How Does Discord Make Money?🤔 This one is the most common question that came in the mind of every discord user as this platform is providing free services.
Don’t Worry!
We got you covered in this guide. Let’s get started. 📗
There is nothing on this planet that can irritate a gamer more than the disturbance caused during communicating and chatting with playmates. TeamSpeak and Skype are the two most efficient and useful communication applications.
However, the problem with these applications is there are low-quality group chat features, security problems, resource-intensive operations, and compromised call quality.
These are problems that cannot be tolerated by avid gamers or gaming enthusiasts who seem to be very particular about their gaming experience.
Jason Citron, the Chief Executive Officer of Discord, along with the CTO, Stanislav Vishnevskiy, identified these problems with those hearts and eyes that have a passion for different games. What came after this was history. They introduced Discord! 🐱🐉
There are more than 2.2 billion gamers across the world, generating a massive 108.9 billion as game revenues. Game revenues keep increasing every year, with more and more gamers joining the league.
What would be a better game-based business prototypal than the one that connects all the gamers without causing any disruptions in service? 🤔 There is nothing better than having a model that does not just connect the gamers but also allows them to have voice communications while playing.
The platform even helps them in making communities and interacting with their friends, even when they are not playing. All these tasks are very well-served by the one and the only Discord. It is a freeware software specifically designed by gamers and for gamers.
Discord: What is It?
Established in 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, in the USA, Discord was initially introduced in the form of an all-in-one, comprehensive and interactive text and voice platform featuring lag-free and top-quality voice chat functionalities.
It is a secure, high-level, and free messaging gaming application that works fat better in comparison to other similar applications like TeamSpeak and Skype.
One of the most interesting features of this app is it offers free solutions to users and that too, without dealing with unwanted and frustrating advertisements and promotions.
This video chat app has been designed to make it easier for gamers across the world to have a mind-blowing gaming experience without any disruptions.
The application has its focus on hassle-free text and voice chat experience while playing games and even building communities outside the gaming environment.
Using Discord means you are participating in specifically themed servers that can easily be created by almost any individual logged in on the app. Even other individuals can join the same servers provided they have the participation or invite link.
Server administrators can host voice and text channels that can be used by all the members for discussing varied titles and topics.
Even though the target market of this application is mainly avid gamers, Discord is simultaneously used by several other art and interest groups starting from spirituality and art to entrepreneurship and music as well.
Discord- The Ultimate Gaming Program
When you hear Discord, the idea of an exclusive gaming application should come to your mind. It is the business model of this program that has further made it exclusive.
It is not just a simple gaming application. It is something more than that. It is more of an online gamer’s space that goes the extra mile in bringing avid gamers the ease of gaming and new fun altogether. Many might be intrigued about the ease, and the fun Discord brings.
So, for them, the explanation would be: Discord gives gamers the ease of connecting with the other players through voice and text chats, and that too in real-time.
Hence, it can be described as a fun-filled game box that comes with an added voice and text assistance for improved communication and thus improved experience altogether.
Thus, it is taken more as a socializing space specifically meant for gaming enthusiasts. This will be the place where you will not just find yourself but even new and equally passionate gaming partners as well. The best of everything- it comes free of cost.
Now, there’s another thing you might find hard to believe. Discord is house to more than 14 million regular players. The platform boasts of around 250+ million current players with endless communication facilities.
It also puts forward that approximately 315 million messages are delivered through Discord regularly. Can you believe this?
Well, you will have to believe this because the platform has officially stated this. Boasting a user base of more than 200 million, Discord is one of the most successful programs available at present. You will not regret being a gamer if you play your games using this application.
Discord App Features
315 million messages were delivered regularly; 250+ million active users and 14 million regular users, all these statistics depict the original picture of the popularity and the success of Discord. This proprietary, VoIP or Voice-over-internet-protocol, makes use of the freemium business model.
All basic services remain free for all users, and the premium features are accessible by paying some extra charges. Discord has a plan of ruling over the voice chat market, which is worth $1.7 billion.
As of now, the platform does not have any plans to charge money for its basic features. Its main focus is on providing hassle-free communication services to every gaming enthusiast. Apart from this, the company also has its focus on integrating voice chat solutions in the industry for gaming.
Discord offers a free device called Game Bridge that helps developers in integrating the application in all their games. Various other features such as Streamkit and Rick Presence are available for free. We will have a detailed idea of these features below.
Operating among avid gamers offers the app a huge benefit. The benefit is it capitalizes on the network effect with its value increasing with more and more users joining the platform.
The current value of the company is approximately $700 million, and recent investments are around $20 million.
The basic Discord features available for free are as follows:-
- Users can easily connect with their friends by using Discord’s voice chat solutions.
- Users even get the flexibility of adding as many friends in their Friends List as they want.
- They can run the application on both phone and desktop just like they use WhatsApp or Facebook on their smartphones. They can customize their notifications for messages and updates.
- Discord requires low latency and negligible CPU usage.
- Almost any individual can easily create a Discord account.
- The platform offers great privacy. Users do not need to disclose their identities to the other players. They have the option of keeping themselves anonymous.
- Users also get the feature of adding bots to their Discord servers if they are looking to boost the functionality of the app. Several cool bots can be availed on servers built by varied developers.
- Discord’s client-server communication encryption feature offers complete protection and security against all kinds of DDoS attacks. The feature also helps in keeping IP addresses safe.
The Rich Presence feature of the platform was launched in November 2017. It enables the easy integration of users and games of Discord. This feature can be used by the players for seeing the screens of their friends and for sharing games.
Gamers can also use this feature for sending party invites to playmates; for launching games in parties and for simply watching and spectating during competitions and matches.
Discord’s Stream Kit feature was launched in April 2016 for steamers. It comes loaded with all the integrations and tools that can easily be added to a Discord server for powering the stream. Users get the flexibility of adding applications like Twitch, Nightbot, Twinge, Muxy, and YouTube.
Other exclusive features of the platform include multiple channels, in-game overlay, modern text chats, custom hotkeys, smart push notifications, and direct messaging.
How does Discord Make Money? 🤔
Since Discord is free of cost, it is quite likely to wonder where the platform gets its revenues from. A few minor expenditures associated with Discord include:
- Storing a large number of messages, approximately in billions.
- Handling more than 5, 000, 000 users simultaneously.
- Staff consists of 40 professionals, including executives, developers, and designers.
To a large number of individuals, this might not be a big surprise. Many successful companies have already used Discord, including Facebook. It is just about getting the central location where every company wants to be and then making profits later.
The program has made more than $50 million through big Venture Capitalists and even from having Discord Nitro which is a $5 per month service available for extra features.
The revenue model of this platform is to work in progress even after several years of its inception in the market. The agency is completely against promotions and advertisements. It also does not consider it to be ethical to sell its user’s data.
Developers working for the agency are of the view that advertisements can be highly intrusive, and selling the data of the users is like a beaching relation between both the parties involved.
Thus, the company has restricted itself from using such revenue-generating strategies. Discord entirely relies on the money it receives through funding. The company does not have any intention of charging users for the features they are using in the future.
Instead, the company is working on introducing better and more features. The company even makes money through the sale of company merchandise. Some useful sources of income for Discord are as follows:
1. Monthly Subscription Package called Nitro
The company recently came up with its monthly subscription package that costs $4.99. It is called Nitro, and it enables the subscribed gamers to avail themselves of add-ons such as higher quality screen sharing, animated avatars, animated and custom emojis, and enhanced upload limit.
One feature that makes Discord’s freemium business approach exclusive and completely different from the others is its marketing strategy.
The marketing strategy used by Discord for promoting the services it offers is unique. The agency does not levy any charges for using its basic features. It just requests its users to buy its monthly subscription package, which would support the platform.
2. Distribution Fees from Game Store
There is an all-new dashboard on Discord called “Games.” This dashboard is a space where users can get hold of news about upcoming games and also about the games their friends are currently playing.
The feature works superbly for players because previously, they would have to visit Reddit to get news about new games and also about the games played by their friends.
This has also worked as a great revenue generator for Discord. Since there are a large number of games promoted in this section, it brings it good revenues for the platform.
The games store came up in August 2018, and it allows the game developers to self-publish the games they have designed. If a certain game is sold, the developers earn 90% of the total revenue, while Discord gets 10% of the share.
The company charges 10% of the total revenue for game distribution, and this helps Discord in covering its operational expenditures. This 10:90 revenue distribution is a win-win situation for both Discord and the developers who are self-publishing their games on the platform.
3. Earnings from Merchandise Store
For the ones who might not be aware of this, Discord even has its very own merchandise outlet. And this store serves as a great source of income for the platform. The store offers a huge variety of branded hoodies, t-shirts, socks, and caps.
A major part of the income of Discord comes from the store as items available at the merchandise are in huge demand in the market.
Well, it is also worth noting that the company makes a major part of its income through effective promotional and marketing strategies. The agency motivates its customers to contribute to the ever-growing firm by buying its cosmetic products and merchandise.
4. Cosmetic Products
The company is also into selling different cosmetic products. These include sticker packs, sound packs, skins, and customer emojis.
The customers will not get any specific benefit as players by purchasing these products because they are only for vanity purposes and enhanced user experience.
5. Investments and Funds
The company receives great financial assistance through investments and funds coming in from larger organizations across the world. Discord uses these funds and money from investors for improving its platform and also for exponential international growth.
The company has been successful in raising around $280 million through funds, and its valuation is a humongous $2.05 billion.
How is Discord Looking to Generate Revenues in the Future?
As has already been pointed out earlier, Discord does not have any intentions of charging its users for using its messaging and voice chat services that are available for free at present.
With that being said, it is also true that the revenues of the company are very low, which would further exert a lot of pressure on the company’s operation.
It is good for the company to stand firmly with its decision to keep its basic features free of cost. But then, Discord must come up with a few methods that can help it in gaining profits and generating good revenues. Not to mention, Discord’s Nitro possesses the potential of providing some great sources of revenue in the times to come.
Regardless of how well a company tries to appeal to its users by offering them ad-free and free-of-cost services, it will have to make income for staying alive in the market.
The same goes for Discord as well. Though the revenue-generating models of the company at present are satisfactory, there are other things that the agency also needs to look at when it comes to generating more revenues.
Nitro is, of course, a great strategy for earning revenues but only in the initial stages. Discord does have other potential and useful revenue streams that it must use in the future. Discord’s future revenue-generating models include:
1. GameBridge
Introduced in the initial months of Discord’s release in the market, GameBridge was removed from its services shortly. However, it is expected that the feature would get back to working and bring in good revenues for Discord sometime soon.
It is also apprehended that GameBridge would be the same but would be available to the gamers in a completely different form altogether.
It offers users the ease of integrating the application in their games. It even helps in reducing the pressure of coding that the game developers need to go through regularly.
The advantages offered by GameBridge include easy-to-use audio settings and control; auto-match gamers in the voice networks; sharing videos; positional audio for enhancing the distribution of players; partner-like benefits for building up gamer communities and screenshots and GIFs.
Currently, the company is testing GameBridge with chosen game developers. Chances are it might release this feature in the form of a paid service or product sometime later.
2. Gaming Arenas and Stores
Discord’s Gaming Stores and Arenas sell a large number of games. These platforms also provide some of the most exclusive advantages to the Nitro subscribed players.
Discord can always look forward to augmenting its services on its Gaming arenas and stores for increasing its revenues. In other words, the company must look at selling more games by enabling the developers to go for subscriptions.
However, when it does so, it needs to ensure that only the best games, the sale of which brings in good profit, are sold in the stores. In the beginning, it might be a little difficult.
But once the stores and arenas gain popularity, Discord will make a good income from the sale of different games on such platforms.
3. Revenue Sharing
If Discord makes plans of entering into partnerships with different gaming providers and companies, it can help the platform in earning more revenues.
It must work at inviting more and more gamers to its platform. This can prove to be highly beneficial because when there are more gamers, they will play more games, and this will automatically bring in good revenues.
Even if the revenues are shared between Discord and the game developer, there would be a substantial amount left as revenue for the company.
Apart from this, Discord can gain huge income through proper and successful referrals. Proper referrals will be turning out more buyers for Discord’s items, games, and features.
Why Discord? 🤔
With its release in 2015, Discord came up as one of the major threats to TeamSpeak and Skype. These conventional chat programs are not available for free.
They are quite heavily charged and also come with the risk of attacks and hacks. Also, these platforms are not dedicated to avid gamers solely.
On the other hand, Discord is completely free of cost and can easily be used on any browser the users prefer. It is in no way heavy and is safer at the same time. Discord comes loaded with all the features gaming enthusiasts require for organizing voice chats while they are in the game.
Many people seem to be simply startled by the fame earned by Discord in a very short period. These individuals repeatedly enquire about using existing solutions like Skype and TeamSpeak. Of course, these solutions can be used, but the brief comparison provided above makes Discord a way better choice.
Final Notes
From its very inception, Discord has been working on appealing to gaming enthusiasts and giving them everything that they want.
Though the vision to make progress has always been a bit blurry for the company, Discord has always made the best efforts in serving its clients in a better way. It has grown at a very rapid pace and has the whole gaming community supporting its services at present.
So, it seems that very soon it might become mandatory for gamers to integrate their platforms with Discord. If they fail to do so, they might not have a very good gaming experience.
So, it can rightly be said that Discord is on its way to being powerful and unstoppable at the same time.
