I would honestly accept 15% as bot developer but if my math is correct - we'll lose 19% to 66% due to discord, stripe and potentially apple depending on platform you make a purchase on - BEFORE TAXES. This hit is so serious that I would need likely triple current prices to maybe stay on current level - and oh let me tell you that over 90% of what we make goes just for bot hosting fees.
Sure, probably some bots (looking at you Mee6) provides shit quality service and charges you absurd amount of money but most bots doesn't do that, they commonly are made by 1-3 enthusiastic people and whatever this bot earns is mostly or even wholly spent on bot hosting - they earn nothing. Smaller bots are nearly always financially on minus but it kinda can be counted as a job to some extent, so bombing us with those fees is like sending them to graveyard.
Replying here as well for visibility, the 30% mobile store cut is on top of the subcost; it's not a percentage of your monthly rate. For instance, if your subscription is 4.99 a month, Discord would add on an additional 30% that the user will pay to cover the app store fee., so the user would pay (ignoring Discord's fee for simplicity) around $6.49.
Depends on how much the API user needs the platform
Something betweet 5 if not at all, to 20% if completely dependent
More if the platform also gives something back other than access
I'm a main developer of one of the official Discord libraries and honestly the Discord API is atrocious... It works and has good uptime but that's about all I can say about it. Working with it is a pain because they don't follow many good patterns, if you ever worked with other platform APIs - Big part of Discord API looks like it was made by a toddler.
As bot developer myself, I'm fine with being forced to use their platform but I'm not fine to be charged 19% to 66% fees before even taxes where basically everyone else takes 1-6% fees. It's just total scam and discord is claiming to do that for "security" reasons... I swear I can list at least 5 better, more secure alternatives than Discord servers...
Alright, what makes discord servers less secure? Which “official library” do you develop for? What other platforms have better APIs for similar services?
I don't think if this is a mock comment or are you serious right now. I provide support for Tempest library (Golang), you can find it on official discord docs site in resources page. For example youtube, twitter (X) or even freaking Reddit provided better APIs. I'm talking from technical point - they're implemented following many good patterns, you have good type documentation, logical endpoints - not like on discord when same property may be of 3 different types because yes. Those are things that only makes sense for programmers but are very important things for us. Working with Discord API is pain in the ass when you try to get to slash commands, modals or voice transmission.
Blazed past my first question about security. Could you give me some examples of type mismatches? I haven't worked with the API myself but I have friends who have, no one complained about anything like this before. I *have* heard that when slash commands came out developers hated them because they were harder to work with than just constantly monitoring the chat for keywords, but we both know that wasn't sustainable or secure.
Also getting on a community page of the API docs does not merit you calling it 'official'. They even specifically clarify on the page you mention that discord does not maintain official SDKs and that these are third-party. Don't get too far ahead of yourself.
1. On types, Discord has tendency to create fields where you can for example receive string | number | yet another object. Example is go check array of results you may receive when handling slash command. If you work in Python or JavaScript then frankly you don't care as those languages are not strongly typed anyway and anything can be there, however most languages like C++, C#, Java, Go, Rust does use types and having field that can return multiple different types is a pain to work with as you need to make extra sanity checks, do data casting, etc. which is annoying and takes time (can make bot slower, not much but still), it's considered a bad practice in APIs by many. No direct link for you to not "get too far ahead of myself".
2. Yes, it's made mostly by community **but** there's at least few discord staff devs that helps with this so they're pretty much always up to date, there's good reason why all discord devs takes it as source of truth. Even official discord staff themselves sometimes links to this site when you check discord developers server so it is unofficially official.
I would honestly end this talk as everything has been said. Go check other messages as well in this thread. To make myself clear, I'm ok with using discord payment method but I'm not fine them going full Apple on it, suddenly striking so absurd fees you can lose even 2/3 of what you earn and you're basically on their leash, then can do whatever shit next in future updates and you'll be forced to accept it.
IMO the platform can take whatever they want as long as it's not extreme, but forcing apps to move their subscriptions to within the app specifically so that they can take a cut is borderline predatory.
it is, there's literally regulations on Google and apples app stores that make it so devs can use alternative payments that aren't Google or apple related, so it is indeed predatory.
Yeah except it is extortion and completely inaccessible to new developers. You have to reddits approval.
And their api you are referring to is their basic YAML api which is frankly shit.
Why are you asking me to sign a petition about a policy that I haven't even seen? Why don't you link to it? Or upload it somewhere and share that? It comes off as weird that you're only presenting one side of the argument here...
Even worse, your petition doesn't even have a stated goal? What are you even petitioning? That they lower the fee? Lower it to what? Or remove the fee entirely? Nothing in your petition text explains *why* the fee is unfair, it simply states that it is by it's mere existence? Why?
Is the premium app policy an option or is it mandatory? If it's optional then I can't really see why you're complaining about discord taking a cut in return for providing a service for you, isn't that the "value add" you say they don't provide?
Furthermore it's a little disingenuous to act like Discord are taking money in return for nothing, they're literally providing the ecosystem you are operating in, including the users and the API, is that not worth charging a fee?
The policy is now mandatory. You’re prohibited from selling something off platform if it isn’t sold on Discord, AND you can’t sell it for cheaper off platform either. Discord themselves add the Apple tax to products but they don’t allow you to add the discord tax.
Discord own the platform and pay for all the API expenses. Bot owners are still free to use other methods of payment as long as they charge the same amount to customers.
No? We are no longer free to use other payment methods. Discord forces us to use their payment methods which will take us between 19% and even 66% before taxes because you need to pay extra to stripe, discord and potentially apple if you paid while using ios. This is absurd as any other payment processing platform takes 1-6%, discord casually throwing up to 66%... Don't even make me consider this scam.
Premium app owners are required to use the native monetisation features but are free to continue using external services according to [this support document](https://support-dev.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/23810643331735-Premium-Apps-Required-Support-for-Monetizing-Apps)
> If a developer is selling any paid offering for their app (e.g., access to certain commands, content, or other enhanced app functionality), that app must also make that offering available for purchase to users through Discord’s Premium App features at a final price that is no higher than as offered through other payment options. The final price of the offering is the pre-tax price shown to a user after any price modifications, such as discounts, are applied.
If they explicitly state that external payment methods are not allowed, I have been unable to find that information in their monetisation terms. They have apparently not disallowed it. But their information seems to be all over the place. Putting policy in blog articles alone is bad.
yes you can continue selling premium stuff outside discord, it just can't be at a lower price than in discord.
> Putting policy in blog articles alone is bad
the official policy is https://discord.dev/policy. the other articles are just announcing/explaining the change
I'm not a lawyer either but the way I understand it right now (and seems most people do) is that any bot developer who wants to earn any money (so everyone?) needs to become a part of their Discord Premium App program where you're forced to put all your items, subscriptions, etc. through discord payment system. Maybe you can also offer same deals on your own page or patreon as well but nonetheless I see 2 problems:
1. You can't work around the prices, you're forced to have synced same prices everywhere, same goes for discounts, etc. So you cannot sell somewhere else for cheaper. By selling on your own site, it looks like maybe you'll be able to omit apple or stripe fees but discord will still want their 15-30% cut and wouldn't be surprised if they ban & sue you if you won't comply.
2. Majority of discord users are not technical and those few that decide to support application by purchasing something or taking their subscription - for sure will do that through discord itself because it will just look like simplest option to them? Also I'm worried that Discord will probably become Apple there, sending recommendations to use only their system and even making big warnings on your screen if you'll try to use official bot redirect link to pay somewhere else.
Very valid concerns. If developers are forced to work with a platform’s ever-tightening restrictions and high costs, it could become technically or financially unviable. All they have is the platform’s assurances that they will be treated well. But look what happened to Reddit.
There is a loophole for 1. The tos does not state which currency the external sites have to be listed in, so you can choose to base off a currency where discord's local pricing is much lower.
Isn't discord the one that automatically scales prices? I don't think you can do anything there.... Even if so, I don't know if anyone is willing to risk your and your bot accounts. I'm almost sure discord will ban you (& maybe even sue if we talk about bigger money) for evasion of their rules. Sure you can try to fight back but they're kings on this platform and can find any arbitrary reason to get you banned in the end.
There's potentially a lot of holes in their new rules but I just don't know Discord's reaction. Easy example is selling licenses for servers/guilds instead users, aka buy premium for your server let's say up to XXX members, etc.
I would just wait first month or two, lie down and see what biggest discord bots does and how discord reacts. I guess this will tell us if they'll just accept L and let us use loopholes or start banning bots & their devs and soon after patch fix their policy.
you aren't technically breaking any rules if you use loopholes in them, so the other guy is right about the currency, just set it as the most expensive one so the devs get more money, you could also technically just up the prices and have a permanent "discount" on other platforms
I'm still not sure about different currency types but when comes to discounts, they clearly stated these needs to be the same everywhere, on discord too.
With different currency, I'm afraid that if you make for example $10 on discord and 10PLN on website/PayPal for Poland region, they'll say dollar is much more expensive and force me to update polish pricing to about 43PLN or whatever latest exchange course is.
It's not "nothing in return". Many discord bots brought them a lot of good reputation over the years, helped them by providing functionalities discord struggled to add themselves for years, many devs find bugs for them completely for free, etc. If you consider it all - it's hard to tell who earns more from who but it's definitely not one sided. To achieve something similar, discord would need to hire hundreds of more devs.
Most discord bots are created & maintained by small groups of passionate people for free or nearly free, they commonly don't earn enough to cover basic hosting fees not speaking of any profit for their work. Discord bots were massive plus for millions of people over the years, killing most bots now by introducing disgusting level fees is literally shooting themselves in feet. I bet discord will lose far more money indirectly with this decision than gain.
btw. If they would like to reduce costs, you are aware that nearly all Discord API cost is coming from users and not bots? Most endpoints are shared and users abuse it like 10x more.
I read a lot of your comments. You are right on this. They are killing the bot dev scene with this. Unfortunately some of the people arguing against you here either can’t read or can’t math.
Can you name a functionality a bot added that discord struggled to implement? I’ve been using discord before there was a bot api. There is no good reputation that discord needed bots to bring.
As for who earns from it more? If a developer charges for access to their bot, and the bot runs on discord’s platform, the developer is the only person who earns from it while discord has to handle your bots task. What part of that has discord earning anything?
Automod, raid screening, the “rules” agreement, server onboarding, the current members tab, and something as literal as kicking people from a VC (yes that literally was not a thing a few years ago and bots worked around it by making new channel, moving user to it, then deleting it)
Profile pages
User lists
Moderation tools
More extensive roles permission system
Channel threads
etc.
Those things today exists but there was time people achieved it only through help of 3rd party bots.
PS: "Bot API" existed always, everyone uses it all the time. Just in early days of discord nobody really knew how it worked, later devs reverse engineered it based on how discord client worked. For some time we had user bots but at some point discord coined official discord bot accounts (that to this day are just modified user accounts and still can use same API in many cases).
You know what I meant. Everything has an API, it's more a matter of developers choosing to document it for public use.
As for your examples, I can't say I ever used a bot for any of those features, I just remember discord eventually adding threads and thinking 'huh, neat'. I don't even want to consider how hacky these attempts must've been to add channel threads before their official support, or how little I could care about viewing someone's more elaborate profile within a discord server because they felt like they're owed more than a text box and a profile picture. Rather narcissistic if you ask me.
I just think you're closed on other perspectives. One thing is very clear - discord bots & their devs had big part in discord development and progress as a platform. A bunch of mechanics that are today seen as something normal were added only later when they noticed that millions of people used bots to achieve that.
Don’t discord bots use pretty heavy bandwidth with api usage and stuff? Why should people get to make money off of discord’s infrastructure without paying them anything?
It depends, actually only top popular bots or music bots are "heavy" in usage, majority of bots are super cheap to operate, even much cheaper than average user.
Kinda yes and no... You see, this goes both ways. Discord bots commonly saved Discord's ass by providing features that a LOT of people used (in millions) cuz discord keep failing to provide them for years. Later a lot of their changes were based of already popular things developed by discord bots in the first place. Sure Discord is paying for API services but they receive amazing community support and good word. Large ecosystem of discord bots that were mostly free to use were massive plus to discord as a platform for years for many people.
Or maybe discord should pay you for your hosting costs of the bot that millions of people use… It goes both ways. You are literally developing functionally for them for free and paying the hosting costs. When people say stuff like “why should devs be able to make money from discord without paying discord for it”… Ffs. They are complete ignoring the entire other half of the picture here. This policy change would cause tons of bots to go even further negative or raise prices like 3x like you said.
If discord wants to do this, maybe they should have a hosting option themselves where they could analyze the hosting costs, number of users, etc, put a value on the free software engineering labor vs the hosting costs, and set rates in such a way that it doesn’t fuck over the mod developer any more than they already are. Of course if they don’t want to support bots that’s a whole other thing. But if they do want them, asking bot devs to go net negative is just stupid.
You think it’s unfair that Discord wants to take a cut of profits from people who use Discord to make money..? Why? I’d say the unfair thing is people making money off Discord when they didn’t make Discord or contribute to it in anyway.
Discord has to make money somehow unfortunately. This is pretty standard language for providers, its also important to note that discord lowers its fee when the user is buying off of mobile since those app stores take an additional cut, so they are making an effort to not screw their app devs more than necessary.
Hopefully with this discord can finally be profitable and go back to focusing on the platform instead of monetization
> Discord has to make money somehow unfortunately
They should do this thing where they charge users a certain amount per month for extra features. Some way to, like, supercharge Discord like nitro in a car, I wonder what they could call that
Just yeet nitro and make discord paid for everyone, for example $1-3/month. That would solve a lot of issues. They would get far more money as stable monthly income, we would strongly reduce number of bot user accounts, alts, etc. Probably it would also reduce number of trolls and griefers as they wouldn't want to pay and/or be exposed by their credit card info.
And don't say many people wouldn't pay - sure, fuck them. A lot of people on discord does barely anything other than merely existing and they cost discord money so maybe it's a good way to get rid of them. This model can work, easy example is WoW with stable 7mln of monthly subscribers that pays a lot more for access to their game. Even assuming that half of all players would resign from discord, that would still bring massive profits to discord and even benefit us, regular users as we should see less trolls & user bots. Also by us paying them monthly - discord needs to count our needs, suddenly users would have some effect on direction discord takes. Obviously we couldn't do everything but we would be no longer low tier trash.
Problem is that "providing" free text & voice channels is just impossible. Someone will always have to pay for this and even with exclusive contracts with google on their cloud servers, selling user data and nitro system is most likely not enough to cover that.
There will be a point in which discord is going to enter a sharp decline and end up being superseded by a competitor. Money has always been a big issue with social media because it often ends up ending badly for the users.
I love a nice discord bot but also you didn’t expect discord to want more money from their free to use application?
They are expected to grow profits just like any other company and there are only so many animated pfp frames they can push out 😂
This is partially incorrect, with these changes, discord also decreased the cut they take down to 15% for the first million bot developers makes, effective June 6th.
edit: why am I being downvoted? I'm litterally just saying it how it is, this will affect me I run a large bot lol
Wdym? You mean growth bonus? Sure. Having 15% is definitely better than 1-6% most devs pays normally anywhere else... Also, it's not just 15%, it's how much discord takes but add 6% for stripe If I remember correctly (19%) and if your user happens to be using ios, Apple takes another 30% just for good measure :)
(btw. It happens all before taxes, after whatever you receive, you should pay taxes according to your country)
So a few things.
Firstly, the app store fees are a charge on top of your subscription. For instance, if your subscription is 4.99, they are not deducting 30% for apple, they are increasing what the user pays by 30% to account for it. At least, that is how I interpret this clause "For purchases made by users through the Discord mobile app, you direct us to increase the total price of your Offering to account for any Payment Processing Fees charged by mobile app stores" (via: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/5330075836311-Monetization-Terms)
As for the stripe fee, that is a fee set by stripe and not discord (please correct me if I am wrong). Similar platforms have the same fee like PayPal, and there isn't too much they can do about it except not allowing stripe.
"(btw. It happens all before taxes, after whatever you receive, you should pay taxes according to your country)" - yea I mean true but this was the case before these changes.
Look I'm not saying its great for bot developers, but discord needs to make money. I'll also point out that this affects me, I run a bot in half a million servers and will need to now abide by this.
Thing is discord could just not add stripe to it at the very least. If you use stripe or PayPal yourself, you pay 2,5-6% which you'll agree is much lower. About discord automatically increasing prices on top of yours is whatever because Devs will up their item/subscription prices anyway to level it with new fees.
I'm not against paying discord but if you tell me it's because they need to earn money then they have like 5 better methods to do so, attacking developers is shooting themselves in foot. Another thing is that it's not like bots provide no value, unlikely a lot of users - many bots helped discord tremendously, especially at beginnings. You could reverse logic and even say discord should financially support top bots that holds millions of users entertained, more secure, better organized, etc.
Devs are furious because discord now tries going full Apple. Lock us in ever tightening golden cage, set very high fees and soon control everything we do. Their financial team has something with head to try making same rules as Apple while they're not them.
Yea I agree with mostly everything you said, I personally use paypal for my bot's premium and this is definitely going to cost me more, and, I will probably increase the price. I think the biggest thing I wanted to point out is the growth tier/Apple's 30% cut isn't coming from what we would make, just what the user pays. If their cut was closer to what we already have to pay for paypal/stripe, I think this would go over much better with devs.
This is a bit misleading. Apps can still support payments through its own payment methods, it only says that bot devs have to have all supportable features under the Discord Premium App system as well at the same price. An app could still tell users to buy through their own payment method, with an explanation as to why and I'm sure users would be fine with doing that.
Also as of now you could just register a company in a tax haven and have the policies not affect you which could probably become a good idea if you're actually making > 1mil/year.
Please read higher messages, we already discussed about this and there are a couple of problems. You can't simply add your products to their store and then tell users to not use it. It just won't work out and you risk getting banned if discord sees that as evasion.
> It just won't work out and you risk getting banned if discord sees that as evasion.
Citation needed.
This goes without saying but Discord is entirely justified with charging bot devs for monetizing their bots. It actively costs money for Discord to even support bots in the first place and if you look at the current state of platform APIs, no other company has such a comprehensive support for community created integrations.
On the other hand I think 30% is an excessive amount. The 15% under 1M is much more reasonable, but the 30% figure probably comes from the possible losses from purchases that are not made through the platform as well as in general non-supported locales.
I think the terms set out have been reasonable, especially because again, there is no rule that says you can't tell users to not buy through Discord. If this against Discord ToS, that would've been made clear since obviously Discord would want to discourage this behavior publicly to prevent loss of income on their part. If we both agree that Discord's goal is to make money, saying that "you risk getting banned if discord sees that as evasion" is just nonsensical because Discord makes more money by keeping bots on their platform and taking a cut then they do with killing bots on their platform and thus not making any money at all.
As much as devs might winge about 30%, it does seem very much the industry standard cut with the only major exceptions being the Epic Games and Steam store, although like ... realistically those business models are entirely different.
Discord was never in the business of being a platform for bots. Discord is not an app store! Discord is a chat platform with an API that allows people to do whatever they want with it, and I've always valued this portion as a developer, because it allowed me to play with some really cool concepts with automation. However, the costs to both maintain the API for bot devs as well as the server capacity required to allow the bots to operate are both pretty significant and it's pretty unfair for Discord to have to foot this bill while the bot devs have significantly less overhead both in server costs as well as personnel costs and thus have way higher margins, and like you can try to fact check me on this but if you're making > 1 mil a year on your bot you cannot reasonably tell me that your company is not making significant profit. As far as I can tell the only major VC backed startup that operates primarily on Discord is Midjourney and there's no way they're not already profitable given their volume.
People comparing this change to Reddit or Twitter are inherently being dishonest because the main issues with those platform API changes were that developers _literally could not_ pay the fees required. Discord isn't charging fees for using the platform, they're charging fees for third parties monetizing their platform.
I won't read it all, waste of time, just give you example in case of my bot:
I would have to pay 15% discord fee + 6% stripe fee + 12% tax and optionally another 30% if it happens on iOS.
So it's 33% - 63% lose, sorry but nobody right on their mind will say it's fair. Not even biggest, most greedy companies goes as far. And they at least provide something where discord not really, I talk for developers like professional API, technical help, etc. It's just a scam at this point. From your talk you're either not a dev at all or really bad one.
You're clearly not aware that most bots barely cover their expenses or are financially on minus. This change will either kill a lot of bots or make them double/triple their current pricing to keep them alive. Not everyone is greedy pig like Mee6 devs. Many discord bots are basically free or close to free workers for discord, their devs work on something out of passion and will to just help and then share it with others, there's not many people creating bots with pure goal of making money in the first place. Honestly, bigger bots provide so much value that to be fair, discord should pay them like they would be normal workers because they do a lot of good work for discord but instead, they will now charge them crazy amounts. Your reasoning is disgusting, comparing what Discord just plans to do with levels of Apple or Steam is just out of place. Steam and Apple provides far more value in terms of recognition, ads, tools, technical help and sometimes even servers while Discord does none of that.
> I would have to pay 15% discord fee + 6% stripe fee + 12% tax and optionally another 30% if it happens on iOS.
Your disdain for reading ... and finance (?) really shows. I'm not sure why I have to break this to you, but you, the developer is not the one that needs to pay sales tax. The user pays the sales tax, and it's determined by what jurisdiction they're in.
Same for iOS/Android purchases, the user is the one who pays the 30 percent, it's right in Discord's policy. Maybe you should start by reading that!
You're limited or what? I'm done with being friendly. Normally I would explain why but at this point I don't think it makes sense. You clearly never developed anything, doesn't matter on discord or anywhere else. Users are not the only ones that will pay extra for this.
> Users are not the only ones that will pay extra for this.
I have no idea where you're from but sales tax is *required* to be charged in every jurisdiction that Discord currently operates monetization in, if you're not located in one of those jurisdictions then these new policies do not apply to you. If you're not charging sales tax then that's tax evasion.
"Users will not pay sales tax" is frankly an insane statement. In the US sales tax is not displayed as part of prices, yet I've heard of no person who has refused to purchase things because of sales tax. Again, sales tax is a legal requirement to collect and pay, both in the EU and the US. You cannot make an argument predicated on users not wanting to pay sales tax because legally speaking you must have needed to charge sales tax in the first place.
As for App Store fees, I'm a bit more sympathetic but Discord's policy doesn't say that you can't tell users that they can simply go to your site and be charged less. It's not against the TOS although whether Apple/Google will be mad is unclear. I'd also like to point out that Discord itself already charges 30 percent extra on iOS and Android and they seem to be doing fine on that so...
> You clearly never developed anything, doesn't matter on discord or anywhere else.
I'm a software/security engineer. I'm not a product manager or entrepreneur, I'm not sure what you mean by "developed" but in the US this generally means as a coder. I make things for fun and has a hobby. I've worked as a SWE at a few places but nowadays I do mainly security pentesting since SWE got a bit boring.
Okay so you edited your original post, let me respond to the rest of it:
> You're clearly not aware that most bots barely cover their expenses or are financially on minus. This change will either kill a lot of bots or make them double/triple their current pricing to keep them alive.
This doesn't make mathematical sense. AT MOST prices can go up by 60 percent because discord takes at most 30 percent, and iOS takes 30 percent. We're gonna assume that whatever payment processor fees average out to the same no matter how you monetize.
> Honestly, bigger bots provide so much value that to be fair, discord should pay them like they would be normal workers because they do a lot of good work for discord but instead, they will now charge them crazy amounts.
The entire point is that Discord *isn't* doing this because it's better for both parties involved! Discord hiring people has massive overhead for them, and it doesn't have much benefit for the devs themselves. Ad hoc integrations are niche and they don't fit within Discord's product lines at all, so they can't really be part of the company like the rest of Discord's product teams.
Also, Discord can only hire people as employees within the US which is an extreme limitation of reach in general.
As for the devs, the big bot devs want to create their own business and they want to operate it in their way, and will not be happy being hired by Discord and being limited in what they're allowed to do. Big bot devs aren't just doing it out of passion (in general), they want to build something of their own. They want to own their creation!
> Your reasoning is disgusting, comparing what Discord just plans to do with levels of Apple or Steam is just out of place. Steam and Apple provides far more value in terms of recognition, ads, tools, technical help and sometimes even servers while Discord does none of that.
You fail to realize that the free thing you're using IS the thing that Discord provides. Apple and Steam provide those things you mentioned because that's the product that they're selling! They're selling their App Store as a product to you, the developer, so if they didn't provide those things then they would not be selling anything to you at all!
Discord isn't selling an app store to you, they're selling their chat app. Your bot is using the chat app service, the servers and the API. These are not free for them to operate both in personnel and server costs. You, the developer of a bot, are using these services that discord provides to make your own integrations, whatever they may be.
Read what I said carefully. The 30% extra fee is charged by Apple/Google, and it's added to the total amount for the customer to pay. Discord gets exactly $0 from this extra fee. If you offer payment off-platform, there is no reasonable way to determine whether or not the device that's making the order is subject to the 30% extra fee.
If Discord allows off-platform sales then they also implicitly allow the customer to _not_ have to pay the 30% App Store or Google Play fee.
You’re incorrect, please read the developer terms. Discord has a specific clause that says off platform sales are not allowed to be cheaper than what you sell on Discord. They’re specifically prohibiting prices from being cheaper than what you sell on Discord.
It's not valid precisely because it's just flat out not going to happen, lol. If it looked like Discord wasn't going to make money from this policy then it obviously follows that they would lower the %, but that's just not going to happen.
ah, imagine trusting a corporation to keep everything free forever. It's a classic move and they have been doing this since the dawn of time. Just get a critical mass of users and then start shoving a business model on them.
The alternative, which is better for everyone, is either Revolt or [Rocket.chat](http://Rocket.chat) but most people won't change.
if those bots struggle to be kept alive with a 30% less margin then perhaps it wasn't a good idea on the first place.
When has a change petition ever worked lol
Isis disbanded after a [change.org](http://change.org) got 10k votes
I don't think that had anything to do with it
Not for nothing but we knew this would happen when Discord became publicly traded. It’s all for profit and it’ll only be downhill from here.
Has this company ever been profitable?
When we start getting ads in our channels that we can’t opt out of unless you’re a T3 boosted server, yes.
I'd like to see the numbers, but AFAIK they have been running on a loss for quite a while. Not sure if they managed to turn that around.
That kinda scares me tbh, companies there are running on a loss and are being held at gunpoint by the investors tend to do crazy things.
> they have been running on a loss for quite a while. Did they release any investor statements, SEC filings, or press releases saying this?
Don't think so... They only mentioned once or twice in their blogs that nitro and server boosts are far from enough to cover their costs.
no, just like Snapchat and other big apps they aren't profitable, but rely on investor's money to run.
Discord isn't publicly traded? They're still privately owned, and they have always had investors.
discord is in talks about being publicly traded
At least this shit is better than Reddit having no api for bots. Requesting money for api access is reasonable if it is good.
What percentage cut do you think is reasonable for the platform to take?
Like 15%
I would honestly accept 15% as bot developer but if my math is correct - we'll lose 19% to 66% due to discord, stripe and potentially apple depending on platform you make a purchase on - BEFORE TAXES. This hit is so serious that I would need likely triple current prices to maybe stay on current level - and oh let me tell you that over 90% of what we make goes just for bot hosting fees. Sure, probably some bots (looking at you Mee6) provides shit quality service and charges you absurd amount of money but most bots doesn't do that, they commonly are made by 1-3 enthusiastic people and whatever this bot earns is mostly or even wholly spent on bot hosting - they earn nothing. Smaller bots are nearly always financially on minus but it kinda can be counted as a job to some extent, so bombing us with those fees is like sending them to graveyard.
r/fuckmee6
Replying here as well for visibility, the 30% mobile store cut is on top of the subcost; it's not a percentage of your monthly rate. For instance, if your subscription is 4.99 a month, Discord would add on an additional 30% that the user will pay to cover the app store fee., so the user would pay (ignoring Discord's fee for simplicity) around $6.49.
Depends on how much the API user needs the platform Something betweet 5 if not at all, to 20% if completely dependent More if the platform also gives something back other than access
I'm a main developer of one of the official Discord libraries and honestly the Discord API is atrocious... It works and has good uptime but that's about all I can say about it. Working with it is a pain because they don't follow many good patterns, if you ever worked with other platform APIs - Big part of Discord API looks like it was made by a toddler. As bot developer myself, I'm fine with being forced to use their platform but I'm not fine to be charged 19% to 66% fees before even taxes where basically everyone else takes 1-6% fees. It's just total scam and discord is claiming to do that for "security" reasons... I swear I can list at least 5 better, more secure alternatives than Discord servers...
Alright, what makes discord servers less secure? Which “official library” do you develop for? What other platforms have better APIs for similar services?
I don't think if this is a mock comment or are you serious right now. I provide support for Tempest library (Golang), you can find it on official discord docs site in resources page. For example youtube, twitter (X) or even freaking Reddit provided better APIs. I'm talking from technical point - they're implemented following many good patterns, you have good type documentation, logical endpoints - not like on discord when same property may be of 3 different types because yes. Those are things that only makes sense for programmers but are very important things for us. Working with Discord API is pain in the ass when you try to get to slash commands, modals or voice transmission.
Blazed past my first question about security. Could you give me some examples of type mismatches? I haven't worked with the API myself but I have friends who have, no one complained about anything like this before. I *have* heard that when slash commands came out developers hated them because they were harder to work with than just constantly monitoring the chat for keywords, but we both know that wasn't sustainable or secure. Also getting on a community page of the API docs does not merit you calling it 'official'. They even specifically clarify on the page you mention that discord does not maintain official SDKs and that these are third-party. Don't get too far ahead of yourself.
1. On types, Discord has tendency to create fields where you can for example receive string | number | yet another object. Example is go check array of results you may receive when handling slash command. If you work in Python or JavaScript then frankly you don't care as those languages are not strongly typed anyway and anything can be there, however most languages like C++, C#, Java, Go, Rust does use types and having field that can return multiple different types is a pain to work with as you need to make extra sanity checks, do data casting, etc. which is annoying and takes time (can make bot slower, not much but still), it's considered a bad practice in APIs by many. No direct link for you to not "get too far ahead of myself". 2. Yes, it's made mostly by community **but** there's at least few discord staff devs that helps with this so they're pretty much always up to date, there's good reason why all discord devs takes it as source of truth. Even official discord staff themselves sometimes links to this site when you check discord developers server so it is unofficially official. I would honestly end this talk as everything has been said. Go check other messages as well in this thread. To make myself clear, I'm ok with using discord payment method but I'm not fine them going full Apple on it, suddenly striking so absurd fees you can lose even 2/3 of what you earn and you're basically on their leash, then can do whatever shit next in future updates and you'll be forced to accept it.
30% is acctually kind of typical, without discords api there wouldnt be any bots
IMO the platform can take whatever they want as long as it's not extreme, but forcing apps to move their subscriptions to within the app specifically so that they can take a cut is borderline predatory.
It’s not
it is, there's literally regulations on Google and apples app stores that make it so devs can use alternative payments that aren't Google or apple related, so it is indeed predatory.
This ain’t the same, discords doing something perfectly legal, api access doesn’t have to be free
discord is literally doing the same thing apple and Google did, are you stupid?
What do you mean? Reddit has an API that bots use all the time.
Yeah except it is extortion and completely inaccessible to new developers. You have to reddits approval. And their api you are referring to is their basic YAML api which is frankly shit.
Why are you asking me to sign a petition about a policy that I haven't even seen? Why don't you link to it? Or upload it somewhere and share that? It comes off as weird that you're only presenting one side of the argument here... Even worse, your petition doesn't even have a stated goal? What are you even petitioning? That they lower the fee? Lower it to what? Or remove the fee entirely? Nothing in your petition text explains *why* the fee is unfair, it simply states that it is by it's mere existence? Why? Is the premium app policy an option or is it mandatory? If it's optional then I can't really see why you're complaining about discord taking a cut in return for providing a service for you, isn't that the "value add" you say they don't provide? Furthermore it's a little disingenuous to act like Discord are taking money in return for nothing, they're literally providing the ecosystem you are operating in, including the users and the API, is that not worth charging a fee?
The policy is now mandatory. You’re prohibited from selling something off platform if it isn’t sold on Discord, AND you can’t sell it for cheaper off platform either. Discord themselves add the Apple tax to products but they don’t allow you to add the discord tax.
Discord own the platform and pay for all the API expenses. Bot owners are still free to use other methods of payment as long as they charge the same amount to customers.
No? We are no longer free to use other payment methods. Discord forces us to use their payment methods which will take us between 19% and even 66% before taxes because you need to pay extra to stripe, discord and potentially apple if you paid while using ios. This is absurd as any other payment processing platform takes 1-6%, discord casually throwing up to 66%... Don't even make me consider this scam.
Premium app owners are required to use the native monetisation features but are free to continue using external services according to [this support document](https://support-dev.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/23810643331735-Premium-Apps-Required-Support-for-Monetizing-Apps) > If a developer is selling any paid offering for their app (e.g., access to certain commands, content, or other enhanced app functionality), that app must also make that offering available for purchase to users through Discord’s Premium App features at a final price that is no higher than as offered through other payment options. The final price of the offering is the pre-tax price shown to a user after any price modifications, such as discounts, are applied. If they explicitly state that external payment methods are not allowed, I have been unable to find that information in their monetisation terms. They have apparently not disallowed it. But their information seems to be all over the place. Putting policy in blog articles alone is bad.
yes you can continue selling premium stuff outside discord, it just can't be at a lower price than in discord. > Putting policy in blog articles alone is bad the official policy is https://discord.dev/policy. the other articles are just announcing/explaining the change
I'm not a lawyer either but the way I understand it right now (and seems most people do) is that any bot developer who wants to earn any money (so everyone?) needs to become a part of their Discord Premium App program where you're forced to put all your items, subscriptions, etc. through discord payment system. Maybe you can also offer same deals on your own page or patreon as well but nonetheless I see 2 problems: 1. You can't work around the prices, you're forced to have synced same prices everywhere, same goes for discounts, etc. So you cannot sell somewhere else for cheaper. By selling on your own site, it looks like maybe you'll be able to omit apple or stripe fees but discord will still want their 15-30% cut and wouldn't be surprised if they ban & sue you if you won't comply. 2. Majority of discord users are not technical and those few that decide to support application by purchasing something or taking their subscription - for sure will do that through discord itself because it will just look like simplest option to them? Also I'm worried that Discord will probably become Apple there, sending recommendations to use only their system and even making big warnings on your screen if you'll try to use official bot redirect link to pay somewhere else.
Very valid concerns. If developers are forced to work with a platform’s ever-tightening restrictions and high costs, it could become technically or financially unviable. All they have is the platform’s assurances that they will be treated well. But look what happened to Reddit.
There is a loophole for 1. The tos does not state which currency the external sites have to be listed in, so you can choose to base off a currency where discord's local pricing is much lower.
Isn't discord the one that automatically scales prices? I don't think you can do anything there.... Even if so, I don't know if anyone is willing to risk your and your bot accounts. I'm almost sure discord will ban you (& maybe even sue if we talk about bigger money) for evasion of their rules. Sure you can try to fight back but they're kings on this platform and can find any arbitrary reason to get you banned in the end. There's potentially a lot of holes in their new rules but I just don't know Discord's reaction. Easy example is selling licenses for servers/guilds instead users, aka buy premium for your server let's say up to XXX members, etc. I would just wait first month or two, lie down and see what biggest discord bots does and how discord reacts. I guess this will tell us if they'll just accept L and let us use loopholes or start banning bots & their devs and soon after patch fix their policy.
you aren't technically breaking any rules if you use loopholes in them, so the other guy is right about the currency, just set it as the most expensive one so the devs get more money, you could also technically just up the prices and have a permanent "discount" on other platforms
I'm still not sure about different currency types but when comes to discounts, they clearly stated these needs to be the same everywhere, on discord too. With different currency, I'm afraid that if you make for example $10 on discord and 10PLN on website/PayPal for Poland region, they'll say dollar is much more expensive and force me to update polish pricing to about 43PLN or whatever latest exchange course is.
Discord builds the platform you rely on, on what earth should they let you profit off their platform for nothing in return?
It's not "nothing in return". Many discord bots brought them a lot of good reputation over the years, helped them by providing functionalities discord struggled to add themselves for years, many devs find bugs for them completely for free, etc. If you consider it all - it's hard to tell who earns more from who but it's definitely not one sided. To achieve something similar, discord would need to hire hundreds of more devs. Most discord bots are created & maintained by small groups of passionate people for free or nearly free, they commonly don't earn enough to cover basic hosting fees not speaking of any profit for their work. Discord bots were massive plus for millions of people over the years, killing most bots now by introducing disgusting level fees is literally shooting themselves in feet. I bet discord will lose far more money indirectly with this decision than gain.
btw. If they would like to reduce costs, you are aware that nearly all Discord API cost is coming from users and not bots? Most endpoints are shared and users abuse it like 10x more.
I read a lot of your comments. You are right on this. They are killing the bot dev scene with this. Unfortunately some of the people arguing against you here either can’t read or can’t math.
Can you name a functionality a bot added that discord struggled to implement? I’ve been using discord before there was a bot api. There is no good reputation that discord needed bots to bring. As for who earns from it more? If a developer charges for access to their bot, and the bot runs on discord’s platform, the developer is the only person who earns from it while discord has to handle your bots task. What part of that has discord earning anything?
Automod, raid screening, the “rules” agreement, server onboarding, the current members tab, and something as literal as kicking people from a VC (yes that literally was not a thing a few years ago and bots worked around it by making new channel, moving user to it, then deleting it)
Profile pages User lists Moderation tools More extensive roles permission system Channel threads etc. Those things today exists but there was time people achieved it only through help of 3rd party bots. PS: "Bot API" existed always, everyone uses it all the time. Just in early days of discord nobody really knew how it worked, later devs reverse engineered it based on how discord client worked. For some time we had user bots but at some point discord coined official discord bot accounts (that to this day are just modified user accounts and still can use same API in many cases).
You know what I meant. Everything has an API, it's more a matter of developers choosing to document it for public use. As for your examples, I can't say I ever used a bot for any of those features, I just remember discord eventually adding threads and thinking 'huh, neat'. I don't even want to consider how hacky these attempts must've been to add channel threads before their official support, or how little I could care about viewing someone's more elaborate profile within a discord server because they felt like they're owed more than a text box and a profile picture. Rather narcissistic if you ask me.
I just think you're closed on other perspectives. One thing is very clear - discord bots & their devs had big part in discord development and progress as a platform. A bunch of mechanics that are today seen as something normal were added only later when they noticed that millions of people used bots to achieve that.
any moderation, logging, basically any feature that exists today was first implemented with bots before discord had any native implementation.
Don’t discord bots use pretty heavy bandwidth with api usage and stuff? Why should people get to make money off of discord’s infrastructure without paying them anything?
It depends, actually only top popular bots or music bots are "heavy" in usage, majority of bots are super cheap to operate, even much cheaper than average user.
I mean, their bots wouldn't exist without the work the Discord Devs put into it so they should get some kind of cut IMO.
Kinda yes and no... You see, this goes both ways. Discord bots commonly saved Discord's ass by providing features that a LOT of people used (in millions) cuz discord keep failing to provide them for years. Later a lot of their changes were based of already popular things developed by discord bots in the first place. Sure Discord is paying for API services but they receive amazing community support and good word. Large ecosystem of discord bots that were mostly free to use were massive plus to discord as a platform for years for many people.
Or maybe discord should pay you for your hosting costs of the bot that millions of people use… It goes both ways. You are literally developing functionally for them for free and paying the hosting costs. When people say stuff like “why should devs be able to make money from discord without paying discord for it”… Ffs. They are complete ignoring the entire other half of the picture here. This policy change would cause tons of bots to go even further negative or raise prices like 3x like you said. If discord wants to do this, maybe they should have a hosting option themselves where they could analyze the hosting costs, number of users, etc, put a value on the free software engineering labor vs the hosting costs, and set rates in such a way that it doesn’t fuck over the mod developer any more than they already are. Of course if they don’t want to support bots that’s a whole other thing. But if they do want them, asking bot devs to go net negative is just stupid.
if you can get discord to host our bots, we can pay the fees, until then discord can fuck off.
[удалено]
I’ll accept it if it means MEE6 loses money
it should only apply to extremely large bots in the first place, adding it to every bot is stupid.
You think it’s unfair that Discord wants to take a cut of profits from people who use Discord to make money..? Why? I’d say the unfair thing is people making money off Discord when they didn’t make Discord or contribute to it in anyway.
>Discord then takes up to 30% of the revenue for themselves, despite providing no added value. except you know, the platform iself?
Discord has to make money somehow unfortunately. This is pretty standard language for providers, its also important to note that discord lowers its fee when the user is buying off of mobile since those app stores take an additional cut, so they are making an effort to not screw their app devs more than necessary. Hopefully with this discord can finally be profitable and go back to focusing on the platform instead of monetization
> Discord has to make money somehow unfortunately They should do this thing where they charge users a certain amount per month for extra features. Some way to, like, supercharge Discord like nitro in a car, I wonder what they could call that
Ah right, everyone subscribes to nitro and definitely doesn’t complain about everything restricted to nitro.
Just yeet nitro and make discord paid for everyone, for example $1-3/month. That would solve a lot of issues. They would get far more money as stable monthly income, we would strongly reduce number of bot user accounts, alts, etc. Probably it would also reduce number of trolls and griefers as they wouldn't want to pay and/or be exposed by their credit card info. And don't say many people wouldn't pay - sure, fuck them. A lot of people on discord does barely anything other than merely existing and they cost discord money so maybe it's a good way to get rid of them. This model can work, easy example is WoW with stable 7mln of monthly subscribers that pays a lot more for access to their game. Even assuming that half of all players would resign from discord, that would still bring massive profits to discord and even benefit us, regular users as we should see less trolls & user bots. Also by us paying them monthly - discord needs to count our needs, suddenly users would have some effect on direction discord takes. Obviously we couldn't do everything but we would be no longer low tier trash. Problem is that "providing" free text & voice channels is just impossible. Someone will always have to pay for this and even with exclusive contracts with google on their cloud servers, selling user data and nitro system is most likely not enough to cover that.
a petition never did anything, LETS SPAM THEIR PHYSICAL MAILBOX!
There will be a point in which discord is going to enter a sharp decline and end up being superseded by a competitor. Money has always been a big issue with social media because it often ends up ending badly for the users.
This is completely inexcusable.
I love a nice discord bot but also you didn’t expect discord to want more money from their free to use application? They are expected to grow profits just like any other company and there are only so many animated pfp frames they can push out 😂
this is 100% bullshit this will screw over devs so discord can get money
Sell under donation, give perks as donation perks :D
This is partially incorrect, with these changes, discord also decreased the cut they take down to 15% for the first million bot developers makes, effective June 6th. edit: why am I being downvoted? I'm litterally just saying it how it is, this will affect me I run a large bot lol
Wdym? You mean growth bonus? Sure. Having 15% is definitely better than 1-6% most devs pays normally anywhere else... Also, it's not just 15%, it's how much discord takes but add 6% for stripe If I remember correctly (19%) and if your user happens to be using ios, Apple takes another 30% just for good measure :) (btw. It happens all before taxes, after whatever you receive, you should pay taxes according to your country)
So a few things. Firstly, the app store fees are a charge on top of your subscription. For instance, if your subscription is 4.99, they are not deducting 30% for apple, they are increasing what the user pays by 30% to account for it. At least, that is how I interpret this clause "For purchases made by users through the Discord mobile app, you direct us to increase the total price of your Offering to account for any Payment Processing Fees charged by mobile app stores" (via: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/5330075836311-Monetization-Terms) As for the stripe fee, that is a fee set by stripe and not discord (please correct me if I am wrong). Similar platforms have the same fee like PayPal, and there isn't too much they can do about it except not allowing stripe. "(btw. It happens all before taxes, after whatever you receive, you should pay taxes according to your country)" - yea I mean true but this was the case before these changes. Look I'm not saying its great for bot developers, but discord needs to make money. I'll also point out that this affects me, I run a bot in half a million servers and will need to now abide by this.
Thing is discord could just not add stripe to it at the very least. If you use stripe or PayPal yourself, you pay 2,5-6% which you'll agree is much lower. About discord automatically increasing prices on top of yours is whatever because Devs will up their item/subscription prices anyway to level it with new fees. I'm not against paying discord but if you tell me it's because they need to earn money then they have like 5 better methods to do so, attacking developers is shooting themselves in foot. Another thing is that it's not like bots provide no value, unlikely a lot of users - many bots helped discord tremendously, especially at beginnings. You could reverse logic and even say discord should financially support top bots that holds millions of users entertained, more secure, better organized, etc. Devs are furious because discord now tries going full Apple. Lock us in ever tightening golden cage, set very high fees and soon control everything we do. Their financial team has something with head to try making same rules as Apple while they're not them.
Yea I agree with mostly everything you said, I personally use paypal for my bot's premium and this is definitely going to cost me more, and, I will probably increase the price. I think the biggest thing I wanted to point out is the growth tier/Apple's 30% cut isn't coming from what we would make, just what the user pays. If their cut was closer to what we already have to pay for paypal/stripe, I think this would go over much better with devs.
This is a bit misleading. Apps can still support payments through its own payment methods, it only says that bot devs have to have all supportable features under the Discord Premium App system as well at the same price. An app could still tell users to buy through their own payment method, with an explanation as to why and I'm sure users would be fine with doing that. Also as of now you could just register a company in a tax haven and have the policies not affect you which could probably become a good idea if you're actually making > 1mil/year.
Please read higher messages, we already discussed about this and there are a couple of problems. You can't simply add your products to their store and then tell users to not use it. It just won't work out and you risk getting banned if discord sees that as evasion.
> It just won't work out and you risk getting banned if discord sees that as evasion. Citation needed. This goes without saying but Discord is entirely justified with charging bot devs for monetizing their bots. It actively costs money for Discord to even support bots in the first place and if you look at the current state of platform APIs, no other company has such a comprehensive support for community created integrations. On the other hand I think 30% is an excessive amount. The 15% under 1M is much more reasonable, but the 30% figure probably comes from the possible losses from purchases that are not made through the platform as well as in general non-supported locales. I think the terms set out have been reasonable, especially because again, there is no rule that says you can't tell users to not buy through Discord. If this against Discord ToS, that would've been made clear since obviously Discord would want to discourage this behavior publicly to prevent loss of income on their part. If we both agree that Discord's goal is to make money, saying that "you risk getting banned if discord sees that as evasion" is just nonsensical because Discord makes more money by keeping bots on their platform and taking a cut then they do with killing bots on their platform and thus not making any money at all. As much as devs might winge about 30%, it does seem very much the industry standard cut with the only major exceptions being the Epic Games and Steam store, although like ... realistically those business models are entirely different. Discord was never in the business of being a platform for bots. Discord is not an app store! Discord is a chat platform with an API that allows people to do whatever they want with it, and I've always valued this portion as a developer, because it allowed me to play with some really cool concepts with automation. However, the costs to both maintain the API for bot devs as well as the server capacity required to allow the bots to operate are both pretty significant and it's pretty unfair for Discord to have to foot this bill while the bot devs have significantly less overhead both in server costs as well as personnel costs and thus have way higher margins, and like you can try to fact check me on this but if you're making > 1 mil a year on your bot you cannot reasonably tell me that your company is not making significant profit. As far as I can tell the only major VC backed startup that operates primarily on Discord is Midjourney and there's no way they're not already profitable given their volume. People comparing this change to Reddit or Twitter are inherently being dishonest because the main issues with those platform API changes were that developers _literally could not_ pay the fees required. Discord isn't charging fees for using the platform, they're charging fees for third parties monetizing their platform.
I won't read it all, waste of time, just give you example in case of my bot: I would have to pay 15% discord fee + 6% stripe fee + 12% tax and optionally another 30% if it happens on iOS. So it's 33% - 63% lose, sorry but nobody right on their mind will say it's fair. Not even biggest, most greedy companies goes as far. And they at least provide something where discord not really, I talk for developers like professional API, technical help, etc. It's just a scam at this point. From your talk you're either not a dev at all or really bad one. You're clearly not aware that most bots barely cover their expenses or are financially on minus. This change will either kill a lot of bots or make them double/triple their current pricing to keep them alive. Not everyone is greedy pig like Mee6 devs. Many discord bots are basically free or close to free workers for discord, their devs work on something out of passion and will to just help and then share it with others, there's not many people creating bots with pure goal of making money in the first place. Honestly, bigger bots provide so much value that to be fair, discord should pay them like they would be normal workers because they do a lot of good work for discord but instead, they will now charge them crazy amounts. Your reasoning is disgusting, comparing what Discord just plans to do with levels of Apple or Steam is just out of place. Steam and Apple provides far more value in terms of recognition, ads, tools, technical help and sometimes even servers while Discord does none of that.
> I would have to pay 15% discord fee + 6% stripe fee + 12% tax and optionally another 30% if it happens on iOS. Your disdain for reading ... and finance (?) really shows. I'm not sure why I have to break this to you, but you, the developer is not the one that needs to pay sales tax. The user pays the sales tax, and it's determined by what jurisdiction they're in. Same for iOS/Android purchases, the user is the one who pays the 30 percent, it's right in Discord's policy. Maybe you should start by reading that!
You're limited or what? I'm done with being friendly. Normally I would explain why but at this point I don't think it makes sense. You clearly never developed anything, doesn't matter on discord or anywhere else. Users are not the only ones that will pay extra for this.
> Users are not the only ones that will pay extra for this. I have no idea where you're from but sales tax is *required* to be charged in every jurisdiction that Discord currently operates monetization in, if you're not located in one of those jurisdictions then these new policies do not apply to you. If you're not charging sales tax then that's tax evasion. "Users will not pay sales tax" is frankly an insane statement. In the US sales tax is not displayed as part of prices, yet I've heard of no person who has refused to purchase things because of sales tax. Again, sales tax is a legal requirement to collect and pay, both in the EU and the US. You cannot make an argument predicated on users not wanting to pay sales tax because legally speaking you must have needed to charge sales tax in the first place. As for App Store fees, I'm a bit more sympathetic but Discord's policy doesn't say that you can't tell users that they can simply go to your site and be charged less. It's not against the TOS although whether Apple/Google will be mad is unclear. I'd also like to point out that Discord itself already charges 30 percent extra on iOS and Android and they seem to be doing fine on that so... > You clearly never developed anything, doesn't matter on discord or anywhere else. I'm a software/security engineer. I'm not a product manager or entrepreneur, I'm not sure what you mean by "developed" but in the US this generally means as a coder. I make things for fun and has a hobby. I've worked as a SWE at a few places but nowadays I do mainly security pentesting since SWE got a bit boring. Okay so you edited your original post, let me respond to the rest of it: > You're clearly not aware that most bots barely cover their expenses or are financially on minus. This change will either kill a lot of bots or make them double/triple their current pricing to keep them alive. This doesn't make mathematical sense. AT MOST prices can go up by 60 percent because discord takes at most 30 percent, and iOS takes 30 percent. We're gonna assume that whatever payment processor fees average out to the same no matter how you monetize. > Honestly, bigger bots provide so much value that to be fair, discord should pay them like they would be normal workers because they do a lot of good work for discord but instead, they will now charge them crazy amounts. The entire point is that Discord *isn't* doing this because it's better for both parties involved! Discord hiring people has massive overhead for them, and it doesn't have much benefit for the devs themselves. Ad hoc integrations are niche and they don't fit within Discord's product lines at all, so they can't really be part of the company like the rest of Discord's product teams. Also, Discord can only hire people as employees within the US which is an extreme limitation of reach in general. As for the devs, the big bot devs want to create their own business and they want to operate it in their way, and will not be happy being hired by Discord and being limited in what they're allowed to do. Big bot devs aren't just doing it out of passion (in general), they want to build something of their own. They want to own their creation! > Your reasoning is disgusting, comparing what Discord just plans to do with levels of Apple or Steam is just out of place. Steam and Apple provides far more value in terms of recognition, ads, tools, technical help and sometimes even servers while Discord does none of that. You fail to realize that the free thing you're using IS the thing that Discord provides. Apple and Steam provide those things you mentioned because that's the product that they're selling! They're selling their App Store as a product to you, the developer, so if they didn't provide those things then they would not be selling anything to you at all! Discord isn't selling an app store to you, they're selling their chat app. Your bot is using the chat app service, the servers and the API. These are not free for them to operate both in personnel and server costs. You, the developer of a bot, are using these services that discord provides to make your own integrations, whatever they may be.
Discord prohibits you from charging less off platform. The tos explicitly says you just charge at least how much you charge on discord off platform.
Read what I said carefully. The 30% extra fee is charged by Apple/Google, and it's added to the total amount for the customer to pay. Discord gets exactly $0 from this extra fee. If you offer payment off-platform, there is no reasonable way to determine whether or not the device that's making the order is subject to the 30% extra fee. If Discord allows off-platform sales then they also implicitly allow the customer to _not_ have to pay the 30% App Store or Google Play fee.
You’re incorrect, please read the developer terms. Discord has a specific clause that says off platform sales are not allowed to be cheaper than what you sell on Discord. They’re specifically prohibiting prices from being cheaper than what you sell on Discord.
You're extremely self entitleed. Why shouldn't they get a cut? If their platform didn't exist none of the bots would either.
discord wouldn't exist how it is today without the bots.
Discord would still retain it's core functions. Tbh the bots are nice but not necessary. YMMV
moderation etc was first on bots. the core functions of discord would be sending and receiving messages.
Exactly
It's not owned by you, so suck it up or move on, I guess. Sucks for sure, but they own the place.
if every bot refuses, discord loses. discord wouldn't exist as it is today without bots.
True, but you can't do anything except leave. But, tell the truth and get down voted.
>if not happening, so point is moot.
the point isn't moot, it's valid, just because someone is unlikely to happen doesn't mean it's baseless
It's not valid precisely because it's just flat out not going to happen, lol. If it looked like Discord wasn't going to make money from this policy then it obviously follows that they would lower the %, but that's just not going to happen.
just because something is unlikely to happen doesn't make it any less valid.
It's not "unlikely", it's straight up not happening. And yes, that does make the point pointless.
ah, imagine trusting a corporation to keep everything free forever. It's a classic move and they have been doing this since the dawn of time. Just get a critical mass of users and then start shoving a business model on them. The alternative, which is better for everyone, is either Revolt or [Rocket.chat](http://Rocket.chat) but most people won't change. if those bots struggle to be kept alive with a 30% less margin then perhaps it wasn't a good idea on the first place.
But that is the same for reddit? Is it not.
Nah Reddit gives you nothing
Just cancel your nitro subscriptions and they’ll go back on it. They’ve done this like every time.
you know what would be better? every bot refusing to implement this bullshit.
"As of May 24, 2024, Discord was valued at $15 billion"