Discord Opens Activities Platform to All Developers, Expanding In-App Gaming and Features

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

GamesBeat Next is connecting the next generation of video game leaders. And you can join us, coming up October 28th and 29th in San Francisco! Take advantage of our buy one, get one free pass offer. Sale ends this Friday, August 16th. Join us by registering here. 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."

Discord's Activities are now open to all interested developers

Own a OnePlus phone? You can now try out this exclusive Spotify feature Key Takeaways Discord boasts over 150 million monthly active users and offers native social experiences called Activities. Activities are web apps hosted within Discord for users to stream media, play games, and more. Activities are now open to all interested developers via Discord's Embedded App SDK. Instant messaging and VoIP service Discord, an established platform for friends to come together and game, chat, or just hang out, boasts over 150 million monthly active users worldwide (as of January 2023). Apart from simply helping gamers connect with each other while playing multiplayer games externally, the platform offers games and social experiences natively too. Activities, as they're called, were first released back in 2022, and allow users to stream movies, videos, music and play multiplayer games together within Discord. Under the hood, these Activities are essentially web apps hosted within Discord in an iframe. Related What is Discord: How to get started with the social messaging platform What makes Discord stand above the rest, and what's it have to do with gaming? The platform is now opening up Activities to all developers with its Embedded App SDK. "Whether you're creating games, music experiences, or other interactive Activities with the Embedded App SDK, you can now build, launch, distribute, get discovered, and monetize natively on Discord," wrote the platform in a blog post. The platform currently boasts roughly 45 Activities, with the likes of YouTube and Rythm to watch videos and listen to music, respectively, countless games, meme builders and more. This number will likely skyrocket with Discord opening up the Embedded APP SDK. In its blog post, Discord indicated that it rolled out the SDK as a developer preview selectively earlier this year, and it found it to be a hit. "We're seeing incredible early traction with early access Activity developers like Death by AI, Krunker Strike FRVR, and Farm Merge Valley. Considering that Discord is already laden with gamers, the platform is the perfect spot for game developers to experiment with fresh ideas and offer them to a ready-made audience that can provide real-time insights and immediate feedback about them. US, UK, and EU developers can monetize their Activity Source: Discord Developers with discoverable Activities can now offer one-time purchases or subscriptions directly within the app, giving users that want to unlock premium features or content an option to do so and generating revenue by monetizing their creations. In addition to in-app purchases, developers can also leverage Discord's existing Premium Apps monetization features, including Durable SKUs, Consumable SKUs and analytics tools. If you're a developer looking to get on-board Discord's Activities, the platform's 'build' page is where you'll find the most relevant information.