How Discord Makes Money

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Discord is communications platform that enables users to interact with each other via text, voice chat, and video calls. 

DISCORD WEBSITE

While Discord initially catered to gamers, it now serves all kinds of use cases and boasts over 150 million active users. 

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In 2011, founder Jason Citron, at the age of 26, sold his first company to Japanese game maker GREE for a combined $104 million. 

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He used some of the cash to launch a gaming studio. Unfortunately, its flagship title Fates Forever never really took off. 

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The 2015 launch of Discord arose from his frustrations with other chat applications, which were clumsy and extremely complicated to navigate.

GOOGLE PLAY STORE

Discord has since raised close to $1 billion in funding while being valued at $14.7 billion. Microsoft even tried to purchase the firm in 2021. 

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But how does Discord, which is free to use, actually make money? 

Subscriptions

Discord sells a subscription called Nitro for $9.99/month or $99.99/year, granting users access to various premium features.

DISCORD WEBSITE

Game Sales

In 2018, Discord unveiled its own game store to compete against the likes of Steam.  It takes a 10-percent cut from each sale.

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Server Boosting

Users can up the functionality and performance of servers  (= chat groups) for which Discord charges a monthly fee.

DISCORD SUPPORT

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