
Discord now has a store - Redoubts
https://blog.discordapp.com/discord-store-global-beta-is-live-38bfd044d648
======
S-E-P
I'm, well not impressed. I don't get why so many people tout discord as this
god send of a service. The web client is Electron(basically chromium) for
crying out loud, it's full of bugs and many times I've lost entire
conversations due to irregularities with how it handles with a slow and
inconsistent connection (I live in the middle of the woods basically, but the
internet is still good enough to handle the most basic of tasks, and voice
most days).

I like it, but it's not reliable, the interface kind of sucks balls, search
function could be a little bit better and why does markdown not work on the
mobile application? Why don't we have threads like in Slack for more business
oriented stuffs?

Just know I'm saying all this as someone who uses Discord every day. I do like
it, but I'm not going to sit here singing it's praises when in reality, it
would be so much better if someone really took time to polish the damn thing.

Also, more to the point, the store sucks. It's annoying, it adds to the
clutter, go buy games off of GOG or Steam if you have to, I don't get why we
need to have another middleman, one that already harvests our data.

Side Note: I will say, Discord's keybindings are absolutely amazing, 10/10\.
Could not be happier, now if the rest of the app was like that, I wouldn't
care about the store.

~~~
markatkinson
I would rather there was more competition for Steam to be honest. Discord may
hit a spot where the functionality required of the app pushes it into a
territory where it becomes a resource hog and justifies a rewrite in C++ or
C#, but we don't really have insight into why they ran with Electron to begin
with. We should be considerate of that fact that not everyone can drum up a
team of C++ engineers to create a suave product in a hurry and at the right
price.

Basically my point is let's wait and see and give them the benefit of the
doubt. From my perspective its an incredible piece of software, front end and
back. It's stunning. We get 100% of the product for free, and those that pay
get 105%.

Also it is still quite young. With time some of your issues will likely be
ironed out, or it may turn into a mess.

I do agree with it feeling a bit cluttered now.

~~~
eksemplar
I don’t get the Electron hate, Visual Studio Code is probably the best IDE
I’ve ever used, and it runs much better than eclipse or even Visual Studio
ever did.

Saying this is a little unfair to Visual Studio, but it’s just so bad when
you’re in an enterprise setup where you don’t really have a local drive.
Visual Studio code on the other hand doesn’t care if your windows profile is
on one network drive and your code is on another. Which is a little ironic
because I think you’ll see code more in small setups and regular studio more
in enterprise.

Anyway, I think electron apps work fairly well. I don’t like discord, the
company, but discord itself works and feels a lot better than Skype, teams
peak or ventrilo.

~~~
pknopf
Visual Studio Code is a unicorn, an exception to rule.

We at least know that decent apps _can_ be built with it, but for some reason,
they aren't. There is a pit of failure somewhere. Maybe the JavaScript eco-
system? Sludge hammers for thumbtacks?

~~~
eksemplar
Is it a unicorn? Atom is the second best “IDE” I’ve used. :p

I also think slack and simple note work really well, and I already mentioned
Discord.

So I’m not really sure where it got it’s bad rep. Maybe because it’s
JavaScript and people hate that?

~~~
zaarn
Atom is quite the heavyweight compared to VSC, especially once you load in a
few plugins.

Atleast about a year back when I used it, Atom quickly filled up about 8GB of
RAM for a moderately sized project in Go plus all necessary plugins.

VSC is fast but no lightweight either and hogs some resources.

It's not inherently a problem with Javascript, usually it's some framework
like React being misused as usual inducing a lot of GC activity on top of
unnecessary memory bloat.

~~~
eksemplar
I work in the public sector, you wouldn’t believe how many terrible programs I
see each year. They are made in C++, C#, Swift, Java and so on, but you
wouldn’t find me blaming WPF because someone didn’t know how to use it. :p

There are a lot of great electron apps, that frankly don’t have non-electron
equals, so it obviously works. Yet it somehow always gets hit with these “well
c++ could have done it better”.

Maybe it’s true, but if the biggest problem with electron is people using a
framework wrong. Then what makes you think they’d do a better job in c++?

------
Kaveren
I think it's a good move. Discord is definitely making almost no money up to
the current point, and this move can help put it on the eventual road to
profitability. The cut of profit Discord takes is the same as Steam (30%).

The product itself is fantastic, and other than valid security and privacy
concerns, it's a lot better than any other chat application I've used in the
past.

Discord is actually quite nice for communities other than gaming. I'm a member
of a number of language learning and programming servers that I enjoy.

Skype looks more and more like a massive mistake after the Microsoft
acquisition. You have a product with an abysmal user experience, no
improvements, an awful group chat feature, unreliable voice calls, and so much
more that was wrong. I'd wager that they were over-confident of their dominant
position. Slack and Discord will hopefully completely replace it with time.

~~~
gsich
Just drop Slack altogether. Discords interface is so much nicer and faster, I
don't see what use Slack still has.

~~~
Kaveren
I avoid Slack entirely. My comment [1] on Reddit still stands for Slack's
advantages for business. I'm sure Discord is happy without the business
userbase, but I can't help feeling they could challenge Slack if they wanted
to.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/95wzu6/discord_is_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/95wzu6/discord_is_going_to_start_selling_games/e3xrrc5/?context=1)

~~~
gsich
It will probably happen, if not enough money is coming in from this. My
feeling is that Nitro is not enough currently. Maybe the shop will help.

------
DizzyDoo
My full-time job is indie game development, and I'm very pleased to see this.
I sell my games on Steam, the Apple Mac Store, Humble Bundle and Green Man
Gaming (and a few other places, but those are the big ones) but 90% of my
income comes from Steam. This is... understandably not the most stable feeling
thing, to have one distributor paying my bills. I'm looking forward to Steam
not having quite the hold on PC Games that it currently does! It's not that I
have any complaints about Steam specifically, but Discord selling games, the
rise of GOG and Itch, and Twitch getting in on it are all quite interesting to
me.

I hope Discord opens up to more developers soon.

Oh, and another thought, I run a Discord for people interested in the game I'm
currently developing. You can imagine the effectiveness of putting a Buy
button so close to an engaged community.

~~~
Endy
Do you produce games on actual printed disks? Have you reached out to smaller
gaming stores - both in your area and around the country? If you move away
from digital distribution, you might just find yourself feeling more stable.
And certainly, you'll be pulling away from Valve/Steam.

~~~
calgoo
Honest question: does anyone still buy games on physical media ? I have not
bought a game/movie or software with a physical copy in the last 10 years.

~~~
Reedx
I own most of the platforms and buy lots of games... but haven't bought any
physical copies in probably 5+ years either.

They're still in stores though and lots of people buy 'em yet. Especially on
consoles.

[https://www.techspot.com/news/75220-most-console-players-
pre...](https://www.techspot.com/news/75220-most-console-players-prefer-
buying-physical-games-over.html)

Digital is only recently starting to beat out physical, but changing fast now:
[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/for-console-games-
dow...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/11/for-console-games-downloads-
are-approaching-a-tipping-point/)

------
p1necone
Steam seemed unassailable by competition until now - is this the solution to
competing with platforms that have a monopoly from community lock in (Facebook
and Youtube being good examples)?

Build a tangentially related service, build up your own community and then
slowly pivot into their space once you've got your userbase.

Anecdotally everyone I know who uses Steam is also on Discord for chat now
because it works so well.

~~~
zaarn
The only downside is the total lack of Linux support despite Discord having a
Linux client. I'll def. stay on Steam until they support Linux as well as
Valve does.

I doubt continuing to be a game store on Windows will be profitable
indefinitely, considering Microsoft is trying to push their own store and
close down Windows gaming for themselves.

~~~
Starz0r
Love how people are claiming they are going to close down Windows for gaming
back in the GFWL days and it never happened.

Now we have the Microsoft Store, whille substantially better, Windows hasn't
even attempted to close down the system and yet again everyone is claiming
they will. They aren't, and they won't, the Microsoft Store still hasn't
urserped Azure or regular Windows keys in sales or profit. So why would any
company close off their system potentially losing more sales on Windows keys,
it just makes no sense.

Can we please stop touting this bullshit?

~~~
zaarn
No I won't.

Valve has been pushing for Linux support in case they need it as fallback
(see: Proton, Steam Machines, etc.)

Atleast at Valve there is a certain amount of fear this might happen.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It's certainly something they might do. It wouldn't be totally out of
character for MS. But there's no evidence that they're "trying to push their
own store and close down Windows gaming for themselves".

------
Daktest
As someone who is not a particularly big fan of Steam's platform, more
competition in this space is a good thing.

------
gsich
It would be awesome if Discord would stop their pseudo-funny-gaming-language
(not in this blogpost, but generally). Nobody talks like that.

~~~
dcow
Well, people do. They just need to introduce _server default themes_ or
something and boom...

~~~
gsich
They don't. Stuff like "This bad boy runs so much better now." and "For when
you can't even alt-tab fast enough to abandon ship." (taken from changelog).
This is just additional shit you need to parse with no additional information
received. Similar to Microsoft and their Windows Installer "We'll setup a few
things for you", which is equally stupid.

People™ usually include much more swear words and other non political correct
terms (or memes). When a company does that, it always feels forced.

~~~
syntheticcdo
Maybe it would seem forced for say, McDonalds, but it is on-brand
communication for Discord. They are all about "made by gamers for gamers"\--
maybe you use Discord in a different way than me, but there are multiple
servers in my list that are just straight memes.

~~~
gsich
It's not. Those lines are not "memey" in any way but straight cringeworthy.
Like memes for 12-year-olds.

"gamer" language is more like stuff you read on 4chan, where most memes
originate.

~~~
dcow
_Constructing additional pylons..._ is cringeworthy? I mean maybe get a faster
machine if you are staring at loading screens for more than 800ms XD (I joke).
Sure there are some silly ones, but also 12-year-olds use discord too.

~~~
gsich
I wasn't explicitly talking about the loading screen.

------
steveklabnik
... and it’s written in Rust!
[https://twitter.com/svishnevskiy/status/1052334204204150784](https://twitter.com/svishnevskiy/status/1052334204204150784)

In the replies, they said they are planning a blog post to talk about the tech
in-depth. Looking forward to that! Apparently they’re also deploying Rust +
Elixir via a NIF.

------
zuzekz
I love discord <3

