Discord’s adding a new commerce feature that will let users buy digital items for games they might not even play. Starting with Marvel Rivals, users will be able to search, buy, wishlist, and gift cosmetics without ever leaving the platform.
It works like this. Starting today, Marvel Rivals will have a new store page accessible directly within the game’s official Discord server. There you can browse and buy offerings without launching the game client. Users can also create wishlists for specific items that will appear in their profile, where friends can also view and buy them. Discord cofounder and chief technology officer Stan Vishnevskiy tells The Verge that it’s the wishlist and gifting aspect of the new store that offers the most opportunity to both the platform and game developers.
“On any single day, 20 percent of purchases are gifts,” he said, talking about Discord’s current shop that sells cosmetics to zhuzh up user profiles. “And on holidays, it can spike to way over 30 percent.” With these new store features, the team saw an opportunity to let users extend that generosity beyond Discord-specific borders. Discord also has the opportunity to take a cut of the purchases but did not disclose the specifics of how that revenue will be split. Vishnevskiy said that the goal is to provide incremental revenue and value to developers. “We’re not ultimately just taking a cut for something,” he said.
That value comes in making the purchasing experience simple and seamless while adding the potential for new player acquisition. Vishnevskiy said that buying items for yourself within Marvel Rivals is fairly straightforward, but it can be tedious trying to buy for someone else and impossible, outside of gift cards, if you don’t already play the game. “We all have friends that play games that we don’t play, and they love things that we don’t always love,” Vishnevskiy said. “This gives an opportunity for a game developer to reach the friends of people that could now potentially be customers.”
The shop is available in US currency and only on the desktop app, but Vishnevskiy said that bringing the offering to consoles and mobile is “top of mind” for the team. As for why the feature started with Marvel Rivals, Vishnevskiy says it was a natural fit. “They have the largest gaming server on Discord, with over 4 million people that they constantly run events with and make reasons [for players] to show up.”
But while Marvel Rivals is the only game that has this feature right now, it won’t only be the big AAA games and publishers able to take advantage of this program. Vishnevskiy spoke about Discord’s introduction of its social SDK earlier this year, which lets developers of all sizes integrate chat and other social features into their games. He said Discord’s in-game shop plan will follow the same route. “We’re starting with more AAA games, but our intent is to make sure this is available long term beyond them,” Vishnevskiy said.
In the current media landscape, media and gaming platforms are experimenting with ways to keep people engaged for longer to monopolize and thereby monetize their attention to varying degrees of success and user irritation. According to Vishnevskiy, this new feature isn’t designed to keep people on the Discord wheel, but something he says will enhance the already meaningful experiences players have on the platform. “Telling people, ‘Hey, your friend loves this game and they love this character, and if it’s their birthday, they would appreciate this.’ It’s something uniquely Discord can do,” he said.