Matrix is a set of free, open-source and open network standards dedicated to secure, decentralized, real-time encrypted communications. It is published and maintained by the Matrix.org Foundation, which is a non-profit organization, and dedicated to creating an open, independent and evolving communication platform. In 2019, Matrix was out of beta, and its protocol is fully suitable for production usage.

There are already countless chatting software (such as WhatsApp, Skype, Discord, Facebook Messenger), but almost all of them are non-free software based on central servers, and their security and privacy are not guaranteed (any chat history of you will be sold to various companies). Many of them claim to encrypt communication content, even with end-to-end encryption, but when a platform is proprietary, there is simply no way for others to verify that it is as secure and private as it promises to be. Of course, there are some really safe and reliable ones, but they are frequently blocked by governments of various countries and cannot continue (such as Signal, Telegram).

One of the most common problems when playing popular online games is live chatting over the Internet. Some live chatting services require players to share multiple IP addresses to make calls, while others (such as Skype or TeamSpeak, TeamTalk) take up a lot of system resources. That led to the birth of Discord, a more user-friendly chat software based on modern technology.

TeamSpeak is a very excellent free and cross-platform professional team VoIP (Voice over Internet Phone) communication application specially designed for online gamers around the world. It was developed by TeamSpeak Systems from Germany in 1999, and has become one of the most popular and renowned voice communication platforms for online games in the world.

Zello is a free (for personal use), small, easy-to-use, and very fast push-to-talk (instant voice chat) app for communications between smartphones, tablets, and PCs on Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Windows platforms.