Discord opens Activities, in-app games and features, to all developers

Discord announced today that it is opening development for Activities, its in-app ecosystem of apps and games, for all creators. This means that any developer can create, distribute and monetize apps on Discord via its Embedded Apps Software Development Kit. This means that Discord offers all developers an ecosystem on which to launch games and other software.

Discord first launched a developer preview of its Embedded Apps SDK earlier this year, with some early partners launching games and apps such as Death by AI, Farm Merge Valley and Krunker Strike FRVR. Developers can not only build and distribute their apps within Discord, but also monetize: Activities supports in-game or in-app purchases and marketplaces. Discord also offers different tiers of growth, with its platform fees going from 30% to 15% for the first $1 million in gross sales generated by a developer’s app.

GamesBeat spoke with Ben Shanken, Discord’s VP of product, about what opening up Activities means for both Discord itself and its users. Shanken noted that Discord has been building to the launch of its developer platform for sometime, even acquiring cloud startup Ubiquity6 with that specific intention: “This has been a multi-year project going back two, almost three years. From a very early point, we were committed and believed in the vision that we would have games embedded into discord that people could play before the game, after the game, during the game, so to speak.”

Earlier this year, Discord announced its intention to refocus on gaming and related hobbies, with CEO Jason Citron saying the company would “narrow our focus from broadly being a community-centric chat app to being a place that helps people deepen their friendships around games and shared interests.” Now the games and shared interests will have a direct pipeline to Discord’s communities.

What Discord brings to users and developers

Shanken noted that Discord offers something that most other platforms don’t: The gamers themselves. Discord has largely catered to and been focused on gaming communities. “Discord is where all the gamers are. It’s built by gamers, for gamers, it’s where we have 200 million monthly active users, and 90% of them play games every week. So if I’m a developer, and I’m building a game right now, and I’m already using Discord, I’m thinking, ‘This is where we already are, where the gamers already are.’ That’s the core value proposition.”

Shanken also added that Discord offers a direct way for developers to communicate with gamers. “Something we’re seeing happen more and more is that developers want to talk to their users. They can come up with new concepts. They can play, bounce ideas off of them and get unique feedback.”

He also noted that Discord’s communities were all interconnected. “The typical way that games grow virally is by getting people to share links with their friends, to invite all your friends to a game. Discord is unique in that there’s this like web of people that are connected together from group to group to group to group. When I’m playing, say, Farm Merge Valley, and my friends see that I play it, that presence will sort of broadcast across the system, causing these games to just sort of hop around. That doesn’t really exist in any form outside of Discord.”

Joshua Lu, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz on its a16z games team, also spoke with GamesBeat on what Discord offers to game developers they might not find elsewhere. “One thing that has been an ongoing challenge for the last few years in games is distribution. There are only a few distribution channels. They are more and more saturated all of the time, with thousands of games that launch every single year. It’s very hard for players to find games that they’d love to play or their friends would love to play.”

Lu added that Discord offers both discoverability amongst a large social platform, and developers can build upon their existing network on the platform when distributing the game. “Discord is the intersection of a platform that allows social communication, social interactivity, with a community that’s really excited to play games together. That, I think, is the big opportunity.”