Discord Chat Bridge
Mirror in-game chat into a Discord channel and send that channel's messages back into the game. Setup, what each game can do, and the limits.
What it does
The chat bridge connects one Discord channel to one server's in-game chat, in both directions. What players say in game appears in the channel; what people type in the channel appears in game.
It works on 7 Days to Die, all five Minecraft server types, Palworld and Valheim. It is part of the same connection the economy uses, but you can run it without ever setting up a shop.
It needs the GameGrid Discord bot in your Discord server. There is no panel screen for reading or sending chat on 7 Days to Die or Minecraft; Palworld and Valheim have a read-only Chat tab on their Game Tools page.
Setting it up
Run /chat-link #channel in your Discord server, with Full Access. That is the whole setup.
The command checks before it promises anything. If the game has no chat the platform can read, it refuses outright. If your API key cannot read chat it says so and tells you to make a new key with the economy:read and economy:write scopes and re-run /setup. If the server is simply not answering, it saves the link and warns you that nothing will appear until it does.
The check it runs is a read, so it only proves
economy:read. A key that haseconomy:readbut noteconomy:writelinks successfully and then cannot speak into the game. If messages flow one way only, check that scope before anything else.
One link per Discord server. Running /chat-link again replaces whatever was linked before, whichever channel and server that was. /chat-unlink removes it.
The Discord-to-game direction also depends on the Message Content intent, which Discord grants to the GameGrid bot as a whole rather than per server — so it is not something you configure, and your channel permissions do not affect it. If in-game chat reaches Discord but your messages never reach the game and your key does carry economy:write, raise that direction with support: the game-to-Discord half working tells you the link itself is fine.
What it looks like
A message from the game arrives in Discord as the player's name in bold followed by what they said.
A message from Discord arrives in game prefixed [Discord] and the sender's Discord username — for example, [Discord] alice: anyone near the trader?. That prefix is not decoration: it is how the platform recognises its own messages and stops a game that echoes chat back from looping the same line round forever.
The bot polls for new in-game messages every five seconds, so expect up to a five-second delay in that direction. Discord to game is immediate.
A poll carries at most ten messages into the channel. If more than ten were said in those five seconds, the newest ten are posted and one further line says how many were skipped — those are not delivered later. On a very busy server the channel is a sample of chat rather than a complete transcript.
Where each game's chat comes from
Each game gives up its chat differently, which is why what you have to set up differs too.
| Game | Chat is read from | What it needs | Messages from Discord arrive as |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Days to Die | The server's Telnet console, connected on demand | Telnet enabled in Settings | The game's say command |
| Minecraft (all five types) | The server log, the only place Minecraft chat exists | Nothing installed, no restart — the server just has to have been started once | say |
| Palworld | The server logs, where PalDefender writes chat | UE4SS and PalDefender installed, and a restart | A server announcement, through Palworld's own announce API |
| Valheim | The GameGrid Bridge plugin, which sees chat inside the server process | Nothing — the plugin installs itself on every server start | A shout every player sees, from the server rather than from a player |
The same chat feed is what the platform watches for !link codes, so a chat bridge that works is a good sign that account linking will too — and one that does not is the first thing to fix when linking fails.
Valheim: chat needs somebody to talk to
Valheim does not broadcast chat. It sends each message to the other players on the server, so with one player online nothing is transmitted at all and the bridge has nothing to forward.
The Capture Chat With One Player Online setting, in Settings under the Game Tools category and on by default, fixes this by adding one entry called "GameGrid (chat relay)" to the in-game player list, so a lone player's message has a recipient. It holds no position, is never drawn on any map, and steps aside as soon as a second player connects.
Changing it takes effect from the next restart of the server.
If you turn it off, accept that chat capture and in-game linking then need two players online.
Limits worth knowing
Colours and formatting are not carried in either direction. Discord markdown is not converted to in-game formatting, and in-game colour codes do not survive the trip. A player cannot format the line with their name either, and nothing typed in game can ping your Discord — an @everyone said in chat arrives as plain text.
The platform keeps only a short buffer of recent in-game chat. If the bridge is down for a long time, the messages from that period are gone rather than delivered late.
Messages from Discord are cleaned before they are sent — control characters removed and length capped — so a long Discord message can arrive shortened. This is a safety measure: on a game where chat is delivered as a console command, a raw newline could otherwise end that command and start a new one on your server. How much shortening you see depends on the game.
Only real player chat is forwarded. System lines and server messages are filtered out.
The bridge posts what your Discord members type into public game chat. Treat the linked channel as public.
If you have Discord activity rewards switched on for your economy, the linked channel is the only channel they count in. That is deliberate — the bot reads no other channel — and it makes the reward "coins for talking in the server's channel" rather than "coins for talking anywhere". The amount, the daily cap and the cooldown are set on the panel's Economy page.
The webhook alternative
There is a second way to get in-game chat into Discord that does not use the GameGrid bot at all: the platform can post to a Discord webhook itself. It is configured through the Customer API, not from the panel:
GET /servers/<id>/economy/chat/bridge
PUT /servers/<id>/economy/chat/bridgeBoth need the economy:admin scope.
It is one-way — game to Discord — and it exists for communities that do not want to invite another bot.
Do not point both at the same channel. The webhook bridge and
/chat-linkare alternatives, and running both posts every message twice.
The webhook URL is write-only: reading the setting back tells you whether one is configured, never what it is.
When the channel stays empty
Is the server running, and is anybody actually talking? An empty channel on an empty server is correct.
Run /chat-link again on the same channel. It re-checks the server and tells you what it found — that answer alone usually names the problem.
Check what your game needs, from the table above: PalDefender installed and a restart since, for Palworld; Telnet enabled in Settings, for 7 Days to Die; at least one start, for Minecraft and Valheim.
Valheim with one player online: see the section above.
If the channel was deleted or the bot lost permission to post in it, the bridge backs off for five minutes and then tries again. Restoring the permission is enough on its own; re-running /chat-link just makes it resume immediately.
If the game has no chat the platform can read at all, /chat-link refuses instead of linking. That is the answer, not a fault.