For a platform where 93% of users are gamers, Discord's focus on gaming decisions is practical and wise.

The rapid growth of the domestic casual gaming market has led to more overseas companies entering the small game platform arena. After YouTube announced the upcoming launch of small games, another social platform, Discord, also made a new move. Its CEO, Jason Citron, released an open letter at the end of May, emphasizing Discord's focus on multiplayer gaming, improving player communication efficiency, and key areas such as small games.

When discussing the future of the gaming industry, he mentioned, "Gaming has become the largest form of entertainment in the pseudo world, surpassing the combined scale of the film and music industries, and is the fastest-growing entertainment industry. Multiplayer games will be the future of entertainment, and cross-platform gaming will be a prerequisite for people to play together, which has already begun and is just the beginning."

Discord's shift in company focus is due to its respect for user habits. Citron also announced in his blog that Discord's monthly active users (MAU) have exceeded 200 million, with over 90% of them being gamers.

He pointed out, "New technologies will be the catalyst for innovation in game development, and great ideas will come from many places. Big games will become even bigger, and independent game innovation will explode, resulting in more games than any of us can imagine. We recognize the need to shift our focus from a broad community-centered chat application to a place that helps people deepen their gaming and common interest friendships."

Citron believes that Discord can play a unique and important role in the future gaming industry, focusing on making it easier and more fun for people to chat and hang out before, during, and after playing games, and helping these game developers realize their creativity.

In the near future, Discord will truly focus on three key areas: improving the speed of player communication with friends; expanding Discord's voice, video, and streaming capabilities to more devices; and opening up more platform capabilities to more creative developers.

Today, Discord has covered console, PC, and mobile gaming platforms, and has been working hard to improve the speed, functionality, and reliability of Discord. Players can now chat directly on consoles and stream games from Xbox to Discord.

In the open letter, Citron announced three things to support game releases and small game platforms, which are "things to be done this year."

Game Quest, helping games with influencer marketing

Game Quest, which was previously announced, is essentially similar to the task feature on content-based streaming platforms, but specifically focuses on game promotion. The specific process involves game publishers or developers submitting task promotion applications to Discord, and then users can accept tasks and create content according to the requirements to receive task rewards based on the impact of the content.

Users can also participate in game quests through user activities, live broadcasts, and other methods, and through social fission, they can make more people become game promoters. According to Citron's blog, games such as "The Finals," "Genshin Impact," and "PUBG" have already been released on the Discord platform and have received good feedback.

In fact, there are similar forms in China, where mainstream short video platforms have corresponding game promotion tasks, which have a relatively large impact on the initial traffic of new games. For example, the popular game "The Dust White Forbidden Zone" from Xishanju obtained a large amount of traffic and user attention through a large number of derivative content placed on TapTap, helping the game reach the second place on the national iOS free list.

However, unlike many platforms, Discord itself has many user-owned channels, and even has dedicated game channels. The details of the quest rules have not been announced, such as whether promoting games will compete with games in the channels? How will quest tasks in private channels be managed? These are still undecided matters.

Embedded Application SDK, creating a cross-platform small game platform

Perhaps more worthy of developers' attention than the game quest is the upcoming Embedded Application SDK. Citron mentioned that this SDK can "allow developers to bring new games and applications directly into Discord, allowing players to enjoy them with friends instantly."

In other words, Discord will become a platform similar to WeChat Mini Games or Douyin Mini Games.

Developers can use this SDK to release a game that is available across Discord desktop, mobile, and web versions, adding multiplayer functionality without the need for users to download additional content. They can also use Discord servers for creative prototypes, test different builds, and collect feedback from users.

Discord in-app purchase mode is coming soon

In addition, Discord will also support various monetization models, including one-time purchases, subscription services, and in-app purchases, but it will also integrate payment channels for game monetization through one-time purchases or subscription services (this feature is expected to be released later). However, Discord has not yet announced specific details such as the revenue sharing ratio for in-app purchases.

Hosting App Selection Competition, encouraging developers to create games on Discord

To encourage more high-quality game developers to join Discord, the platform has launched an App Selection Competition, which has already closed for registration. Users can vote for the registered games starting from June 27, and the finalists are expected to be announced in July.

Winners have the opportunity to win up to $30,000 in prize money and other prizes. In addition to user voting, the competition will also be judged by professionals such as Ann-Marie Harbour, Discord's game development director, Emil Kjaehr, product and partnership manager at Funday Games, and Dustin Clingman, product manager at Sony Interactive Entertainment.

In January of this year, there were reports that Discord would lay off 17% of its staff. At that time, Citron stated, "We are growing too fast, and the size of our staff is growing even faster. Since 2020, it has grown fivefold, and as a result, we have taken on more projects and reduced operational efficiency. We are increasingly aware of the need to focus, improve our collaboration, and bring greater flexibility to our organization, which largely drove our decision to reduce the size of our staff."

During a GDC speech last year, Cherry Park, Discord's platform marketing manager, stated that its MAU had exceeded 150 million, with the majority being Generation Z users, and the core user group being young people aged 13-18. There were also reports that Microsoft planned to acquire Discord for $10 billion, but it did not materialize.

For a platform where 93% of users are gamers, Discord's focus on gaming decisions is practical and wise.

CEO Jason Citron said, "In the next decade, we believe that there will be another billion people playing multiplayer games, enjoying the kind of deep and rich experience that we all love. For us, providing fast, seamless, and powerful services for you to chat with your friends before, during, and after playing these games will be more important than ever, regardless of what device you play games on."

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