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Comment by dyeje | Hacker News Reader

Discord trying to take on Epic and Steam to create a marketplace was perhaps the worst move I've seen in the past few years. Steam is entrenched and Epic is printing money.

Discord needs to capitalize on its greatest asset: a massive community. To me, the obvious path forward is doing Patreon like features for servers and perhaps trying to break into the streaming market.

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When Discord was making that move, Epic store did not exist, the period when both stores existed was rather short and unevnentful, discord's being on clear decline, epic's not even bare bones and tossing money on any and all early access games in sight.

Why isn't Epic buying Discord?

What would that get them? It's already clear that Discord's community doesn't translate into success for an associated game distribution platform.

They were announced within months of each other [1][2]. That means both companies were planning their stores at the same time. I find it hard to believe Discord did not have any idea about Epic's store, considering they were simultaneously raising a funding round and talking to VCs about their plans (who you would think would be aware of Epic's move). I suppose it's possible Epic played their cards close to the chest though.

[1] Discord Announcement https://blog.discordapp.com/the-discord-store-beta-9a35596fd...

[2] Epic Announcement https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/announcing-the-epic-...

They have added more streaming features in recent months, so perhaps this is their pivot.

Their idea of patrons is boosting servers for perks which is sort of similar but the price of boosting is far higher than Patreon sponsorship and there's no way afaik for servers to customise what the booster gets as reward (the whole server gets the reward)

I have noticed them pushing the streaming features, and I think it's a brilliant play. Cut Twitch out of the equation entirely, stream and monetize your community directly in Discord. I think it's also interesting in that Discord servers can be private so you open up the possibility of allowing content that Twitch shuns due to its public broadcast nature (e.g. adult content).

They already have Patreon-like features for servers where you can "boost" a server with tokens you get from your Nitro (premium) subscription. These "boosts" allow the whole server to get more stuff.

Honestly I'm surprised they didn't try to enter the space by buying an existing competitor. GoG, or Humble maybe.

It might also be possible they're trying to build critical mass to get bought by some gaming company. Perhaps Amazon for Twitch integration? MS in some bold attempt to buy a userbase for their PC game store?

I don't think it's possible for them to buy GoG or Humble. GoG is was created by and is owned by CD Projekt, and Humble is owned by IGN.

Realistically, I don't think they could have purchased either of those.

GOG is a rather niche store with a strategy contrary to Epic Games (in fact, there is this popular item on a functionality wishlist: https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/do_not_get_bought_by_epic_...). For most customers, GOG is a secondary store mostly due to its DRM policy which I don't see a chance of Epic Games keeping if they were to purchase the store (if anything, due to Fortnite). GOG isn't really profitable currently, but selling it to Epic Games of all companies would risk PR and could cause skilled developers to leave CD Projekt. It wouldn't make sense for both Epic Games and CD Project.

Meanwhile, Humble Store does pretty well, and I don't think IGN is interested in selling it.

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