There’s a new player in the developer revenue share battle that’s coming out swinging right from the get-go. Discord’s store will be upping the ante, even surpassing Epic Store’s generous revenue split.
Discord announced in a blog post today that starting next year they will be offering developers a 90/10 revenue split, besting Epic Games’ 88/12 and putting Steam and mobile stores’ 70/30 split to shame. In the post, Discord questions why so much of the revenue share is going to competitors’ stores, asking if they’re in it just for the money and not for the games and communities themselves.
“Is this the only reason developers are building their own stores and launchers to distribute games?” they ask. “Turns out, it does not cost 30% to distribute games in 2018. After doing some research, we discovered that we can build amazing developer tools, run them, and give developers the majority of the revenue share.”
The news of the revenue split comes as that their store will release a self-serve game publishing platform starting in 2019, open to every kind of company from the AAA powerhouses to unknown single person development teams. Discord also promised to improve Verified Servers in the next year, as well as extending the ability to add new content to their activity feed.
Epic Games has received acclaim in recent weeks since the launch of their store earlier this month. The generous revenue split has caused some developers to move its upcoming games to Epic’s Store exclusively. Developers Overclock3D, for example, is moving its games to the new store as timed exclusives.
It’s not just the revenue split, either — Epic’s store is doing things differently than Steam. They promise to be more transparent to developers than Valve’s storefront, and will provide a more curated experience rather than Steam’s wild west approach to video game releases. It feels like the dawning of a new era in digital storefronts, with Discord and Epic ready to dominate the conversation.
