Discord is being taken to court with a class action lawsuit that alleges their subscription service, Nitro, is needlessly difficult to cancel. They claim that the “cancellation flow” is obstructed to the point that it’s anti-consumer.
This class action lawsuit comes out of California, with the crux of the suit being rooted in a business practice law from the state.
California Business and Professions Code 17602 is a rather long set of rules and regulations. The gist, however, is that it was put in place to keep companies from trapping people into subscriptions after they were purchased or purposely obfuscating the process of unsubscribing.
And, according to some California consumers, Discord is doing just that.
Discord sued over subscription service practices
The suit alleges that there is “no ‘prominently located direct or link or button’ for the user to click” in relation to trying to cancel the service.
On Tuesday, Discord was sued in a class action over its subscription practices.California consumers say Discord violated state auto-renewal laws by making it too difficult to cancel: pic.twitter.com/HEcT1JVj4N
— Rob Freund (@RobertFreundLaw) December 20, 2024
“A user is required to navigate to the “Subscriptions” tab within the user settings and then locate a small “Cancel” button. After clicking the ‘Cancel’ button, Discord then presents the user with a series of prompts to click through in order to cancel the subscription, including prompts which are seemingly designed to convince the user to not cancel their subscription.”
Unfortunately, the suit doesn’t include any images of what this actual process looks like. Here’s a quick rundown for context.
Once you scroll through the options and find “Subscriptions” under the “Billing Settings” tab, you’ll see this screen:
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The cancel button they’re referring to is the one next to “Switch Plans” in the bright Discord Nitro banner. After clicking cancel, you’ll get this screen:
Discord advertises a wealth of features you lose upon cancelling your subscription, along with an offer to get a discount if you opt to continue your sub. The menu scrolls and shows the user several advantages they lose out on if they opt to cancel.
They quoted Code 17602 in the suit, claiming that, “This is hardly a ‘timely and easy-to-use mechanism for cancellation,’, nor a cancellation procedure that allows the consumer to cancel ‘without engaging any further steps that obstruct or delay the consumer’s ability to terminate the automatic renewal or continuous service immediately.”
The plaintiffs also claimed that the need for tutorials on how to unsubscribe from Discord were a testament to how difficult it is to unsubscribe from the service.
Discord has yet to publicly respond to this class action lawsuit at the time of writing. However, California’s business laws have caused changes when it comes to online transactions in the past.
For instance, a change to California business law companies like Valve, Nintendo, and Sony to disclose that downloadable games don’t belong to you, but simply that you’re purchasing the license to play them.
