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Discord’s game store tries to top Steam and Epic by offering developers more money

Discord’s game store tries to top Steam and Epic by offering developers more money

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A 90 percent revenue split starting next year

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Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Discord is looking to make its fledgling game store the most developer-friendly option around. Today, the company announced that it will offer developers a 90 percent share of revenue when its PC game store opens up to all creators starting next year. The store first launched in October with a heavily curated selection of indie games, including Into the Breach and Dead Cells as well as a handful of timed exclusives. Currently, it operates under a fairly standard 70 / 30 revenue split.

“Turns out, it does not cost 30 percent to distribute games in 2018,” Discord CEO Jason Citron explained in a blog post. “After doing some research, we discovered that we can build amazing developer tools, run them, and give developers the majority of the revenue share.”

“Turns out, it does not cost 30 percent to distribute games in 2018.”

Last week, Fortnite developer Epic launched its own PC games store, which similarly offered a more developer-friendly revenue split, taking just a 12 percent cut of all game sales. Both Epic and Discord are looking to make their digital shops more appealing to developers by offering better terms than the current dominant platform Steam. Indie-focused store Itch.io, meanwhile, has an “open revenue sharing model” where developers can choose the revenue split.

Discord says that its split will apply to developers of all sizes — Steam recently switched to a tiered revenue structure that incentivizes larger games — and that it will consider lowering its fee even more in the future. “No matter what size, from AAA to single person teams, developers will be able to self publish on the Discord store with 90 percent revenue share going to the developer,” Citron explains. “The remaining 10 percent covers our operating costs, and we’ll explore lowering it by optimizing our tech and making things more efficient.”

Of course, it’s unlikely that either Discord or Epic will overtake Steam anytime soon, but competition is always a good thing.