Skype’s Group Video Calls Now Free for Everyone

Skype’s group video call feature is now free for all users.

The company introduced group video calls in 2010, supporting group video chats for up to 10 users at once. The feature was free for a few months during a public beta, but became a paid feature in early 2011.

Skype outlined the new change on its blog, writing (emphasis ours):

For the last few years, we’ve offered group video calling to Premium users on Windows desktop and Mac and more recently Xbox One. Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re making group video calling free – for all users on these platforms. And, in the future, we’ll be enabling group video calling for all our users across more platforms – at no cost.

By other platforms, we assume Skype is referring to mobile, where group video calls are currently unsupported.

When Skype introduced group video calls in 2010, it was the only consumer-focused service that could offer that kind of feature at scale. That changed, however, with the launch of Google+ andGoogle Hangouts in the summer of 2011.

Google Hangouts may have been arguably less reliable than Skype (especially in the beginning), but its offering was free. Moreover, Google brought group video chats to its mobile apps and added other advanced features. Last year, Google started integrating all of its VoIP, text, video and chat features into the Hangouts umbrella — making the product even better.

Meanwhile, video chat on mobile has exploded — with FaceTime, ooVoo, Tango, Line, Viber, Qik and many others actively competing in the space.

Making group video chats free is an indicator that Skype understands that it is at risk of losing (or has already lost) its status of being the de facto voice/video service. Now, the big question is: Will free video group calls be enough to entice users back to Skype?

To get the free video group calling features, update Skype for Windows or Mac. Xbox One users still need to be Xbox Gold subscribers to access Skype.

Source: Mashable