Discord is a popular VOIP app among gamers and now wants to open its own gaming store in the style of Steam. An investment of 150 million dollars will help Discord with this.
The background: Discord is an app that primarily provides gamers with a platform to chat and talk to each other. In 2019, Discord wants to expand its offerings and become a game publishing platform for PC games. The VOIP provider could thus be an alternative to the giant Steam.
Discord promises developers a 90/10 revenue split, while Steam has a 70/30 distribution.
Discord receives significant investment: The company is getting financial support for its endeavor. In total, investors are providing the community messaging service with an amount of 150 million US dollars. This is approximately 132 million euros.
Value of the investment is estimated at 2 billion US dollars
Who has invested? A large portion of the investment comes from Greenoaks Capital, a company specializing in investing in technology-based firms.
Also, Tencent is among the investors. The Chinese game publisher is behind League of Legends (LoL) and distributes several western games in the Chinese market. Among them is the Diablo-like Path of Exile.
Other companies that have invested are Firstmark, IVP, Index Ventures, and Technology Opportunity Partners.
Discord increases its value again: In April, Discord already received a financial boost from investors. Here, the company received an amount of 50 million US dollars, with an estimated value of 1.65 billion. Through the new investment, Discord reached a new estimated value of 2 billion US dollars.
Large user base of Discord is attractive
More than 200 million users: It may be difficult for Discord to break the monopoly that Steam has built over the years. The Discord store is still very unknown. However, Discord has a huge user base that frequents the free app daily. Most users are PC gamers.
By now, it has become nearly impossible for publishers to overlook Discord. A part of community management and distribution of news takes place via Discord. Therefore, the app is also attractive for console gamers. Generally, gaming is discussed and informed about on Discord.
This vast user base and the potential it holds makes the Discord store likely attractive to investors.
More competition for Steam: Discord is not the only company that is opening a new game store.
