Discord becomes a cosmetic skin shop for live service games

Discord is adding a feature that allows players to buy skins and cosmetic items from specific live games directly within their Discord community hubs.

Discord becomes a cosmetic skin shop for live service games
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Senior Gaming Editor
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2-minute read time
TL;DR: Discord is launching an in-app store for buying and gifting cosmetic video game skins, starting with Marvel Rivals. This new feature leverages community engagement to boost sales and marks Discord's shift toward monetization ahead of its IPO, potentially impacting traditional game storefronts and microtransaction models.

Discord has announced that it will allow players to buy cosmetic items directly within the app.

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The popular chat app Discord is changing from a community chat app into something that's better designed to make money. The maneuver makes more sense when considering that Discord is expected to go public with an IPO sometime soon. In August, Discord got a new CEO--Jason Citron resigned and former King president and CFO Humam Sakhnini took the helm. Shortly after, the company introduced interactive ads accompanied by a new virtual currency called Orbs.

Now Discord is essentially becoming a storefront for digital video game skins. Discord is adding a store that allows users to buy Marvel Rivals skins and cosmetics directly from the game's Discord server. Users can also buy and gift skins to their friends, which could end up being a powerful community-driven spark for sales.

Discord will take a cut of each cosmetic sale, and we have to wonder what actual store operators like Valve and the console Big 3 think about this deal--does it undercut their microtransaction sales?

In a recent interview with The Verge, Discord's chief tech officer Stan Vishnevskiy says that Marvel Rivals is the biggest Discord server on the platform with over 4.1 million users.

The direct gift option is aimed at better matching up players with the content that they are most interested in, and to exploit the community-driven spark effect that can happen when users are able to freely share and showcase vanity options.

"We all have friends that play games that we don't play, and they love things that we don't always love. This gives an opportunity for a game developer to reach the friends of people that could now potentially be customers," Vishnevskiy said.

The biggest question we have now: What other game servers will get the same treatment, and when?