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Decoded: How does Discord Make Money?

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martin nepster
Decoded: How does Discord Make Money?

In 2016, Discord made it clear to its users that they will never stuff their interface with ads to generate revenue. With a large fan base & ever emerging popularity among the gaming community, the temptation to earn millions & boost the Discord business model through ads must have been difficult to turn down for CEO & founder of Discord Jason Citron. Like many other apps, the question of how does Discord make money has relied mostly on capital investments. They have adopted a freemium model where core features are always free and accessible to all, but some value-added features are put up for users for an extra one-time or periodic fee.

Citron’s previous venture OpenFeint was based on a similar concept. It provided a social platform for gamers where they could maintain leaderboards, bet with virtual currencies and award achievements. OpenFeint was predominantly targeting mobile games & was eventually acquired by Japanese mobile gaming giant GREE for a fee of $104 million. The idea of the Discord came from the difficulties many users faced while connecting through VoIP. Citron wanted to create servers where users can connect and chat or speak to each other making them feel like they were sitting next to each other. Competing against the likes of TeamSpeak & Skype, it was going to be an uphill task.

How Does Discord Make Money?

In a first attempt to seek financial support from its users, Discord urged their loyal fan base to contribute to the company as a “THANK YOU” gesture. There was no hiding from the fact that the sole purpose to launch the Nitro feature was to address the core issue of how discord makes money! They made it very clear that they needed contributive help from their users to grow as a company. A little honesty hurt nobody. It was an appealing gesture. An excerpt from the Nitro launch article read “We wanted to give our Discord family an easy way to show support for Discord, grab a couple of nifty perks, and help us continue what we love doing: pouring our heart & soul into making a super wonderful chat & voice experience for gamers and communities alike”.

What is Discord Nitro?

As mentioned earlier in the Discord business model and promised by the company, the core feature of Discord remain completely free but for a premium fee of $4.99 per month or $49.99 annually, you can get a few value-added features such as customizable skins and larger upload capacity. Having cool animations and emojis and other stuff that normal people don’t have is pretty much a royal feeling for the premium users. Here are some things that Discord Nitro offers for the premium fee.

  • GIF Avatar for a profile. You can create your own customized GIF avatar for your profile picture. This GIF of you will show across all the text messages and all chat rooms where you converse with your friends.
  • Selective custom emojis. You can use a variety of emojis to express your feelings in all the chat rooms across all channels. You can also send these emojis in direct messages to your friends.
  • Increased upload limit. With Nitro, you can upload individual files up to 50mb as compared to non-Nitro users who have an upload limit of 8mb.
  • Nitro-badge. You get to brag about being premium by having a Nitro badge on your profile.
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