Provisional Accounts

​

Overview

Provisional accounts let players use Social SDK features in your game without linking a Discord account so all players can have a consistent gameplay experience. With provisional accounts, players can:

• Add friends and communicate with other players
• Join voice chats in game lobbies
• Send direct messages to other players
• Appear in friends lists and game lobbies

All of this works seamlessly whether your players have Discord accounts or not. This section will show you how to:

1. Choose an authentication method and configure your identity provider
2. Create and manage provisional accounts for your game
3. Merge accounts when users link a full Discord account, and unmerge them when the link is severed

​

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• A basic understanding of how the SDK works from the Getting Started Guide
• An external authentication provider set up for your game

---

​

What Are Provisional Accounts?

Think of provisional accounts as temporary Discord accounts that:

• Work only with your game
• Can be merged into a full Discord account later
• Persist between game sessions
• Use your game’s authentication system

With provisional accounts, players can use Discord features like chat and voice and interact with game friends without creating a full Discord account. They are “placeholder” Discord accounts for the user that your game owns and manages. For existing Discord users who have added a provisional account as a game friend, the provisional account will appear in their friend list, allowing you to send direct messages and interact with them for text and voice in lobbies.

​

Benefits

• Instant Access: Players can use social features immediately
• Seamless Experience: Works the same for all players
• Easy Linking: Simple to merge into a full Discord account
• Data Persistence: Friends and history are preserved
• Cross-Platform: Works on all supported platforms

​

Provisional Account Lifecycle

The diagram below shows the general lifecycle of a provisional account, from creation through an optional merge with a full Discord account.

---

​

Choosing an Authentication Method

Discord offers a number of authentication methods, the one you use depends on how your game and account system are set up:

1. Use the Bot Token Endpoint if your game has an account system which uniquely identifies users. This is the recommended approach when possible.
2. Use Server Authentication with External Credentials Exchange if you have a hard requirement for a server side custom OIDC integration.
3. Use the Public Client Integration method if you don’t have a server authoritative backend, and therefore require using a Public Client for authentication.

If you are using (2) or (3), you must configure your identity provider before being able to create provisional accounts.

​

Implementing Provisional Accounts

Whichever method you choose, creating a provisional account and requesting an access token for it always happens in a single step. You provide external authentication that uniquely identifies the user, and Discord finds a user associated with that identifier.

• If there is no account associated with the identity, a new provisional account is created along with a new access token for the user.
• If there is a provisional account associated with the identity, an access token is returned.
• If there is an existing full Discord account associated with the identity, the request is aborted.

Once authentication is complete, you can use the access token as you would a full Discord user’s access token.

---

​

Next Steps

Need help? Join the Discord Developers Server and share questions in the #social-sdk-dev-help channel for support from the community. If you encounter a bug while working with the Social SDK, please report it here: https://dis.gd/social-sdk-bug-report

---

​

Change Log