Does gamedev have an IRC channel? I saw the Discord chat thing but honestly if I have to sign up for some other login/account then I am not going to do it.....

generally you have to register a permanent nick for irc, so i don't see much difference for discord. as it is discord is essentially the official chat channel. I do believe that their is a #gamedev on freenode that's still active, but last time i went their only a handful of actual site members i recognized.

The discord server is fairly active at all times, so drop by if you change your mind.

You don't have to create an account to use Discord, but if you do create an account then it will remember a list of all the Discord chat rooms that you've joined and automatically open them when you visit their site / open their app.

Discord provides some capabilities we never had with IRC. As a longtime IRC user I too was reluctant at first and wanted to move our chat back to IRC - GameDev.net was essentially founded in an IRC chat room - but.. Discord has its benefits.

Also we validate your account with the GameDev.net user database to verify who you say you are, so while it's a Discord account we're at least confirming its you with respect to GameDev.net.