Discord Store To Offer Developers 90 Percent of Game Revenues (arstechnica.com) 47
DarkRookie2 shares a report from Ars Technica: Discord has announced that it will start taking a reduced, 10-percent cut from game revenues generated on its online store starting next year, one-upping the Epic Games Store and its recently announced 12-percent cut on the Epic Games Store. The move comes alongside a coming expansion of the Discord Games Store, which launched earlier this year with a tightly curated selection of games that now includes roughly 100 titles. The coming "self-serve publishing platform" will allow developers "no matter what size, from AAA to single-person teams" to access the Discord Store and the new 90-percent revenue share. "We talked to a lot of developers, and many of them feel that current stores are not earning their 30% of the usual 70/30 revenue share," Discord writes in the announcement. "Because of this, we now see developers creating their own stores and launchers to distribute their games instead of focusing on what's really important --making great games and cultivating amazing communities."
"Turns out, it does not cost 30% to distribute games in 2018," the announcement continues. "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% to distribute games in 2018," the announcement continues. "After doing some research, we discovered that we can build amazing developer tools, run them, and give developers the majority of the revenue share."
This is worth waiting for (Score:2, Interesting)
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In this the error is, price is not everything. How about with my downloaded game, I want to run which ever the patch I want to and not have shitty patches forced into the game I bought, looking at bloody Steam. The can waffle all they want how they will serve game publishers cheaply, I don't give one fuck about that. The price I pay and the services I get, is all that counts, screw the developers and the publishers. I want service from the game store, I want punishments for shitty developers and publishers,
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I'm personally interested to find out how this turns out. It may lead to innovative ways to tackle other issues in our society.
This will turn out the only way possible: Expect every game to come out on it's own publishers store uniquely. We already saw that with the last Slashdot announcement about the Epic store. Greater choice for all they said! Only a few days later the list of exclusives, and the list of games being pulled from Steam started being released.
How much longer can I see Disney content on Netflix? On and how's things going in America, where your latest Startrek is only available in 1080p with stereo sound instead of
more than 50 (Score:1, Funny)
I'm not a mathematician, but I suspect 70% of something is still a majority of that thing.
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This is about Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Steam takes 30%, the same as the historical retailer average. Remember when one of the selling points of digital distribution was that it would be cheaper?
Epic made their own infrastructure to handle Fortnite, and decided that they, too, could run a store. They decided 12% would be profitable. And if you use their game engine and publish on their store, they waive the 5% fee for using the engine.
Valve got wind of this and, just before Epic's new storefront was
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Steam is the incumbent, where people have amassed large libraries of games and that has things like the messaging system and friends, so it also has some social control.
The fight is barely starting. I'm wouldn't dismiss Valve any time soon. Discord's strength is that it has a better messaging system that has supplanted steam friends for many gaming social circles. Epic's strength is a single title that is played by a very large and very specific category of players that haven't actually shown much interest
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Valve does keep making games. It hasn't been a month since their last game's release. It's just that they're increasingly divorced from the consumer side on gaming, being deeply specialized in maximally monetizing people rather than satisfying their needs, so their latest offering is just awful when contrasted against competition.
Citation: Artefact.
So waht's the restrictions? (Score:2)
90/10 sounds great, but there has to be restrictions.
Because it would mean the store loses money if I were to offer games for $1 each (credit card would take a good 30% of that). Or if I offer it for free with a bunch of $1 items, again each purchase would cost a good 30%.
So unless they're going to restrict games to costing at least $5 or DLC costing at least $5, or basically approve only good games where people are willing to pay more for,
Of course, these make sense in situations where apps and such genera
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Alternately, they'll do what the Playstation Store et al (at least used to) do, and have a 'wallet' that you recharge, making an e.g. $25 credit card transaction, and then deduct those $1 games from that with no further fees. Or they're betting on people buying multiple games at once. That said, looking through their games, I don't see a single one selling for less than $8 (that's not F2P).
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Ever hear of Desura? Yeah, they offered basically the same 90/10 split. They don't exist anymore, and were supposedly the big up and comer and whatnot. In JP game markets, the opposite applies, it's 10/90 for titles under $5. Which dissuades fly-by-night and shitty developers from making a game that operates at the bare minimum.
And so it begins... (Score:2)
Begun the digital distribution wars have.
Now we can enjoy the same Balkanization that video content has been descending into.
Someday, somehow, some way, someone needs to design a federated distribution system for digital media. So all the vendors can have their own little stores with their own little terms and conditions and their own individual rates and exclusives and what-have-you, and the buyers can have one friendly interface.
Won't happen, because someone's precious branding. But a boy can dream.
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Currently in the Epic one they're giving away a pretty well known game to entice people to install their downloader/storefront. I'll just concentrate on a few big ones and ignore the rest. I don't care if I'm gonna miss some games I already legally own more than I can play anyway.
I have reasonable confidence when I buy on Steam (Score:4, Informative)
..that I will continue owning that game, at least to the extent you can own a digital object. That is the core value proposition they give me. Everything else is gravy (friend list, chat, game discovery, refunds, cloud saves, etc..).
Mostly, I just want to know that when I plunk down money on a game, it will stay in the list of games I can play for a reasonably foreseeable future. I trust Valve for that because they have some track record, and over the course of many years their terms have not significantly degraded.
I'm also just generally loath to install any new store or launcher thing. I don't want a Ubisoft account or a Microsoft store account or an Origin or Epic account. I barely tolerate having a Blizzard account.
Anyway, I don't wish these guys any ill will and I think Valve could use the competition - but I don't think the world can support too many stores over the long term.
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Then discord has a massive advantage for you, because Discord has become the de facto voice communication and text communication/social networking platform for all things gaming. So you'll have discord installed regardless if you're in almost any kind of gaming community with other people.
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I have reasonable confidence when I buy on Steam that I will continue owning that game, at least to the extent you can own a digital object.
And that extent is near-zero. Steam games come with DRM. You don't own the things you bought. Valve allows you to do some things because they feel like it. They have a track record and they're flush with cash at the moment, but if that changed they could simply pull the plug and walk away. They could also selectively screw over individuals. If your account is banned you cannot log in, download, or play any of your games. As a policy, they will not tell you why your account is banned, simply stating you vi
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Indeed, Steam has been running 14 years now; the Discord app is less than 4 years old. Discord Inc. claims they've raised over $30M in investments... which is a drop in the bucket compared to what Valve and Epic are making from Steam and Fortnite respectively. Ten years from now, will anyone still use/remember Discord? They could crash and burn like MySpace or countless other social networks. Far more likely, they'll get bought out by, say, Microsoft, and get rolled in to Skype or something.
I'd only buy som
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..that I will continue owning that game, at least to the extent you can own a digital object.
Do you have the game Satisfactory by any chance? This is a game that was recently pulled from Steam and is now an Epic store exclusive. Now I haven't heard much about it yet but I wonder, in 5 years when you want to go back and play this again will you still be able to download and run it having purchased it in the "wrong" store?
Apple's recent experience, and their terms of service saying that a customer may not be able to download the thing they bought if its not available on their store would suggest tha
apple needs to lower there cut or add 3rd party st (Score:2)
apple needs to lower there cut or add 3rd party stores
Damn (Score:2)
This is how you go from a decent chat and voip client, to a bloated behemoth.
Can not wait :/
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What makes Steam digital restrictions management superior to the lack of any DRM that's more common on Itch.io and GOG?