Popular amongst hardcore gamers who game online, Discord is a social media platform that allows gamers to communicate with their teammates in real time, allowing them to share ideas on the next move to make. As exciting and useful as it seems to be, Discord is one of those valuable services that doesn’t feature Ads. Since discord doesn’t offer Ads, how do they make money? In this article, we explore facts on how discord makes money.
Before we dive into the facts explaining how Discord makes money, let us explore some more information about discord, explaining their services and how useful it is to gamers.
What is Discord?
As mentioned earlier, Discord is a social media platform, designed for Gamers to communicate with their teammates, allowing them to have confidential conversations on how to win challenges. Discord is popular amongst gamers who game online.
Discord allows users to send free text, make video and voice calls to teammates. Discord was designed to offer high-quality and lag-free voice chat, enable gamers to communicate with teammates around the world.
Discord lets users create a themed server, which teammates can join, allowing them to communicate with you and other teammates. This theme server can be formed by anyone on the team. The admin of the theme server has the choice of making a voice, text or video channel. After creating these team servers, the admin sends invites to his teammates. As earlier mentioned, all these services are offered for free.
While Discord’s target audience encompasses gamers generally, the free chat app is also enjoyed by other interest groups varying from music, entrepreneurship, art, etc.
How Discord Makes Money
One of the policies of Discord is the ”No advertisement policy”. Discord doesn’t permit Ads on their platform. This way Discord doesn’t have to share user’s data with the world. Their trust isn’t breached. In the absence of paid Ads, here is a list of ways Discord makes their money:
- Cosmetic items: Seeking to spice up your Discord theme server, with sound packs, sticker packs, skins, and custom emojis? Discord allows you to, but you would have to pay to use them. These items are optional; the users decide to make use of them if he or she desires.
- Discord Merchandise Store: Having a merchandise store, is a ubiquitous way popular brands make money. It is an avenue for fans to show their fanship. Plus everybody puts on clothes, so clothes are a viable business to dive into. Discord merchandise store features branded hoodies, hats, t-shirts and sweatshirts. Apart from making money, discord also uses these merchandise to promote its service, making it accessible.
- Discord Nitro: Apart from having an entirely free app, discord also has a paid app, that offers more features, in exchange for a subscription fee of $4.99 per month or $4.99 per year. Discord Nitro provides more features, features not found in the free discord apps. Features offered on the Discord Nitro app are listed below:
- Animated avatars
- Custom emojis
- High-quality screen share. Discord Nitro allows you to enjoy higher resolution (720p or 1080p) screen share in your chat.
- Special Nitro Badge
Note: Using Discord Nitro will attract a subscription fee of $4.99 month or $99.9 per year.
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Apart from the already listed avenues Discord is making money, there are some potential avenues Discord can make more money. These potential avenues are listed below:
1. Game Bridge
Discord GameBridge is a feature that allows game developers to integrate discord into their games, making interaction easy and seamless. Monetizing Game bridge is another way Discord can make more money, making game developers pay to feature Game Bridge in their games. Features of Game Bridge are listed below:
- Auto-match Players in voice channels
- Auto-create permanent or temporary servers for in-game-worlds/guilds
- Screenshots, GIFs, and videos sharing
- Partner-like benefits, where users can build up a community
- Easy control of audio settings
- Positional Audio (Voices in a virtual space to augment distribution of players)
3. Launching a Game Store
Discord previously announced that they would be building a game store, a game store its users can conveniently purchase games. Initially launched a beta of the game store to 50, 000 users from Canada.
Discord game store is currently online, feature a wide range of exciting games, that appeal to a lot of fans. Selling games through its game store is another avenue discord can make more money.
The facts listed in this article, clearly depicts how discord makes money. It proves Discord is highly profitable. If you have other contributions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below.