Think of Discord as like TeamSpeak and Slack combined. Streamers use Discord as a place to house their viewers and community when they're not streaming. Having a TwitchChat outside of TwitchChat is actually pretty powerful for streamers and a potentially crucial part of their setup. Twitch needed to invest in something like that.
Full Disclosure: I really like Discord, and use Twitch daily.
Discord has more easily manageable chat roles, eg: Moderator, Helper, Regular, Supporter, etc. Twitch chat is nothing more than simple IRC, and relies almost entirely on bots for the more complicated stuff. Discord also has voice chat built in, whereas Twitch has none for their chatters.
Discord also has a better documented API and libraries in a lot of languages. Overall, Discord (despite using an electron app...) is simply a better chatting product.
"despite being an electron app", I'm way happier using Discord than I am using either Hipchat or Skype.
Discord is a really well-put-together app, has text and voice chat that do their jobs, and get out of the way. The only complaint I have is that there's little to no support for searching history, but for an app focusing on live "community" chats, that seems a reasonable compromise.
I don't like browser based desktop apps. They have all the disadvantages of native apps but lose most advantages of HTML5 apps by being platform specific (apparently these is no discord desktop for linux) and require you to download an entire browser engine along with your app. You have to install them as opposed to just visiting an URL. They are not as lightweight as conventional desktop applications and don't perform as well. I'd rather see the browser getting more powerful. The cat is out of the bag already. If they're going to use a browser anyway, why can't they just run in my browser of choice along with all the other websites?
> apparently these is no discord desktop for linux
The Discord developers are working on this. It's not just web components but also native dependencies as well, so it's understandable I think if the Linux version comes in a little bit behind macOS and Windows versions where the majority of the gamer market is.
Next up, I'm starting to like when companies use desktop HTML5 apps. HTML and JavaScript does enable developers to move quickly with their interfaces, and I find them to be generally much more well-kept than native counterparts, where there's more inertia in making interface changes. A good comparison gamers will be familiar with is Steam. The Steam UI is written in a valve-proprietary, CSS-like language that I imagine is less performant than CSS. It's also REALLY buggy, so much so that I'm surprised that Valve has not already moved to an Electron app for Steam. If they did they'd be able to iterate quickly on interface improvements which they certainly don't do now.
I'm on the same boat, the only complaint being the lack of history search. And I like Discord so much that I switched our office from Hipchat to Discord, despite it being exclusively marketed towards gamers.
We have been completely happy with the switch, in special the ability to hop into voice chat with remote coworkers with one mouse click.
(Discord Dev here) Awesome to hear Discords a good fit for workplace environments too, we've heard a couple success stories around remote teams swapping. Search is a huge priority for us, but its also something we wanna spend time getting right. e.g. soon!
I haven't used Discord but if it's better than Slack you are sitting on a huge opportunity. I know your focus is gamers but the market Slack is targeting is huge. Their mobile app is garbage (at least on android). Always 'reconnecting'. Doesn't keep the recent chats offline and has to always fetch it from server. Missing/delayed notifications. Desktop app on OS X is better but it too has 'connection issues'.
It looks like we will be able to use Discord when you add search. Seriously, tell the management to think about it being an alternative to Slack. We are a paying Slack customer and while they are better than hipchat/IRC, it is far from perfect.
I've said it before and I'll say it a thousand times more, a 'business-oriented' rebrand of discord (basically ditch all the gamery shit and allow people to host their own servers on their own hardware) would basically be pure profit.
Remote startup checking in here - we're in the gaming industry and Discord has been a perfect fit for us. We love it.
Our top "wanted" features right now are video chat/screenshare, so that we can drop Hangouts entirely, and search. We wish we could pay you guys. Seriously.
I stated that transparently just to say that it was one, not that it isn't a well done one. I actually am running a Canary build for Linux of Discord and have had almost no issues with it, and any problems have been fixed very transparently.
Discord is also arguably a better implementation for team chat than Slack. Being able to jump in a room and have audio session out of the box alone is huge advantage compared to Slack.
> Discord also has a better documented API and libraries in a lot of languages. Overall, Discord (despite using an electron app...) is simply a better chatting product.
Better documented APIs and libraries than IRC? That’s not just quite a stretch, it’s literally a lie.
There’s IRC libs in every language you can imagine, usually dozens per language, with many perfectly documented ones, for every possible purpose.
IRC libraries are often gnarly and quirky at the best of times, and Twitch isn't all that close to standard IRC and never has been (plus, they've changed their proprietary extensions in non-backwards-compatible ways from time to time).
Twitch has been trying to hire front end devs and they're failing at hosting anything more than a video stream. They should have acquired discord, but instead the two failing companies curse and twitch are teaming up
Can you expand upon the "failing" nature of these companies? On first sniff, I'm catching the same scent that rises from the last several decades of people proclaiming Microsoft is on the way out.
Twitch won the war of becoming the go to video game streaming app, but didn't do so by being a great innovator. It just got there first and now is a monopoly due to it having all the audience. Discord is clearly a passionate endeavor made by gamers. They may have a way of really changing the video game streaming business if they would be willing.
Twitch at least "won out" over competitors by just being the least terrible streaming site for the most part. Now it's gliding along purely on inertia. They haven't innovated or brought anything important to the table, they're just the biggest player at that table
Curse I'm admittedly more than slightly biased on, since I used it basically from its inception back in the World of Warcraft days, because that's all it was initially
Curse was the least awful way to manage a bucket load of WoW addons, almost like how there are package managers for Linux today. It simply provided some central place to manage and keep mods updated, especially ones that would break whenever Blizzard patched it
Curse at least, slowly evolved into this hydra-like monster, trying to split itself off into as many different things as it could. The most insidious one I remember was when I reinstalled it (for trying out the newest World of Warcraft expansion at the time) it'd evolved far beyond what I expected
Upon relaunching my system it prompted me to add literally every friend I had across Skype, Steam and League of Legends. While also overlaying its voice chat system when playing certain games (League and TF2 come to mind)
Keep in mind I never used any of these features, it was simply new garbage that Curse added to try and stay "relevant"
TDLR The site is riddled with glitches and they've done the bare minimum with their pipeline. They literally cannot fix their chat system, but somehow their video streaming works? That's like the first thing you learn how to make using JavaScript.. I feel like they have so little to offer, it's only a matter of time before gamer, tech-savvy, word of mouth, linking type of people use another platform where browsing for channels is easy, there are featured streams, aggregate streams, non-gaming streams, forums, profiles, private messages, and all the normal stuff you see on a website nowadays. Hacker news is yet another example of a bad front-end. Amazon and facebook are bloated, and soundcloud is in the same boat too, they literally just cannot realize what users want, and at this point the higher-ups will only focus on squeezing revenue out while the app is still relevant. Lost all startup mentality before they actually made something great. Sure it's viral but so is the "blue or yellow dress" and tons of other bs
It looks like they do have "whispering" but I still literally cannot browse the site without it crashing. I feel like users are just abusing the free bandwidth and hosting capability, similar to soundcloud and youtube
I am amazed Discord itself has not been acquired yet. It looks like it was effectively designed to be acquired. They have no functional business, and have to be in the market. I've commented before I expected someone like Twitch to pick them up. Maybe Twitch didn't like the price?
I actually disagree that Discord doesn't have a functional business. They have massive growth and many many top teams, streamer personalities etc use their services.
If Discord becomes a critical component to the content creators of the whole gaming ecosystem, there's going to be plenty of revenue opportunities.
As I just said, and you confirmed: Discord doesn't have a functional business. Discord currently makes no money. "Opportunites" are just that, opportunities. A lottery ticket is an opportunity, but it is not a business.
Discord promises it will always be free with "no gotchas". It specifically notes no "slot limitations" as an example of that, which indicates premium tiers are unlikely. They promise to never charge for core functionality. Presumably they may be able to do some sponsored promotion of some sort, but banner ads are probably out.
The revenue plan they mention is here: "In the future there will be optional cosmetics like themes, sticker packs, and sound packs available for purchase." And I have not ever seen an emoji pack for a chat service as an appealing sales item that's going to fund a startup. I'm super skeptical of this, and it's why I don't use it.
But, it'd make a solid acquisition for a company like Twitch that has a shoddy/simple chat function and needs something better in the gaming space.
If Discord can keep up the growth, things like stickers, emojis, and sound packs could pull in good revenue. Also, the gaming community is already used to paying for these items on sites like Twitch
I have to admit, Slack and Discord are much nicer to use than IRC - even something like IRCCloud (and I'm a relatively happy paying customer of IRCCloud).
It's probably due to location. LINE is absolutely dominant in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and a few other Asian markets. None of my friends in America use it really. Facebook messenger is clearly watching LINE closely though.
It's not really totally separate. Discord is a web app and you can run it in chrome. The only feature that you lose is push-to-talk, last I looked.
Granted, a lot of people will run the electron-based desktop app (which packages the web site), but IIRC, there's a plugin for twitch emotes for it too.
> And I have not ever seen an emoji pack for a chat service as an appealing sales item that's going to fund a startup.
You underestimate gamers as a market. Valve's built a thriving business on virtual hats. Twitch sells access to premium emotes and a wider range of username colors as a subscription upgrade. "Cosmetic purchases" are huge.
Discord could also do what Twitch does and let streamers offer recurring donation options to their fanbases, in exchange for perks like being able to talk during restricted times (eg. during large streams) and custom community-specific stickers.
I'm not that sure about Valve. What they actually have for hats now is a system that withdrawals short of casino — you can't buy the thing you want, instead, you buy a "crate" that may (randomly) contain it, or other item.
My thinking is that hats aren't that profitable without these kinds of tricks, and Steam effectively sponsored everything that happened at Valve before they implemented "gambling".
I get where you're coming from, but this is definitely not the case. Valve recently banned all gambling sites from using their APIs, so they're all shut down by now.
And if you refer to crates of random items as gambling, they've also filled in that gap with the Steam Marketplace where you can buy individual items for market-dictated prices from other Steam users, where Valve takes a portion of the money the items are sold for.
This business is extremely profitable. Looking at their game Dota 2 for example where they recently hosted the world's largest e-sports tournament, where the pricepool were completely funded by the players of Dota 2 through in-game virtual items. This pricepool were over $20,000,000 USD, funded through in-game purchases where 25% of the items price would go to the pricepool, and the rest would go to Valve. That is $60,000,000 USD that Valve profited in the span of two months, for one of their games, in one of their tournaments. Valve hosts 4 tournaments per year for this game.
Looking at the pricepool of their previous tournaments ( http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments ), we can see that this amount just keeps increasing year after year.
My point is that what Valve does with in-game items is similar to what certain mobile games do with time/pay-walls and how casinos exploit certain aspects of our psychology. And if you do not practice this "shady stuff", it is not that profitable…
# Crates
Crates or doubling, tripling, etc. item's cost. Say I want a certain hat, on average, I'll need to pay multiple times (crate contains 5 other items, but successive crates do not yield duplicates in most recent Dota 2 versions, so worst case you pay 6 times a price).
# Steam Marketplace
Adds at least 30% to item's cost, since you buy with real-world dollars, but sell for "Valve Dollars" (only usable in Steam, no withdrawals), this is effectively paying more for a single item (at least 30% more expensive which is Valve's margin for Steam purchases of non-Valve titles).
In addition, Valve makes purchases non-tradable via Marketplace for a period of time (multiple months, usually) since original purchases for "preventing fraud". I see it as "incentivising gambling with crates", though.
# Third-party site
These were probably shut down because they involved real money, so Vavle could be potentially helping organise casino/bookmaking businesses from legal standpoint. It's all fine with Steam Money from marketplace.
So, yes, it is extremely profitable, probably orders of magnitude more profitable than "honest" selling where transaction is "pay money, receive item".
# Regarding TI
It is incredible how much money it made. It is as incredible as how Valve decided to split matchmaking pool for months with International Ranked to boost prize pool, so you had to pay $10 to go into faster queue.
You do realise it is completely backwards, right?
The crates were first to arrive, only after that the real money market came along. Sure, the boxes themselves were a little scammy, but it was not like it meant anything gameplay wise, unlike most of in-game purchases ever - where you have to continually feed money to be able to keep up
Not sure what you mean by "real money market", Steam Community Market? Or ability to put in money for creates in TF2? Because in TF2 you first would randomly receive items for just playing or achieving certain goals. Then they added creates which would also randomly drop and you'd need to buy a key to unlock some random stuff inside. Not sure on current situation, haven't played for years now.
In the beginning of Dota 2, you were able to buy item directly, now you either need to go to Commumity Market, or buy crates from Valve. Check out dota2.com/store — there is either half a year old sets, or crates for new ones. Even older items are not in the shop and I believe w/ever you unlock from crates is not tradable for quite some time.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there seems to be no way to buy particular items directly, at least not newer ones. (Exceptions are $30+ arcana quality sets which bring a lot of money as they are, so no need to increase price with "gambling".)
You can generally buy the majority of items you want directly and it's often actually cheaper than buying 200 crates to get some item with a 0.5% chance.
I guess I don't know what you mean by functional business. For me they have built an incredibly valuable asset that has grown enormously and will probably continue to do so.
Amazon is another company with opportunities to make profit, but they traditionally haven't done much of that, eschewing that for just growing value.
In the years when Amazon was not turning profit, would you consider it a non-functional business?
I don't see how they're going to extract enough revenue to keep the lights on and pay the staff. This isn't the same as Amazon reinvesting money that would otherwise be profits.
Curse has tendrils in dozens if not hundreds of niche gaming sites, all with ravenously loyal fans with really high usage rates. When I was a kid I wanted to improve one of their data visualizations so I sent an admin an email about it and they never got back to me :-(.
Edit: I really hope their isn't a consolidation of gaming communities like Twitch is trying to do because it's only going to pander to the lowest common denominator, which in gaming tends to be absolutely cringeworthy.
With Microsoft buying Beam and Google maybe doing more with YouTube streaming, I'd say at least the streaming part of the market doesn't look like it will consolidate further, but rather split up more, away from only Twitch.
I hope that the market is able to support all of them, and we see robust competition.
From what I can tell, streamers have no issue streaming on both twitch and youtube, and it mostly comes down to content restrictions as to which they use as their primary (twitch is fairly strict about streamers doing something 'creative', I think to avoid cam girl like activity).
I will be interested who comes out on top. You really have 3 large backend competing. AWS with Twitch. I would think Beam would be hosted on Azure and Google do its own thing. I am not sure how much traction google is going to get, from my knowledge twitch pays much better than google ads, per consumer.
Because as far as I know it has the only useful mod management tool. It's nice, works and doesn't cause problems. Every time I come back to WoW, there's the Curse client, ready to help me get my mods and settings all sorted again. It has never failed me.
Are you able to say why you think Curse is terrible?
That's a bit of an overstatement. It's very slow and, like any ClickOnce application, is a pain to get working under Wine.
Searching around there were apparently better tools, but Curse shut down their access. Imagine if GitHub were to stuff their desktop client full of ads and then require you to use that instead of the Git CLI.
And if they do merge it with Curse Voice (as they claim to plan to) then I expect it will stop working entirely...
For syncing/backups you can just symlink Interface/Addons and WTF to somewhere in Dropbox/Owncloud, no need for a specific application (and subscription) for that.
Full disclosure: A few years ago I published an add-on on Curse and apparently I still have free premium ~80% of the year after that. I still use their client because they're the only game in town these days, sadly.
Curse has a not-bad generic mod client, but many games have homegrow utilities that blow it out of the water. Many MC launchers or ModOrganizer for Skyrim come first to mind.
the semi-irony here is their source-project management site for addon developers is called "curseforge".
I use curse mostly to handle addons for games I play a lot (world of warcraft primarily). Every now and then, when I bump into some terrible interface on their client or bad practice by their business managers, I have wondered how much work it would be to move to an open addon publication system. If you get all the addon authors to move to a different storage platform for their actual addons like github, how much extra work would it be to build a client on top of that? The addons themselves are pretty much FOSS by definition - you can't distribute for-pay addons for WoW at least.
I imagine there'd be some scale issues, and github isn't really a distro network, but I'd bet the technical work could be done in a weekend.
CKAN, the package manager for Kerbal Space Program mods, works by having a central metadata repo that they accept pull requests against for adding metadata for new mods, and then the mods themselves are hosted on Github or SpaceDock or wherever.
It's not quite as automated as publishing a NPM or Composer package, but it's close and works well.
The precursor system to Curse was actually originally a shared SVN server a group of addon authors (called Wowace; still around somewhat) were using to collaborate on addon development. SVN checkouts were so convenient for distributing addons that the authors started using it to keep their own addons up to date, and then usage started to rapidly spread among "ordinary users".
Unfortunately, the traffic every time a new patch came out absolutely smashed the server and generated enormous bandwidth bills. Various attempts to fund it via donations or sponsorship went nowhere.
Curse had been knocking around in various forms for a while (I think they were a guild at one point, and already had a failed pivot to a "gaming community" behind them), but they rose to prominence by, basically, taking over the SVN server and finding ways to keep the lights on.
Switching to github would be coming full circle in many ways. And it would have some advantages, but I'm not sure how happy github would be to act as a distribution network for addons.
Not that there's anything wrong with the Curse client from a user standpoint, but it might be worth someone's time to write a client that runs off of github. More open and all that.
I've seen quite a few large streamers getting paid to switch off Discord and promote Curse's chat client. If anything that's probably what Twitch is after but I'd be curious why they didn't pick up Discord then since it seems to be more widely used.
I agree. I have been a loyal user of Curse for years but when they released their app I didn't see the value and didn't want to install an attack vector on my pc. I still go to Curse, sometimes several times a week but definitely it has become a worse experience over the years.
As for Discord... my guild leader switched our raid team from Teamspeak and there was some acrimony because a guild member refused to install Discord as he felt strongly that it was a security threat and malware.
I did try to substantiate these claims but couldn't find proof one way or the other.
As a precaution I've resized my hard drive and installed a separate Windows for gaming and encrypted each partion separately to isolate Discord from my personal files.
Several weeks into using Discord I think it is better than Teamspeak for overall features but in a raid situation with 20 on simultaneously the quality isn't as good as paying for a private Teamspeak server. Having said that though Discord is free and allows for a much richer experience so if they can sort out voice reliability and quality it will be a compelling proposition.
I still have concerns as to the security of Discord as their website pretty much brushes over the topic but they do offer two factor for what it's worth... but I can't raid with my guild without it so I'm stuck using it.
Twitch is dying? They had 258k+ people watching The International. There were 130k watching an EULCS quarterfinal today. And those are just a couple of streams of the thousands that are online at any given time. Not to mention the popular streamers who have 10 of thousands of subs who pay $5+ a month which Twitch gets part of. Twitch is most definitely not "dying."
What you say is true, but "thousands that are online at any given time" doesn't accurately reflect what's going on. First of all, I would think most of streams are 0-10 viewers. Then we have people that stream to multiple services simultaneously (most programming streams do this and majority of people are not watching them on twitch).
They don't pay to watch, they pay to support the streamer.
Most streamers have subscriber/donation/cheer notifications appear on-screen in some way. Making partner on Twitch (which enables subscriptions) requires the streamer to have a consistent number of viewers each time they stream, and they must stream fairly often.
It's not uncommon to see streamers with a fairly sizeable number of subscribers any given month.
This guy is a good example of a club. He is more akin in building a group of followers that like the same games. He even has a site dedicated in building this community. his stream is basically what facilitates a common identity.
The best way to think of it is paying to be a member of a private club to meet people to game with.
Alright, I understand that. You suggest it's an ethical decision rather than economic; that streamers deserve the support. But why?
I fund a few YouTubers on patreon, because they create content in the traditional sense, e.g., research, writing, filming, editing, etc. That's hard work.
Streamers don't do any of that; they literally sit in their basement and play video games all day. Why do they need support?
Sure, watching a stream is entertaining, but when I think "supporting a content creator", I have to imagine that my support enables their creativity in some way. Does a streamer with more support produce better content than a streamer with less support?
The only thing I can think of is more support might allow a streamer to devote more of their time to streaming.
> Streamers don't do any of that; they literally sit in their basement and play video games all day.
You seem to be missing what they do: they are entertainers. They aren't "playing video games" all day; that's just the medium. People come to see the entertainer. The most successful streamers create a unique character that people want to see, often regardless of the specific game being played.
Some people also integrate legitimate review and and critique into some of their shows (not to be confused with the current plague of "reviews" that are actually paid native advertising).
> Sure, watching a stream is entertaining
See, you do understand. Being an entertainer is work. Just like the standup comic, the better streamers/youtubers know they are putting on a show. It may be unscripted, but that may make the job harder requiring a quicker wit.
> The only thing I can think of is more support might allow a streamer to devote more of their time to streaming.
That's the point. If you like someone's work and want more, paying them so they can spend more time creating is a good idea.
(as others have said, some are also a kind of club/community manager where they also maintain other things such as a community game server or website/forum)
I support him because the streams and let's plays that he does are games that I would like to play. But have very little time to actually play due to work, family and life. My support, along with many others allows him to stream full time, and I am able to enjoy the games and his streams during work, so I get to see the game content that I otherwise wouldn't have time to play myself. And for the cost of a game per year. It's a pretty cheap way to enjoy games that I otherwise wouldn't.
>You suggest it's an ethical decision rather than economic; that streamers deserve the support. But why?
I don't suggest any such thing. I think supporting a streamer or not is pretty amoral. It's all about whether or not you feel that you would like to contribute financially to a given streamer whose work you enjoy.
As for why they need support? I don't think many people would say that streamers universally "need" anything. It's about whether or not you personally would like to give money to a person who brings you entertainment. You admit that there are a few YouTubers who you support on Patreon. Many Twitch streamers (most that I've seen) are also YouTubers and produce content there based on their streaming.
At the end of the day, I think your misconception is that you think of "supporting the streamer" as a transaction in payment for content produced and that entertainment is not content (or in some other way not worth supporting in the same way that traditional "content" is).
The question is simple: Is the content entertaining to me? Do I want to show my appreciation for the entertainment? That's all.
Personally, I have not subscribed to any Twitch streamers and I don't intend to. I appreciate what they offer, but I do not feel compelled to subscribe. And I don't think there's any moral quandary there.
Why people use patreon/twitch/... is an interesting question, and I don't think there is a good logical answer or a right/wrong, as with a lot of entertainment-related spending.
Some questions one might ask to challenge your example (but I don't want to imply you are wrong, it's your money you are giving to people you don't have to pay, it's your personal decision what you do with it):
Are your example YouTubers directly spending money on research/editing/filming, or are they also "just" investing time? Why is time spending research more deserving of money than time spend streaming if you enjoy the output of both?
How does money enable their creativity in ways that are not "less time spend making money in other ways = more time for content tantalor enjoys"?
With the creators I support on Patreon, I don't really think or know about how much time they spend on what they are doing (and some of them don't have a day job, so one might argue that they apparently already had enough money and my contribution doesn't enable anything more for me).
> Streamers don't do any of that; they literally sit in their basement and play video games all day. Why do they need support?
The way you chose to phrase this hints at your opinion towards playing a lot of video games.
I personally have subscribed to a tournament host and various (ex-)professional players at times just because I valued the content they produce enough to be okay with giving money to them.
> Does a streamer with more support produce better content than a streamer with less support?
In many cases yes they do, because higher income can make way for dedicated streaming hardware, better gaming hardware, better internet connections and probably other things too.
People find value in watching them play. You don't. So don't pay them. If they get paid, they get paid. A guy living in a cabin in the woods isn't likely to find what you do to be worth a dime either. Doesn't mean there aren't services he'd pay for.
There are streamers that have people who have subbed at $4.99 a month for 12+ months, upwards of some I've seen at 30+ months. Every 12 months is called a twitchaversery.
Streamers can choose different features that are reserved for subscribers only, but with maybe the exception of a few large events (at least in the past some gated HD streams behind the subscription) it's more like perks for people supporting the streamer, not for access to the content.
Patreon is also not uncommon, + with the potential of higher amounts with better perks.
I feel like Ventrillo and Teamspeak were marketing themselves to businesses and tried to cram in enterprise features instead of polishing their interface or smoothing out rough edges. Conversely discord markets to gamers and if you've ever talked to an indie dev you'll have had your ear chewed off on the value gamers put on "polish".
Regardless, props to discard. I've never used it but I downloaded it today due to this thread (which is ironic because Twitch purportedly bought curse to prevent that very thing!).
Where is the option to host the Discord server yourself? Where is the Linux client? Is there an overlay that works on more than a tiny handful of games and doesn't click-jack? If it's so great where it does at least work, how come they have to bribe streamers to use it?
Discord brings a new coat of paint, but nothing of any substance.
Was this basically an acquihire? No price disclosed. I would be very surprised if this was any kind of successful acquisition, given Curse has taken $60m in funding.
