Discord users are in mourning today. Groovy, the Discord chatbot that brought music into your chats, has been killed by Google.
Although to be fair, Groovy did probably violate YouTube's terms of service. At least, that's what a YouTube spokesperson told The Verge. “We notified Groovy about violations of our Terms of Service, including modifying the service and using it for commercial purposes,” the spokesperson said.
For those unaware, Groovy was a Discord bot that let you inject audio into your voice chats. It worked by drawing audio mostly from YouTube (although Spotify and a few other streaming services were supported) and then adding it to your D&D sessions, Among Us games, or to just spice up a call with old friends. Over the past five years, Groovy grew to be extremely popular and was installed in over 16 million servers.
Nik Ammerlaan, Groovy bot creator, explained in a heartfelt message on Discord channel that he only created Groovy "because my friend’s bot sucked and I thought I could make a better one." He also admitted that it was likely just a matter of time until Google came knocking. “It was just a matter of seeing when it would happen."
Although the free version of Groovy would likely have survived on its own, Groovy also has a premium version that allows it to be installed in more than one server and also includes some new features like sound effects and audio controls. Google already doesn’t like it when you just scrape things off YouTube, but they especially don’t like it when someone charges money to do it.
You can enjoy Groovy for the next couple of days, but Groovy will stop offering its services on August 30. After that, you’ll just have to screen-share your YouTube window like the rest of us.