"Total" Discord integration for community participation in development
I've been discovering recently how convenient Discord can make developing with the feedback of your community, or of selected members of your community.
This is assuming that you are already talking with your dev team and community on Discord and have a server for that.
Create your game on the Discord platform (they do the same thing as Steam basically), and integrate an alpha-access store page right into your Discord server as a channel. This store page can be restricted to whomever you want via normal Discord permissions. Binaries can be distributed wonderfully simply this way, becuase if you're talking with the community in Discord already, you can just send them to that store page channel embedded directly in your server where they can simply click "install" to test your most recent binaries.
The agreement with Discord restricts only a few things that I wasn't interested in anyway: They don't want you to do an exclusive deal with another distribution service (duh), and anywhere you advertise your game you must mention that it's also available on Discord in addition to wherever else you're distributing it. That's pretty much fine with me.
Anyway, I'm having a lot more fun with this than I had previously trying to distribute pre-release alpha binaries, so I wanted to see what you all thought about it. And what criticisms there are to be had.
I mean that seems like a pretty good deal, honestly. Not sure I have much criticisms of it this way, but then again I haven't read the full terms of the agreement and you're mostly giving the really short layman's version here.
I feel like maybe there's some criticism to be had there that it might make some developers increasingly dependent on Discord for both fan interactions and distribution, and since Discord is still a Venture Capital black box with an unclear direction that wouldn't necessarily sit right with me long term. Of course I can't actually prove anything bad is gonna happen, so take my comment with a grain of salt.
Thanks, I see your point.
I'm fairly confident personally that, even if Discord's distribution abilities go away for my game for some reason, they're not going to take away my wider server, in which case I can just start linking people to my steam page instead of to an integrated channel. But maybe that's naive?
I'm thinking more along the lines of them making it so you primarily publish games via Discord, to a point where you'd be less willing to consider other platforms after a while. That would create the kind of dependency you see with other monoliths where you slowly, but steadily, start putting up with more and more inconsiderate decisions on their part just because you fear switching platforms.
Like if in a year or 5 or so, after you've built up a sizeable community and published an extra game or two, Discord suddenly decided all games with servers and integrations need to be exclusives or be booted from the platform. I'd take you a really long time to rebuilt what you have so you have reason to stay and abandon Steam and other distributors, but that would make you even more dependent on Discord.
I'd view that as a massive red flag and dealbreaker.
I personally agree, but I can see why this would be acceptable to most. Unless there's a hidden clause under which you sign away your intellectual property rights this seems like a really basic quid pro quo. When you're a small creator just trying to get your game out there then it's probably not a huge deal to have to include a mention of Discord in your marketing material, you're probably just happy to get eyeballs on it in the first place.
Could you explain why? To me this just means that you say "Available on Steam here, or on Discord here, or on etc. etc."
Assuming that one would use the game entry on Discord just to take advantage of this feature, then
It's the rough equivalent of being forced to advertise your dev/community tools. I wouldn't be fine advertising, say, Travis CI, Visual Studio, or AWS every time I mention that my game is for sale.
Using this basically means you HAVE to sell your game on Discord just to take "easily" share the development version with people.
Then again, this seems to be more of a "hey, you're already made a game entry on Discord doing stuff, why not take advantage of this as well" situation, so I don't think I'm the target for it.
afaik they're shutting that down.
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/9/13/20864278/discord-nitro-games-subscription-bundle-discontinued
I'm pretty sure that's not the same thing. I think making your game part of the nitro subscription bundle (which they discontinued, true) is separate from just having a store channel for your game inside your server. I'm seeing active development from them on their game-sdk and their developer portal meant for this. But I could be wrong.