Fix: Discord Rich Presence Not Updating After Launch

Your game updates Rich Presence on level change. The first level’s presence shows correctly; subsequent levels never update Discord, even though your code calls UpdateActivity each time. The updates are being silently rate-limited.

The 15-Second Rate Limit

Discord caps Rich Presence updates per client to one every 15 seconds. Calls within the window are silently dropped — no error returned. Without throttling on your side, rapid presence changes mostly disappear.

The Fix: Coalesce Updates

float _lastUpdateTime = -100;
DiscordActivity _pendingActivity;
bool _hasPending = false;

void SetActivity(DiscordActivity act) {
    _pendingActivity = act;
    _hasPending = true;
}

void Tick(float dt) {
    core->RunCallbacks();
    if (_hasPending && (currentTime - _lastUpdateTime) >= 15.0f) {
        core->ActivityManager().UpdateActivity(_pendingActivity, [](auto result) {});
        _lastUpdateTime = currentTime;
        _hasPending = false;
    }
}

The latest pending activity is sent at most once every 15 seconds. Rapid state changes coalesce; the most recent one wins.

RunCallbacks Per Frame

RunCallbacks drives the Discord SDK’s internal event loop. Without it, callbacks queue but never fire. Call it from your game’s main loop:

void Game::Tick() {
    DiscordClient::Instance()->Tick(dt);
    // rest of game tick
}

Discord Not Running

If Discord isn’t running when the game starts, Core::Create returns NULL. Handle gracefully:

if (Core::Create(CLIENT_ID, DiscordCreateFlags_NoRequireDiscord, &core) != DiscordResult_Ok) {
    UE_LOG(LogTemp, Warning, TEXT("Discord not running, Rich Presence disabled"));
    core = nullptr;
}

The NoRequireDiscord flag prevents Discord from auto-launching. Your game continues without presence; if the player launches Discord later, retry init periodically.

Verifying

Open Discord. Launch your game. Verify status shows your initial presence. Change levels every 5 seconds; presence should update roughly every 15 seconds with the latest level info. Discord’s Activity log (in your profile) shows the most recent updates.

“Discord rate-limits; coalesce updates. RunCallbacks every frame or callbacks never fire. Handle Discord-not-running gracefully.”

Rich Presence is best when it reflects meaningful state changes — not every UI tweak. 15-second cadence matches that intent naturally.