The reason is simple. Discord's users are it's product, not the software services it provides them. Its clients are intentionally spyware. If you made your own client then they could not spy and sell information about you.
They send a tracking request for every single thing you do in their client. Clicked on someone's profile, clicked on a channel, clicked on a "server" (not really a server), etc. The URL was named "/track" before but they renamed it to "/events" recently (but it's still a POST with no response).
Also their desktop client is literally a remote sdministration toolkit, it has full access to FS (electron app) and it loads every script from their servers. They can just add something like require('fs').readFileSync(process.env.HOME + '/.ssh/id_rsa').toString() and send this to their servers, and you won't even notice that (since it doesn't require an update on client because the client is just a browser with full permissions that loads obfuscated code from their servers every time you launch it).
I’m not even talking about 3rd party clients becoming the main clients. As I said that would be a sign of a much bigger problem than just reduced ability of monetization.
The reasons why they default to lock in are obvious, what I’m saying is that it ultimately benefits their business or has a neutral effect as the type of users to use a 3rd party client isn’t and is probably still using multiple clients (mobile/desktop) and still buys the subscription services.
Discord will always make the most popular client. It’s just how this stuff works. Just like Twitter 95%+ of people go to discord to download the clients. It’s the niche ones on the side that end up getting banned.
It’s not like the advanced features of a freemium model couldn’t be replicated in the client or in Twitters case they can still send ads in the API stream. If the client doesn’t show the ads + is very popular (a key part of the equation) then you can cut them off.
They could charge to allow people to use private clients equivalently (or maybe even more) to what they make per client selling that track data. Either way things go they'd win that way.
They send a tracking request for every single thing you do in their client. Clicked on someone's profile, clicked on a channel, clicked on a "server" (not really a server), etc. The URL was named "/track" before but they renamed it to "/events" recently (but it's still a POST with no response).
Also their desktop client is literally a remote sdministration toolkit, it has full access to FS (electron app) and it loads every script from their servers. They can just add something like require('fs').readFileSync(process.env.HOME + '/.ssh/id_rsa').toString() and send this to their servers, and you won't even notice that (since it doesn't require an update on client because the client is just a browser with full permissions that loads obfuscated code from their servers every time you launch it).