Mainframe

When you want someone to try your game, what do you do? Send them a trailer? A code? A download link?

Mainframe, the Nordic game studio behind the social sandbox MMO Pax Dei, wanted to go further. They came to us with a challenge: could we create a prototype that shows what a frictionless “try with a friend” experience could look like? No install, no cost, no waiting. Just click, and play – right there in Discord.

Together with Discord and NVIDIA, we helped bring that vision to life. What emerged was a one-of-a-kind proof of concept: a working demo that takes a guest player directly into Pax Dei, streamed via the NVIDIA cloud, embedded within Discord. It’s the kind of integration that could rewrite how players discover games, and how studios reach new audiences.

Player acquisition for MMOs is notoriously tricky. The games are big. The downloads are bigger. And few players are willing to commit without seeing the world for themselves. Mainframe’s idea was deceptively simple: show, don’t tell. Let players see what Pax Dei is like by letting them jump straight in—ideally with a friend who’s already playing.

That’s where the Discord Social SDK, Discord Activities platform, and NVIDIA’s GDN (Graphics Delivery Network) came in. In theory, these tools offered the ingredients for something seamless. In practice, they had never been combined before.

Our job? Stitch them together into a playable experience that felt like magic.

This was not about launching a public feature. It was about building a behind-the-scenes prototype – one that shows what’s technically possible when barriers like downloads and hardware disappear.

Here’s how it worked:

• A current player sends a game invite through Discord.
• Their friend receives an Activity – Discord’s way of embedding interactive content.
• Clicking the invite opens a live session of Pax Dei, streamed from NVIDIA’s servers.
• The guest player appears beside their friend in-game, ready to explore.
• No client to install. No account creation required. Just pick a character and step into the world.

We customized every part of the experience to reflect Pax Dei’s vision: simplified onboarding, auto-equipped gear, and a smooth 60 FPS stream – all within Discord’s interface.

The development process required a deep dive into both platforms' software development kits (SDKs), as there were no existing implementation models to follow. We analyzed how these technologies functioned independently and then developed methods to make them work together effectively, all within a relatively compressed timeline. This included building a custom user interface to ensure the experience aligned precisely with Mainframe's vision for player onboarding.

This ground-breaking prototype was premiered at the Game Developers Conference '25 in San Francisco. You can watch the recording of the full session here: Discord for game devs – Build where the world plays.

A Discord integration like this is a big deal for how games, particularly resource-intensive MMOs like Pax Dei, can be discovered and experienced. By removing traditional barriers like download times, hardware requirements, and upfront costs, Pax Dei could reach players who might otherwise never have tried the game. This free-to-try approach eliminates the significant friction of asking potential players to spend their money on a game they're uncertain about.

What we built is a prototype. But the impact points toward something bigger:

• Lowering the cost and commitment for new players
• Supporting social-first game mechanics by making it easier to bring friends along
• Removing the “will my hardware run it?” anxiety
• Showing what’s possible when cloud gaming and communications platforms converge

For Pax Dei, this aligns perfectly with the game’s community-driven ethos. For the wider industry, it opens the door to a new kind of acquisition funnel – one based not on downloads, but on direct experience.

As gaming moves toward a future where experiences are delivered as services rather than products, this collaboration between Reaktor and Mainframe – together with their partners Discord and NVIDIA – offers a glimpse of what's possible when technical barriers are removed, and community comes first. Mainframe is exploring the possibility of turning this prototype into a feature available to all Pax Dei players in the future.