The fact you can’t use the desktop client with a self hosted server and that there is no public iOS app right now are dealbreakers for me

Tangentially related: Fuck Arc raiders.

True. However TS has been around for a very very long time and have a proven record of not shitting on users. The free server and client have remained free all this time.

That doesn’t mean things will always be good though.

It’s all about friction. As long as the user has to pick an instance they will always hesitate to pick any federated service. The average user will always choose the path of least resistance.

Proprietary services spend a lot of time trying to reduce friction, and it works.

The only solution I can think of would be a three part one:

1. The main app of a federated service automatically rotates between a pool or reliable, reputable, non-extremist instances where the user can log in with an email and password.
2. The federated service makes it trivial to migrate accounts amongst instances.
3. the user can log into their instance threw any other instance perhaps threw oauth.

This would of course require some federated account login system. Hard but not impossible. It could be some sort of Casandra style ring based account service where nodes are part of the ring.

This eliminates the new user friction.

1. Download app
2. Sign up
3. Login

It works anywhere any time with corpo style low friction. You don’t need to think about instances at all till you are ready to.

Bring back Ventrilo. Get on Vent or I’ll have you bent

XMPP!

Stoat is dead in the water due to dependency on the UK and not an easy solution to deploy yet.

Fluxer is dead in the water due to license.

Hey guys, stop moving on to the next commercial service who will do the exact same thing once they get up to critical mass.

Yes, commercial services are easier to setup. The cost you pay is all of your privacy and your loss of control over the service that you’re building your communities on.

Stop making this same mistake OVER and OVER and OVER.

Take the time to find the IT workers or tech nerds in your community, take donations to rent server space and administer it yourself. Moving from Discord to Teamspeak isn’t an improvement, you’re just selecting the next group of people who will sell you out the moment that it becomes profitable.

Use Free and Open Source solutions, that your community hosts themselves. You have Mumble (https://www.mumble.info/) for voice, XMPP (https://xmpp.org/software/?category=servers) for text chat, Discourse (https://github.com/discourse/discourse) for forums, or even setup a Lemmy instance.

None of these things are difficult to use and the administrative side of things is simple (most are simply pre-made and hardened Docker containers). Even if you don’t want to deal with that yourself, there are managed hosts available for all of these pieces of software. If you don’t want to administer a Mumble server you can just rent one for less than the cost of a single Discord subscription. There are similar managed hosts for all of the other software.

Every game that I’ve ever played as part of a large community has had forum software and voice chat that we’ve hosted ourselves. Discord killed all of that because they offered the same service for free and made it easier.

Well, it wasn’t free, they’ve been steadily enshittfying and profiting off of the users. The prices keep increasing and they’re depending on the Network Effect (“I can’t leave because everyone uses it!”) to keep you trapped on their services.

Sure, but I see no need to host when so many cool nerds will gladly host your space for you. Different strokes, I guess.

time repeats itself.

I don’t get why so many people are saying this. Afaik, it doesn’t have channels within servers like Discord and Slack, which I feel is a defining feature in the text chat part of the apps.

The official self-hosted guide is actually quite simple and straightforward. I had it set up and going in a half hour or so, and that’s even with removing Caddy and using my existing nginx reverse proxy. It’s intimidating at first-glance, yeah.

That being said, the official self-host guide is also 5 months out of date. The alternative you linked requires jumping through a bunch of hoops because it’s just a small community of enthusiasts hacking together the current version of Stoat for self-hosting.

So I acknowledge that self-hosting current version of Stoat with voice is rather complicated and frustrating right now, but hopefully it becomes as simple as the official self-hosting guide eventually.

Oh dang. Why?

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARC_Raiders#AI_use

Oh. Fuck Arc Raiders.

TS also has a straightforward charge for server hosting.
This is free on Discord, but we all know nothing is actually free.

Their client runs on top of the ts3 server, so I assume it should just work. Set up the server and you can choose from the old or new clients.

Apparently you can self-host TeamSpeak

Kind of, they give everyone a free 1 server 32 slot license.

That isn’t guaranteed to be there forever and they could decide in the future that you need to buy that license.

However, if you install a Mumble server then it can’t be taken away from you. The hosting process is largely the same from an administrative perspective so I’d prefer the ‘free forever’ to the ‘free, limit 32, while supplies last’ license-wise.

I am much more inclined to trust TeamSpeak, but personally I’d rather move personal smaller groups to Matrix, and bigger public communities to Discourse or Lemmy where they are properly indexed and searchable.

It seems like the most realistic option to me since I doubt the masses wanna get into self hosting.

You only need these services as part of a gaming community.

I think you’d have a hard time finding a gaming community that didn’t contain at least a few people who could handle installing a docker container on a VPS.

The trade off, to save minimal administrative overhead (compared to moderation and such), you give up complete control over how your system is run, how your data is divulged and any control over future cost increases.

Everyone should be self-hosting (and also running Linux, but we’ll beat that horse later) if they’re running a gaming community.