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Discord announce a 90/10 revenue split, Discord Store will support Linux

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You will be forgiven for not paying much attention to the Discord Store, since it doesn't currently support Linux. It seems that is going to change and they've announce a pretty small cut compared to the competition.

Firstly, today the Discord team announced in a new blog post that starting in 2019 they will only take a 10% cut from developers. Considering Valve still take 30% unless you earn a lot of money and even the Epic Store will take 12% that might help quite a bit. Not only that, Discord do have a pretty large pull considering they're already the go-to application for a lot of people to chat, even game developers and publishers have moved over in large numbers to have their community on Discord. I wouldn't underestimate them if they keep pushing it.

Sadly though, the Discord Store currently only supports Windows but that will change. According to one of their team on Reddit, who said this:

Good news! Everything we built for the store actually works great on macOS and Linux. A lot of our devs use those platforms internally. We just wanted to focus on releasing Windows first to make sure everything works, and to be honest thats where most of our users are. We will definitely bring things to all platforms!

Usually, when replying to questions about other platforms you get some kind of vague response but that's pretty darn clear. As always though, we will believe it when we see it. Words are nice, actions are better. We will be keeping an eye on it though for sure.

Considering their chat client already works rather nicely on Linux, the Discord Store could be one to watch as well. While they don't technically do fully exclusive games, they do have timed exclusives and so eventually we may get in on the action for those too.

Ps. Use Discord? Come join our very own server.

Hat tip to Jens.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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43 comments
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eldaking Dec 15, 2018
Quoting: mylka
Quoting: eldakingThat is great (much better than Epic). Particularly good to hear that they already have working versions and that they use Linux. Makes up for the delayed release and no word so far. Now we just wait until it actually happens, because by now we are already too used to promises without results (GOG, cough cough).

doesnt Tencent own discord?
they also own 40% of epic

discord = epic ??????

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_Games

so maybe epic comes for linux, as they said they will support a free OS

Well, that's capitalism for you. Even when you have "competition" (still an oligopoly even if they manage to get a good share of the market) it ends up that the same people own everything. And due to network effects and other barriers, there is no chance to get a competitor who isn't already a giant monopolistic corporation that will use exclusives or screw its users as needed.

But in this case, "owning" doesn't mean they control both stores. They will get a share of the revenue regardless of where you buy a game, and they might even influence some policies on occasion, but it isn't like they are setting up two competing stores or they are coordinating both stores for their interests.
einherjar Dec 15, 2018
"Blitzkrieg" by Tencent/China?

Seems they want become the Nr. Player in Gaming-Shops.

I am not sure if that is a good development. There where other industries, that where killed by the Chinese. The Photovoltaik-Industrie in Germany e.g. is down. The chinese manufacturers sold their panels for less then the production-costs until the other companys gave up AFAIK.

Perhaps we see a similar strategy here. Don't earn money with the 10% cut? Doesn't matter. If you are backed by the Chinese government, this is no problem....
seven Dec 15, 2018
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: seveni hate discord, i really do.
each time i try too login or if someone invites me i get the message that my email account is already claimed (which is true, i already have discord accounts, but why can't they just put those accounts together somehow)
Not entirely sure what your complaint is about Discord here? You made multiple accounts, then complain they can't put them together? Sounds like it's more an issue with how you use it, if I understood what you said correctly.

i cant remember the login to my previous accounts so when i click a link like yours ican't join because my email is already used for one of the previous accounts
there is just no way for me too log in or participate on any discord server

if i am doing something wrong or overlooked something please let me know


Last edited by seven on 15 December 2018 at 3:21 pm UTC
Liam Dawe Dec 15, 2018
Quoting: seven
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: seveni hate discord, i really do.
each time i try too login or if someone invites me i get the message that my email account is already claimed (which is true, i already have discord accounts, but why can't they just put those accounts together somehow)
Not entirely sure what your complaint is about Discord here? You made multiple accounts, then complain they can't put them together? Sounds like it's more an issue with how you use it, if I understood what you said correctly.

i cant remember the login to my previous accounts so when i click a link like yours ican't join because my email is already used for one of the previous accounts
there is just no way for me too log in or participate on any discord server

if i am doing something wrong or overlooked something please let me know
I think this is what you want.
F.Ultra Dec 16, 2018
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Quoting: AppelsinSteam need to get off their behinds, clean up their store for asset flip bloat and crap

My guess is that all those asset flip bloat and crap will be among the first to switch over to these new stores considering that the lower cut is so much more important to these people. And if the refund policy will not match that of steam:s (or even exist at all) then they should love it even more there.
Salvatos Dec 16, 2018
Well, that's assuming Epic and Discord are letting anything get onto their stores and not vetting games. Is that known at this point?
Appelsin Dec 16, 2018
Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: AppelsinSteam need to get off their behinds, clean up their store for asset flip bloat and crap

My guess is that all those asset flip bloat and crap will be among the first to switch over to these new stores considering that the lower cut is so much more important to these people. And if the refund policy will not match that of steam:s (or even exist at all) then they should love it even more there.

That is of course a very real possibility. No refund, no reivews, a fresh start so to speak. It'll be interesting to see if they (Discord and Epic) have learned more from Greenlight than Steam (or Nintendo! seems to. GOG have largely kept out of this race top the bottom.

After checking, it seems they have refunds. Same as Steam (14 days, 2 hours played), but not covering DLC apparently.

Quoting: SalvatosWell, that's assuming Epic and Discord are letting anything get onto their stores and not vetting games. Is that known at this point?

Unsure, but I found the following on their page:
QuoteHere you’ll see a curated list of games for your buying pleasure! Our store has a hands-on personal approach to give you the best information about each game. Each game has a video preview on hover and a custom description so you know what the game is about so you can browse easily.

Hard to say if it's just the list you see that's "curated", or the entire library. I would assume thought that common sense dictates that if you're just starting up a store, you wouldn't want it to run over with crap from day one, so I would assume there's at least some level of vetting going on. But hey, common sense isn't everyone's cup of tea :)
Purple Library Guy Dec 16, 2018
Quoting: Samsai
Quoting: kuhpunktNowhere did I say that Valve couldn't afford taking a smaller cut or anything - but there's got to be a line that's fair to all parties: Valve, the game developers and the customers. No one is independent of each other here.
Alright, why is 10% below that line? You yourself called it a downward spiral implying that the line is being crossed. Also, I would like you to explain why you think these services would operate at a loss even if there is absolutely no way for them to maintain that kind of a margin. I mean, it might work in the short term to draw people in but then there would be backlash when the cuts go up, so to me that move would make little sense.

Quoting: kuhpunktAs I said: there's a line. Capitalism isn't the best thing in the world, because it will eventually hit you, too.
Quoteand this race to the bottom is just capitalism working for a change?

This is drifting far off topic, but I'd like to briefly discuss a now little-known group called the "railway economists" who explained why such services might operate at a loss.
Spoiler, click me
Back in what's often called the "gilded age", late 19th century US, they had an economic problem which had caused a few depressions--bigger than normal recessions, smaller than the "great" depression that happened later. And they were trying to figure out why it was happening, and they concluded that the problem was, ironically, competition. In modern times we normally think of competition as something that, if it's really happening, is the condition that makes markets and capitalism work properly and everything will be hunky dory, and the problem is that it so often isn't really happening. Neoclassical economics says that would be the case if a bunch of assumptions held in real life which actually don't, and most modern economists sort of say that economies sorta probably should be treated as if efficient markets were real.
But the railway economists found a significant problem with how markets for many things worked under price competition. It was a problem that emerged once you started dealing with time, something which basic neoclassical math treats as if it didn't exist. Also, debt. Here's how it works, as I recall it. Say you have two cities, and 10,000 people per month want to travel between them by rail. And say it costs 20 million bucks (in 19th century dollars that are worth something) to build a railway between them and buy the trains and stuff. And say you borrow that money at 6% interest (or alternatively, you have that money, but you eschew investing at 6% interest where you could have and spend it on this stuff instead). So every month you're paying out 6/12= .5% on 20 million dollars, or 100,000 dollars a month. Now if you actually start running that railway, you will also be spending money on coal and engineers and ticket-selling staff and maintenance--operating costs; say it's another 100,000 a month. But you're on the hook for the debt, the "sunk costs", even if you never start running the railway.
Right. Now imagine we have two railways servicing those cities in competition. They each have 5,000 of the customers, and they break even at $40 each, giving them $200,000 a month which just pays off their costs. Both of them would clearly prefer to have all the customers. If one could have all the customers at $35 each, it would be making $350,000 a month, and clearing a profit of $150,000 instead of just treading water. So at some point, if they're genuinely competing, someone's gonna make a move--they'll drop their price to attract more of the customers. But you can already see the problem--if the other one doesn't match it, they'll lose their customers and be losing money. So they'll drop their price, too. Now the new equilibrium has both losing money. Neither can increase their price, lest they lose their customers. They may continue the price war in an attempt to get out of the situation.
But the weird thing is, although they're losing money, they can't just quit. See, they're losing money--but they're still losing less than if they stopped running the railway; they're making more than their operating costs. They can't stop operating, but they can't pay off their sunk costs--they're stuck! The railway economists predicted that in cases of competition where the total available revenue was basically fixed, and sunk costs were significant, price competition would inevitably lead to all the competitors charging prices that left them barely making an operating profit but unable to service the debt for their sunk costs, with losses mounting until some of the competitors went bankrupt. In modern times, probably the most prominent example of this sort of thing is what's happened with airlines, which keep competing on price, going bankrupt, and consolidating into bigger and bigger airlines.
Back in the day, certain tycoons basically "solved" the problem by ending price competition, through monopolies and trusts. This had its own problems which became intolerable during the Great Depression, when governments got serious, for a while, about antitrust laws.
So there you go. Capitalism and market competition can have serious problems even if competition is working as it's supposed to.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 16 December 2018 at 5:39 am UTC
Nanobang Dec 16, 2018
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I only use Discord because it's been more reliable than Steam's voice chat. But that's it. I'm no more likely to buy games from Discord than I am to rent DVDs from the nearby petrol station.
Asu Dec 17, 2018
now that's something. Still valve has proton and that's a yuge thing.
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