Discord Store to Allow Self-Publishing With 90/10 Revenue Split

Discord, owners of popular voice/chat tool and recent storefront managers, have announced they’re going to allow developers to self-publish on their store, with a 90/10 revenue split. The news comes in the wake of the launch of Epic’s game store, which offers developers a similarly favourable deal. It seems Steam will have a lot of catching up to do in the future, as more and more people wrap their heads around the fact that their service is simply not worth the cost.

Both Epic and Discord have a frighteningly large install base, but obviously, not every one of those who use their software will translate into a store user. It’s still a whole lot better than starting from scratch. According to a post on their blog, the Discord folks have been keeping their ear to the ground for a while, and they discovered a lot of developers don’t feel like digital storefronts in this day and age are earning their cut (which is an ungodly 30%).

So they’re going to allow everyone to self-publish on their store, and they’re going to take 10% for the services they provide. The 10% will cover their operating costs, and they’re going to “explore lowering it by optimizing our tech and making things more efficient”. Which probably means their cut could drop in the future, if they manage to get to the point where they run it with less human effort.

Of course, if you’re an indie developer or a supporter of indie devs, it’s worth mentioning that itch.io still take as little as 0% of the sales profits from games on their store. It’s not one to give Steam a run for its money, but it’s a warm and cuddly place which tries to do good by both developers and customers, more than any other store out there.