Full Steam Ahead: Bringing the Upland Community Closer Together

This week has already been packed with new updates and early looks at what’s coming next for Upland. We’re in the middle of an alpha preview of Troves, and yesterday we introduced a new feature that allows players to place items on top of each other across their maps, creating more unique and personalized experiences than ever before.

Today, we’re excited to share how we’re thinking about the future of communication and community inside Upland.

Community Is at the Heart of Upland

Community has always been one of Upland’s strongest foundations. It is a major part of what sets Upland apart. Our players are informed, involved, active, and always ready to help each other, especially when new players enter the world of Upland for the first time.

That is why we want to make it easier for every player to connect with the broader Upland community as quickly as possible.

While in-game messaging has become a useful way for players to communicate one-on-one, our current native game chat has not grown into the active community hub we hoped it would become. At the same time, our Discord community has continued to thrive, with players showing up every day to discuss the game, answer questions, welcome new players, and stay connected.

So, we’re taking the next step.

Bringing Discord Conversations Into Upland

In the coming weeks, we plan to begin rolling out a game-native Discord chat experience inside Upland. This will allow select Discord channelsto appear directly inside the Upland chat interface. Players will access it from inside the game, and it will feel like part of the Upland experience, but the activity they see will come from Discord.

A Phased Rollout

This rollout will happen in phases. At first, the experience will be read-only. Every player with an Upland account will be able to open chat inside Upland and follow conversations happening in select Discord channels, without needing to log into Discord or have a Discord account. That means players will not miss the conversation simply because they are not on Discord. They will be able to stay informed, learn from the community, and see what’s happening in real time directly from inside Upland.

Inphase 2, we plan to expand this to read-and-write access. At that stage, players inside Upland will be able to chat directly with players in Discord from inside the game, without needing to log into Discord or have a Discord account. Participation in this phase will follow Upland’s community standards and moderation policies, and we’ll share more details as we get closer to rollout.

During this transition, native game chat will remain available for a period of time. Once the new Discord-powered chat experiencesupports full communication inside Upland, we plan to sunset the existing native game chat and replace it with the new connected experience.

Why We’re Doing This

Upland’s community is one of the most important parts of the experience. Players learn from each other, welcome new members, share strategies, answer questions, and help bring the world of Upland to life every day.

For many players, Upland truly opened up once they connected with the community. That is often when the game becomes easier to understand, more exciting to explore, and more rewarding to be part of.

We want to help make that connection happen as quickly as possible for more players. Even if someone chooses not to chat, they will still be able to follow conversations, learn from experienced players, stay informed, and feel more connected to what is happening across Upland.

By bringing select Discord conversations directly into the game, every player with an Upland account will be able to see the community in action without needing to log into Discord or create a Discord account.

That keeps the community more connected, more accessible, and easier to discover.

We’ll share more details as the rollout gets closer.