
The Discord Store Beta - doppp
https://blog.discordapp.com/the-discord-store-beta-9a35596fdd4
======
tosh
Discord's user experience is incredible compared to Steam. The app is super
responsive. If they add video streaming as well they can compete with Twitch &
Steam at the same time. Both have abysmal ux.

~~~
WolfRazu
I'm sorry, what? Steam is much more responsive than Discord.

~~~
Kiro
Strongly disagree. Steam feels like browsing a slow web page.

~~~
dvtrn
Most of the time that's exactly what you're doing, if you're navigating
through the 'store'. And it's horrible. Steam absolutely is not an application
I would point to if someone asked me for an example of a well optimized and
performing desktop application.

(And I still haven't forgiven Valve for killing WON, even if I know they had
what they felt was a good reason for it)

~~~
erulabs
Oh WON... Those were the days! HLDS (Half-Life Dedicated Server) was a very
big part of how I became a sysadmin - I'm sure I owe a big chunk of my career
to whoever wrote it and it's documentation!

------
aquova
It's an interesting choice, and while I saw it coming after they added a page
to view your friends' gaming habits, it's not the long-term move I thought
they would take.

Discord basically started out as "Slack for gamers", and very quickly (IMO)
surpassed both Slack and Skype in terms of functionality. I don't have to have
a different account for every server I'm in unlike Slack, and their video and
audio calling has always been much more stable than anything I've gotten on
Skype.

With that in mind, I would've thought that their next plan would be to improve
on what they do best, and try to market to the professional markets and take
Skype and Slack head on. Instead they seem to be veering off and doubling down
on the gamers. Judging by the number of people I see who have it, I imagine
the profit from Nitro may be enough to keep the company going, and the Slack
crowd won't be as lucrative as the opportunities from taking some of Steam's
marketshare.

~~~
shiburizu
Anything marketed to corporate inevitably gets bogged down with nonsense. With
their current approach they can keep working on what the absolute end-user
cares about, and this is how they avoid repeating Skype's mistakes. I think
it's interesting how many ways they are planning to mimic Steam's features
with moves like these, I still wonder how much traction it can actually gain.
But everyone I ask seems positive about it.

------
schnevets
If you told me two years ago that anyone (even a major player like Amazon) was
thinking about competing with Steam, I'd write them off immediately, but this
makes a lot of sense. Steam has gotten way too complacent in its social
features, and I am getting increasingly frustrated by bugs in the app. My ears
picked up when Discord mentioned a "book shop" vibe. With all of the
controversy about adult games and Steam's "grand bazaar" approach, I would
love a store that was curated and made my gaming experience more fun.

I smell a game vendor war a-brewing. The results could be messy...

~~~
heroprotagonist
Well, almost exactly two years ago, Amazon bought Curse. I believe this is
forming the basis of their Twitch desktop application. I haven't looked at it,
but I imagine the intent is the same.. use Twitch network effect to build an
install base, turn it into a distribution/store to take on Steam. That's what
Discord had already been doing at the time, largely accomplished via the
Twitch platform too.

They must have looked at Discord when they were evaluating Curse, given that
they suggested the purpose of Curse was to help build community (though curse
was originally a distribution mechanism for mods and add-ons that added
community as afterthought, in my subjective opinion). I imagine someone at
Amazon is kicking his or herself for the choice today..

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I am still surprised Amazon didn't buy Discord, and my internal canon suggests
they must not have liked they price. Between Lumberyard, buying Twitch and
Curse and merging them, Discord is a sure thing fit for their gaming arm.
Twitch in particular is a great/widespread streaming platform with utterly
terrible chat, bringing Discord into that would patch up a big weakness there.

Microsoft has often been suggested as a suitor, but between having Skype and
Teams and the Windows/Xbox Store already, I just don't see Discord meshing
well with what they already have.

------
minimaxir
Recently, Steam rolled out Discord-like chat/community features:
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/24/17609872/steam-chat-
new-f...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/24/17609872/steam-chat-new-features-
roll-put-discord-like-competition)

Turnabout is fair play.

~~~
old-gregg
Shouldn't discord be considered cheating by Valve? I haven't seen/used it, but
I assume it's a voice chat outside a game, so people can continue to give out
enemy coordinates even after they die. If that's the case, steam should just
refuse to run or ban your account if discord presence is detected, no?

~~~
eisrep
It's no different than using Skype or Ventrilo or even a phone/conference
call. There's no real way to manage who talks to who while you're playing a
game.

~~~
tetrep
Hell, it's not different than being in the same room as other players. I've
yet to hear of any games that ban teams sharing the same IP address.

~~~
cjhopman
Most poker games do.

------
ocdtrekkie
I've long held that Discord lacks an actual business model. This is the first
time I could honestly say they have one, as the benefits of Nitro were a joke.

Of course, it's interesting they chose a business model that nobody has ever
succeeded at: Competing with Steam. You need exclusives to draw people to your
game platform, and with that on PC comes "why can't I just get this on Steam?"
Without something like a "Games Anywhere" offering sync, you'd also have to
have people buy games anew on your platform.

~~~
dbmikus
People can keep their old Steam games and still use Discord. That's what
people have been doing since Discord came out (along with Epic Games,
Blizzard, EA, etc.).

I'm curious to see how the social stickiness of Discord will affect their
foray into a games/app store. I believe that, for multiplayer games at least,
people first fire up the way they want to talk with their friends and then set
about playing a game. From there, you grow the product into managing and
buying your games.

If Discord provides some differentiated social benefits to the games bought
through their store, then I could see this doing quite well.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
With Steam comes the achievements, the trading cards, etc. Sure, you can copy
all of that, but the challenge is that Discord isn't fighting Steam on day
one, they're fighting an established library. How do you convince someone with
99 games in Steam that their 100th should be bought through Discord instead?

Sure, people can use Discord for chat while playing Steam games, but Discord
really doesn't benefit from that. They need to convert chat users into game
buyers, and I think you'd need something like Games Anywhere (or more simply,
like GOG Connect), to bridge in what people already bought to start the
process along. Bonus if you can find a way to bring over people's achievements
and other progress.

~~~
tapoxi
> How do you convince someone with 99 games in Steam that their 100th should
> be bought through Discord instead?

You don't have to, there are always people just starting their library. The
Discord client is already significantly better than Steam's (which is why its
so popular for chat).

I think people are pretty meh on Steam achievements since hacks to unlock them
are pretty widespread, but Discord would need to provide other platform norms
like cloud saves and DRM.

I also think Microsoft should swoop in and buy Discord before it's too late.
The Xbox brand and UWP need a shot in the arm, and a Discord purchase could
finally get PC gamers using Xbox services.

~~~
Macha
Because that audience didn't collectively jump ship from the last service
Microsoft bought _to_ discord. They also don't have a long lasting mistrust of
Microsoft due to GFWL, the Xbone attempt to stop game sharing, umpteen "We
really care about PC gaming this time, honest" promises, etc.

Frankly, while programmers have benefited enough from new Microsoft that
people are starting to give them a chance, gamers have not at this point a MS
owned Discord would do more harm to Discord than good to MS. Users already see
the Microsoft store as a flytrap to avoid, and any future Discord services
would be tarred with the same brush.

------
laken
I've been a Discord Nitro subscriber since Nov. 2017, so I welcome any
additional benefits. That said, I'm not entirely a fan of the game store
model. I know Discord's primary audience are gamers, but that's not why I use
Discord.

~~~
bytematic
Agreed, they could have have generalized and eaten all other chat services
including slack. I guess they want to take on steam but I don't know if it
will work.

~~~
jgh
honestly i was so skeptical of discord at the beginning because as someone who
was a regular vent user it really struck me as a niche thing. But they've done
a great job to branch into non-gaming communities to get enormous growth. I'm
not sure if they're gonna "win" against steam or even make a dent but it will
be interesting to see them try.

------
belltaco
Discord is claiming that these new features won't add to bloat:

[https://blog.discordapp.com/how-discord-maintains-
performanc...](https://blog.discordapp.com/how-discord-maintains-performance-
while-adding-features-28ddaf044333)

Meanwhile I've noticed that Battlenet and Steam have rolled out even more
Discord style features very recently.

------
hkmurakami
I remember telling s friend a few years ago that this is the natural next step
for their business. Attacking he steam hegemony won’t be easy though given
people already have libraries there. But if anyone can do it it’s them.

~~~
bovermyer
I've already moved beyond the everything-in-Steam model. I'm content to have
games in Steam, in Origin, in UPlay, in my Microsoft account, in the Blizzard
launcher, and standalone.

This is just one more account to keep in mind, though it looks like it's more
of a rental model than a purchase model.

~~~
Gaelan
Looks like Discord can launch games from all of the above from within the app.

~~~
bovermyer
So can the Xbox app.

------
sunaurus
Steam works pretty great on Linux (with a surprisingly large selection of
native games). I wonder if Discord is planning on competing there as well, or
if they're just limiting games to Windows.

~~~
SeanMacConMara
They have no hope until they fix the terrible audio quality on Linux that
appeared several months ago.

~~~
londt8
For me and many others audio input doesn't even work. There is a ticket in
their issue tracker, it has been broken for a long time already

------
prions
I love Discord and have been a nitro subscriber for a while now, but I'm
disappointed at their responsiveness to bugfixing.

One of their latest updates added a really frustrating regression where emoji
autocompletes are spellchecked on ios, correcting it nonsensical words. It
took some digging to find their bug tracker and I noticed it's set to their
lowest priority. Why was this allowed to be released in the first place?

------
mrguyorama
>So, we’ve curated some of these golden games and will be adding them to
Discord Nitro.

They need to focus this curation in a big way. There's been a lot of flack
directed at steam for allowing it to be essentially polluted by all sorts of
low quality "games" recently, and discord could really hurt them by actually
_caring_ about their community. Valve's hands off nature has not been easy on
gamers

------
Reedx
This'll be really interesting. They might have the best shot so far (IMO) of
actually competing with Steam in a significant way.

They have a very sticky app for gamers with best in class UX. People love
using it and many have it open 24/7\. A lot of companies have tried going
"store first" and it hasn't put much of a dent on Steam, but this approach
might eventually. Assuming their library gets big enough. Still incredibly
difficult though given how much players have invested in their Steam
libraries.

------
beerlord
I just hope its not another store with a 30% commission. If they're charging
developers 15% or less, I'll definitely get on board.

Valve need to up their game though. Their approach of 'anything goes' when it
comes to allowing games on Steam is backfiring. They need to increase the fee
to list from $100 to $2000. For legitimate devs that extra $1900 charge will
more than pay for itself with the attention you will get launching a game into
a de-cluttered store.

~~~
lostmsu
Microsoft now charges just 5%, if you do your own marketing.

~~~
beerlord
Thanks, didn't realise that. Its a shame that the Microsoft store is so
terrible.

[https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-
micr...](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2018/05/07/a-new-microsoft-
store-revenue-share-is-coming/)

------
kup0
Just wish they would add encrypted messaging. To me that's Discord's most
important missing feature.

~~~
heroprotagonist
Well, their privacy policy allows them to sell all of those messages.
Encrypting them in a non-reversible fashion (or at least non-reversible to
Discord themselves) would impact this or any kind of research they want to do
on the years of gamers' conversations.

I like Discord a lot, and to be fair, their people have publicly claimed here
and elsewhere that they have no intention to sell the information.
Unfortunately, those statements have no teeth.

While they state the same in their privacy policy (in non-binding form about
intent), the same privacy policy goes on to specifically allow sale and
transfer of user data.

See "OUR DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION" here:
[https://discordapp.com/privacy](https://discordapp.com/privacy)

The difference is that the privacy policy is a legal acknowledgement end users
must accept before they use the software. The forum/blog statements and non-
binding language we read everywhere else are just 'feel good' things for users
to hear and for their employees to tell themselves.

If they just wanted protection against an accidental slippage of data then
that privacy page could be changed substantially. Instead, they pave the road
for the explicit sale of data at a later time.

Ideally they would deny it in current policy if they have no intent of selling
the information. They could leave the option open to change in the future with
a "this privacy policy is subject to change" clause, but clauses like this
only have teeth if there is also a clause that ensures future policy changes
won't apply retroactively to historically collected data without opt-in after
the policy change.

But this weakens their position in an eventual acquisition by some company who
finds monetary value in that data.

As it stands right now, in an eventual acquisition or even just some internal
shifts of philosophy in the organization, all historical data is up for grabs
for any potential use.

------
knlam
This is an interesting move. Mark my words, Valve will acquire Discord soon

~~~
tenryuu
Tencent will acquire Discord soon

------
tw1010
Great, distracting games where I least want them.

~~~
drngdds
In a gaming chat app?

~~~
tw1010
People don't just use discord for gaming chat.

~~~
Spivak
And people use bats for things other than baseball but it's doesn't stop
manufacturers from catering to the athletes.

