Discord, a San Francisco-based voice, video, and text chat app for gamers, has raised $150 million in funding at a $2.05 billion valuation according to The Wall Street Journal. Investment group Greenoaks Capital led this round of funding. And Firstmark, Tencent, IVP, Index Ventures, and Technology Opportunity Partners also participated in this round of funding.
This round of funding comes on the heels of Discord preparing to start selling games. A few months ago, Discord launched the Discord Store for games, which is going to compete against the Steam Store. And with this round of funding, Discord is going to expand the scope of its store.
One of the best features of the Discord Store for developers is that the revenue is going to be split 90/10 rather than the industry standard of 70/30. This might incentivize developers to put their games on the Discord Store despite the smaller audience. Epic’s game store started offering an 88/12 split as of December 4th.
“Earlier this year though, we noticed a change happening in the game industry. We talked to a lot of developers, and many of them feel that current stores are not earning their 30% of the usual 70/30 revenue share,” said Discord CEO and founder Jason Citron in a blog post earlier this year. “Because of this, we now see developers creating their own stores and launchers to distribute their games instead of focusing on what’s really important — making great games and cultivating amazing communities.”
Photo: Discord
Discord currently has 200 million registered users and it will continue focusing on its chat service. The chat service is free for all users, but there is a $9.99 per month subscription option called “Nitro,” which offers unlimited access to games and premium chat features.
And Discord previously raised a $50 million round of funding at a $1.65 billion valuation in April 2018. Following the latest round of funding, Discord has raised more than $280 million in funding.
