A new challenger has appeared and they’re hungry
You though Epic Games was trying to place their storefront as the hero for indies and struggling developers in the PC gaming scene? Well, Discord just said hold my beer, as they just announced they were getting into the action as well. While we already knew about Discord’s gaming storefront, which was all the talk before Epic launched theirs. Guessing Discord didn’t like that.
Now Discord is getting into allow publishers to self-publish their games on the store. And get this, they’re offering a 90/10 revenue split. Which looks to be a direct shot across the bow of Epic games storefront with their 88/12 split and Steams 70/30, 80/20 split. Not to mention very enticing for indie devs looking to get their game out there.
We think developers should be able to focus on building great games and communities.
In 2019, the Discord store will allow all developers to self-publish games with a 90/10 revenue split so they can.
Read: https://t.co/MFJTbVZrf3 pic.twitter.com/V9HckJaSHQ
— Discord (@discord) December 14, 2018
They go on to explain that it’s time for developers to get their fair share, which I totally agree with. To this extent, they’re offering a better return investment than even Epic Games is. Along with doing this, they stand to be in a better place with Epic at the same time. Not only are they offering a better revenue split, but they also run the most popular voice and video communication applications that gamers use. On top of their small but growing library of games, I feel this could help put them over the top in those who pose a series threat to Steam. What’s more, they aren’t curating the developers, it’s open to everyone. Unlike Epic Games who still hasn’t specified how they determine who makes the cut to be added to their store.
So, we asked ourselves a few more questions. Why does it cost 30% to distribute games? Is this the only reason developers are building their own stores and launchers to distribute games?
Turns out, it does not cost 30% to distribute games in 2018. After doing some research, we discovered that we can build amazing developer tools, run them, and give developers the majority of the revenue share.
So, starting in 2019, we are going to extend access to the Discord store and our extremely efficient game patcher by releasing a self-serve game publishing platform. No matter what size, from AAA to single person teams, developers will be able to self publish on the Discord store with 90% revenue share going to the developer. The remaining 10% covers our operating costs, and we’ll explore lowering it by optimizing our tech and making things more efficient.
So going into 2019, we have not one but two storefronts that are gunning for Steam. One of which has a huge amount of momentum and can pose more of a threat that Valve probably thinks. One thing is clear, the storefront wars just got a bit more interesting.
My only concern with this is will they utilize the same approach that Epic Games is using. Yes, I’m referring to offering money in order to get exclusives that were already slated to arrive on another storefront. While Epic Games is already under fire for using this tactic, Discord is no stranger to this. They recently poached several titles that were set to arrive on Steam first and released them under their “First on Discord” label. I suppose we’ll have to see, but I’m hoping the answer to that is no.
The full read can be seen here.
