Discord Game Store – A New Threat to Steam?
We all know that Steam set the 30/70 revenue split (store revenue/developer revenue) as the standard for online game stores. Steam had been ruling over the world of the online game stores without any competition. Epic Games then stepped into this game in early December this year with their new store and offered the developers 88% of the revenue off their game. In this situation Discord, with their new game store, stepped up the game by promising to give 90% of the revenue to the developers of the game/software.
Discord started their journey as a free VoIP application for gamers in 2015. Since then they turned it into one of the best chatting-apps for gamers. But recently they released their own Game Store integrated with their chatting app. Discord stated that their 10/90 revenue split is applicable for all sorts of developers. Their game store currently features titles like Celeste, Into The Breach, Dead Cells and Subnautica.
Steam is the games and app store developed by Valve. For those who don’t know about Valve, it is the company behind popular games like Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Half-Life and many more.
Epic Games is the developer behind the popular battle-royale game Fortnite. And they also developed the game engine named Unreal Engine. On December 4th, 2018, Epic games announced their new game store. With that, they introduced their new policy of giving 88% of the revenue to the developer of the game, which broke the stereotype of 30-70 revenue split and created a havoc on the internet. Their store features Hello Neighbor: Hide and Seek, Ashen, Heads(early access) and many more.
Is it really a threat to Steam?
With no doubt, Steam is the biggest online game store right now. And it is impossible for Epic Games Store and Discord store to come even close to what Steam is right now. Smaller platforms like itch.io (indie-focused online game store) meanwhile have an “open revenue mode”, but they are nowhere in this competition. So, I think that Steam does not need to press the panic button just yet. But they need to rethink their revenue splitting process. Some competition is always good. And I hope that this competition will ultimately benefit the online game stores and their customers.
