Sega has invited chaos upon itself by launching an official Sonic the Hedgehog Discord channel. Unsurprisingly, it’s proven immediately popular, and strictly locked down. There is no fan art channel as of writing.

The announcement, made on official Sega social media accounts, reads as follows: “Looking for a place to chill and chat all things Sonic the Hedgehog? Maybe find people to race in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds? We are excited to welcome you to the official Sonic Discord server!”

This post, made on X late last night, invited hordes of Sonic fans into the hub all at once, where there are various channels for discussion of Sonic games, movies, and comics. There’s even an off-topic channel, which seems potentially unwise, and when Eurogamer explored the Discord server today, strict moderation features were in place.

For example, the server is currently on slow mode, meaning the quantity of posts made in each channel has been drastically reduced. There are also chat limitations in place, preventing newcomers to the server from posting at all unless they use a Discord Nitro boost (a paid service). A plea to “keep it family friendly” is present on the rules page as well.

The moderators posted a launch day Q&A, establishing some additional ground rules for the influx of Sonic fans. It claims over 50,000 people hopped into the server within around six hours, and made it clear a fan-art channel would eventually be coming down the line. It also confirms that posting images has been disabled by default, and an “aggressive” auto filter is removing messages written in all-caps.

Even with these strict rules and harsh moderation practice, cheeky messages have found a way to be sprinkled throughout the chat channels.

However, for the most part, the current state of the Discord server is stable. For the most part, people are spamming the same Discord sticker showing the Sonic mascot running towards the screen. Which, relative to other gifs that could be posted, is harmless fun.

Hopefully, this will be a home for discussion on upcoming Sonic games. Sega was recently hiring for key roles across a variety of teams, indicating Sega could be working on fresh Sonic games, though nothing has been announced as of writing. Sonic Racing: Crossworlds was the latest release and has proved fairly successful, speeding past 1m sales in short order.

How long the Sonic discord will exist, and how long the moderators will last, remains the two big questions. Eurogamer wishes these moderators all the best in the coming weeks.