Discord is launching a beta with a game store and universal library/launcher, and adding a selection of games to Nitro

This feels like the beginning of Discord flailing around in search of a business model. There are already so many game stores, I really don't think another one is needed. I can also imagine this starting to get pushed into annoying places in the app before long (for example, prominent buttons to buy games that people on the server are playing).

I also really don't like this, for multiple reasons:

For our store, we’re excited to announce we’ll be supporting “First on Discord” titles — indie games that we’ve helped bring to life. Supporting indie games pushes the boundary of creative game design and is important to innovation and the long term health of the industry. Of course, we think the games are really cool too!

To be very clear, First on Discord games are temporarily exclusive. They’re literally first on Discord — usually 90 days and then the developers can sell anywhere else they want. This beta won’t have any First on Discord titles, but we’ll be showing off some soon!

Bias upfront: I dislike Discord as a company.

The reason that people like Discord so much is precisely because their business model is unrealistic.

I did some napkin calculations about a year ago, and calculated their (very conservative) annual cost of survival. I'll look this up and post it as an edit later.

By my math, Discord needed up to 20-30% of their userbase to subscribe to Nitro to think about breaking even cost-wise. The problem is that as their userbase expands (as free service userbases tend to) their costs grow, requiring more subscriptions. Something has to give. I maintain that it'll be advertisement based on data collected in their chat streams - it's a surefire way for them to make consistent money (and "charge" every consumer).

This move brings them into direct competition with Steam, and spreads their resources further. It's just a matter of time.

edit: calculated 3/23/17 (note: i'm not a mathematician, but I do work in tech and understand most costs associated with running a service)

Discord Profitability:

Employee Retention Costs:
$4,750,000/year for employees (at least, based on average Bay Area pay of 95,000, note that this is a low estimate)

Server Costs:
Erlang on Google Cloud Services. They have PBs of data according to their job descriptions. Let’s use a messy estimate and say that 3mil/year is a reasonable assumption for everything server-side (including backups, databases, instances, lambdas, etc)

Note that the above metrics do _not_ include furniture costs, computer costs, cleaning services, etc etc.

Office costs:
Discord is headed in the Bay Area. Using 225ft/person as a metric for Office space, the cheapest office in the Bay Area I could find was 3.58/ft/month. Using the above calculation, the average 40-person office costs about 32,000/month. Let’s round up and say half a million per year for office space, parking.

So we have about 8,250,000 in maintenance costs per year for Discord (very, very conservatively).

Discord has 25 million users as of December 2016 (server costs increase linearly with user count)

At $5/month (after tax discord receives roughly 3.80/user), discord would require 2 million nitro subscribers to break even. 

They currently need _at an absolute minimum_ 12% of their user base to pay $5/month to discord for an entire year to survive as they currently exist, not to mention grow. At most (assuming higher rent, pay, catered lunches, higher computing costs, etc) I would reckon ~20-30%.

This is why there’s no doubt in my mind that Discord will eventually pursue other means of profit. According to their privacy policy, they collect and own the rights to:

* Your voice
* Your chat
* Your images

This is more than enough to set me on edge. There are many simple malicious avenues to revenue that could be pursued once their venture capital runs out. Including but not limited to:

- Serving ads based on user preferences
- Selling user data directly to advertisers (no ads appear in discord this way)
- Tracking users across websites (Facebook style) to determine browsing habits. Selling this information.

This seems.... weird. Discord is a fantastic communications platform, but turning in to steam-lite seems like unwanted bloat. I'm worried that the communications platform part of Discord will suffer from the addition of the store in terms of performance, application size, privacy, etc...

While I understand that Discord needs to make money, I have a feeling this move will drive people away from the platform. Previously, it was a simple chat service. This move seems like Discord is trying to encompass your entire gaming life. I surely don't want that.

For now, this is a wait and see situation. Or, is it time to start looking for/building an alternative?

Although I use Discord (mostly just in browser), I'd really prefer if it were to die off. Their business model is uncertain, and a free service with access to all of the information they get isn't going to respect your privacy. I use mumble (FOSS, self-hosted) for VoIP as much as possible.

This feels like the beginning of Discord flailing around in search of a business model.

I've never liked Discord, and never understood the rationale for its existence. Is there actually anything of substance to this platform, or is it just IRC with a proprietary wrapper and an Electron app that some startup is trying to pass off as a revolutionary new technology as if they were Apple?

TBH I'm down for a universal library that works like they said

I guess it's time to be overly safe and have a backup for my Discord server on Slack for when people inevitably get pissed at Discord or when it eventually goes under. Just gives me some peace of mind, I wouldn't want to deal with trying to track everyone down and set up a backup after the fact.

I really don't want a launcher to launch more launchers to launch games. All I want is one simple interface with enough features for everything I need. I'm not going anywhere, I'm invested in valve with two steam links a steam controller and I've setup a cat6 gigabit network in my home to accommodate for steam in home streaming. It's going to take a lot to move me away from steam.

I wish them luck, but discord first Indies is super sketchy and anyone interested in this service should treat this as someone trying to invest in a "get rich quick" scheme because that's pretty much what this is, discord trying to make a quick buck off a niche market.