How Discord Makes Money?
Wondering how Discord makes money? This app is famous with gamers and live streamers, which allows them to join “servers” that serve as communities. The company has several sources of income and this article describes how Discord makes money from its services.
Discord makes a profit by providing its service on subscription fees as an upgrade to its basic product which is free of cost, and it also makes money on games that sell through the platform and on “boost” servers.
Discord was launched in 2015 and is based in San Francisco. With more than 100 million users, the company continues to grow thanks to its adoption by the global gaming and live streaming community. Discord handles more than 6.7 million servers, with compatibility for iPhone, Android, Mac, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC devices.
What does Discord do?
Discord allows users to set up servers where they can entice audiences to stream online events. Basically, the server acts as a hub for the community and displays relevant content for them on the server.
The server owner moderates the community at his own discretion. The application provides a chat feature that allows the community to chat with one another during events.
How does Discord work?
The Discord chat app is the current choice for live streamers and players. The Discord platform supports community communication through voice chat, text messaging, and video calling. The Discord app is currently available for all Android and iOS devices, as well as all major gaming platforms, including Mac, PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.
Discord allows its members to arrange them into communities, also called servers. It shares similarities with Slack and allows users to fill the server with multiple channels to discuss and comment on various topics.
Users can join up to 100 servers, access the public via links, or receive an invitation to a private server. Servers have limits on the number of channels they can join, and the maximum value for each Discord server is 500 channels.
Discord enables instant chat for users who are tired of the community aspect, and the app integrates with many other multimedia platforms such as YouTube, GIPHY, and Spotify. As a result, users may share off-site content with members of the server.
Many people assume that Discord is only for players, but in reality, users can start a community in whatever they want, from yoga clubs to dance classes to book clubs. The platform offers an excellent way to organize communication, aimed at a target group.
According to data from Discord, approximately 100 million users on the platform spend up to 4 billion minutes chatting on 6.7 million servers.
How Discord Makes Money
Discord makes money on subscription fees, games sold through the Steam-like platform, and server hardening (which improves the performance of the Discord server).
Similar Recommendations: How does Cred Make Money?
Nitro subscription
In 2017, Discord introduced the Nitro subscription package, which served as the company’s first source of revenue. The service is not mandatory and is available as an option and offers the creation of a personal profile for its users with animated avatars and custom labels.
Users can use Nitro to create custom emojis and upload files up to 100 MB in size. Also, free live streaming, screen sharing, and high-definition video with your Nitro subscription for $ 9.99 per month or $ 99 per year.
Discord also offers a cheaper version of this package, “Nitro Classic”, which costs users $ 4.99 per month or $ 49.99 per year.
Breakdown of the game
In 2018, Discord launched an online video game distribution service that mirrors Steam. The store offers exclusive “Into The Breach” and “Dead Cells” Discord games. However, the model did not live up to expectations. Discord has made a new idea of this by teaming up with game developers who want the sale of their products only on the Discord platform.
Discord takes a 10% commission on every game it sells and uses its revenue to expand the size of its server communities. As mentioned earlier, Discord servers are communities and it is a free service provided by the platform. However, streaming users find that they need more features from their Discord server to make a living.
The server is growing
As a result, the organization made a decision of adding another premium service to its offering, the Server Upgrade. The main purpose of upgrading the server is to improve the performance and functionality of the Discord server at an additional cost.
Users have the option of expanding their server to three levels, with each level providing unique benefits. Discord charges $ 4.99 per month for a server upgrade. All Nitro subscribers get a 30% discount on a server upgrade.
Users unlock level 1 when they have two users on the server who pay a subscription fee. To access level 2, users must purchase 15 reinforcements, and level 3 requires 30 reinforcements. Fortunately, premium features are available to all users on the Discord server, even if they don’t pay for the service.
The future engine of growth
The company plans to add additional services and features to the Nitro package in the coming years. Discord says it will still keep chat and messaging services free, but they plan to expand their premium offerings.
The company launched GameBridge in hopes of improving its service offering and revenue model. However, Discord pulled it down a few months after launch. Yet their goal is to win back GameBridge with an improved offering.
We can expect Discord to expand its player and shopping area in the future as it attracts new developers and users and entices them with a new model of revenue sharing. The company aims to reward game developers who bring new games and new users to the platform.
Competitors
Discord is growing and is a hit with the live streaming and gaming community. But technology changes rapidly and trends can disappear at any time.
There are other companies that offer a service similar to Discord. Some are better and some are not. However, it is a good decision for gamers and lives streamers to consider backups for their business.
Some of the other companies that offer Discord comparison services are as follows.
- TeamSpeak: VoIP communication system for online games.
- Troop Messenger: A complete instant messaging application.
- Chanty: a team collaboration tool.
- HeySpace – Collaborative tool for task management, chat, and scheduling.
- Slack – A messaging app that connects people through channels.
- Mumble – Open source voice chat application designed for gamers.