Discord popularity became a huge competition for Skype and TeamSpeak ever since it was launched in the market. Skype and TeamSpeak are perhaps efficient communication applications, but their substandard call quality, poor group chat functionalities, security issues, and resource-heavy operations can’t be tolerated by games-enthusiasts in particular. So by seeing its demand in the market gamers Wondering about How Does Discord Make Money?
So the CEO of Discord Jason Citron and CTO of Discord Stanislav Vishnevskiy in 2015 came up with the thought of interacting with people among lots of features that idea gives birth to this app and Discord introduces the first time in San Francisco and currently, the headquartered is also located there.
Dozens of new games coming out every day on different gaming platforms, there is a choice for every flavor so lots of gaming apps there but now gamers need a platform for connecting people around the world which increases their business and also for showing skills.
What is Discord?
If you are new First let you know about What is Discord and how it actually works. Discord is one of the best instant messaging and VoIP applications and digital distribution platforms Discord is a text, voice, and video chat application dedicated to gamers around the globe.
The main purpose of this application is to connect gamers from any country and give them the chance to communicate with each other in different ways like video or text chat. Of course one of the most important things is fast servers that can be joined by other players and to provide this without any lags and problems.
Discord is not limited only to the gamers, now a day people also using it for education and business niches it is also used for communication on different topics like art, music, video marketing. This app supports almost all the platforms android, iPhone, Mac, Xbox, PlayStation, and PC devices.
How does Discord Make Money?
This is the main topic of our post How does Discord Make Money also many of the business-minded people are searching for it and you know in 2017 There are over 2.2 billion active gamers in the world in discord that are generated around 108.9 billion in-game revenues which expand every year. And currently, in 2020 The company now hosts over 100 million active users, which are spread out across 6.7 million servers.
Indeed Discord makes huge money in several other ways. From its Discord Market, when you purchase premium games, to the seller shops, that works with a 90/10 revenue cut for developers and game dealers. And the facility for sellers to gain more visibility on the platform by combining features to the game visibility.
Discord makes money from its Nitro subscription packages. Additional sources of income by server boosting as well as fees it takes from games sold on its servers. Discord doesn’t charge for The core app but if you trying to access premium features you need to pay some amount. So let us discuss in brief How Does Discord Make Money and all the ways were discord generated a handsome amount of money.
#1. Discord Nitro
Foe paid members This is a premium subscription package with charges of $9.99 per month or 99.99 per year. The lower version is called Nitro Classic, it costs $4.99 per month or $49.99 for a year.
For basic functions discord doesn’t charge anything and only asks its users to ‘support the application’ by buying the monthly subscription. This Discord plan is like Netflix’s model 30 days free trial and can be canceled at any time.
Discord Nitro best Features
- Personal profile, including an animated avatar, Creating your own custom animated emojis, and custom tags.
- Getting a pair of server boosts and a discount of 30 percent.
- Ability to Higher quality screen share and boosted upload limit up to 100MB (free limit is 6MB).
- High-resolution videos and Discord Go live streaming.
#2. Merchandise
When a brand goes popular anyone can make many from Merchandise store. A small portion of Discord’s income comes from its merchandise store they had a merch store, which is currently paused while they “retune it”. Were they sell out companies’ branded t-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, cosmetic items, and hats by effective marketing and promotional strategies.
#3. Sell Your Game
Discord launched a game store globally in August 2018 The game store provided Nitro subscribers to get access to Discord premium games. Discord also enables game developers to distribute and sell their games Developers need to pay a small fee to unlock the option on their server, Once the game is sold, developers get 90 % of revenue share, and Discord will charge 10%. Not like Apple and Google who charge 30%. This 90/10 split commission is appreciated by many sellers community.
#4. Partnerships and Ecommerce
The company is totally against to generate revenue by advertisements and selling of user data and has been relying on the funding money till recently. So what they do is accomplish revenue-generating partnerships with other businesses which bonds a good relationship between the two parties. from browsing Discord’s employees on social media like Linkedin, you can find several business development managers.
#5. Server Boosting
Boosting a standard server cost in discord is $4.99 per month. Server Boosting allows a community to up the functionality and enhances server performance. There are different Levels to unlocked when two users pay the subscription fee. You might understand it on three different levels.
| 1. Level 1 | 2. Level 2 | 3. Level 3 |
| Custom Server | Server Banner | Vanity URL |
| 128 Kbps of Audio Quality | 256 Kbps of Audio quality | 384Kbps of Audio Quality |
| Go Live streams boosted up to 720P at 60FPS | Live streams boosted up to 1080P 60FPS | 100MB Upload Limit for all users (server only) |
| +50 Emoji Slots ( total of 100 emojis) | Quality +50 Emoji Slots (total of 150 emojis) | +100 Emoji Slots (total of 250 emojis) |
| Invite Background | 50MB Upload Limit (server only) | |
| Animated Server Icon | From Level 1 | From 1 and 2 Level |
Discord Investors & Revenue
Discord’s revenue design is still a work in progression. Discord raised $279M from venture capital firms such as Spark Capital, Tencent (inventor of League of Legends and PUBG, amongst others), Index, Greylock, Benchmark, and more. During the company’s latest funding round, now it’s worth a valued at $3.5 billion. And from Forbes magazine analysis discord will generate annual revenues of $120 million as of 2020.
How Does Discord Make Money Future Strategies
As I told you Discord is still in progress they update their feature and business module every year but if you providing users a free and ad-free experience you cant stay in the market for a long time. The Nitro plan is a good strategy but this startup definitely has many other possible revenue streams. Maybe you can see these 2 features in discord near future.
- Gamebridge: Gamebridge allows game developers to integrate the app into their game features like Integrated Sharing of Screenshots, GIFs, and Videos, and lessen their burden of coding an in-game chat feature. The company is currently testing might release it as a paid product in the future.
- Game Revenue Sharing: Discord can partner with some games in future same as a Twitch app and earn through by referring each users which end up buying the game or any of its feature.
