Microsoft quietly announced that the gamer-created social clubs on Xbox will be retired in April 2026 (via Windows Central). The Discord-like communities launched ten years ago alongside the Looking for Group feature that helps players find other gamers to play with, but they’ve been neglected for years.
In an official FAQ, the Xbox team explained that the retirement of user-created clubs is “part of ongoing platform updates to focus on the social experiences players use most today.” Official clubs for individual games are not going away, however, and these clubs will still feature updates from developers and a Looking for group page to help gamers connect with each other.
As of today, social clubs on Xbox are only available on Xbox consoles, which severely limits their usefulness compared to Discord servers. They also used to be available on Windows via the UWP-based Xbox Console Companion app, but Microsoft retired it three years ago. The new Xbox app on Windows is pretty light on social features, and it also lacks the Friends and Community updates feed that’s available on Xbox consoles.
Most gamers these days use Discord to connect and get updates from game developers, and it’s quite likely that usage of social clubs on Xbox is very low. It doesn’t help that Microsoft integrated Discord voice chat and live streaming into the Xbox OS, and the company even tried to acquire Discord back in 2021. As Discord is currently embroiled in a mandatory age verification controversy that follows a recent data breach, it’s quite unfortunate that Microsoft, which wants to make Xbox games available on any platform, didn’t push Xbox social features harder.