Steam looks vulnerable, so it’s only fitting that others are jumping at the chance to steal some marketshare. First Epic and now Discord:

So, starting in 2019, we are going to extend access to the Discord store and our extremely efficient game patcher by releasing a self-serve game publishing platform. No matter what size, from AAA to single person teams, developers will be able to self publish on the Discord store with 90% revenue share going to the developer. The remaining 10% covers our operating costs, and we’ll explore lowering it by optimizing our tech and making things more efficient.

90/10 split is ambitious. And I hope this kind of competition combines across more than one storefront to give both developers and players more options. I just wish they hadn’t followed that paragraph with this one:

We will also empower developers to communicate with their players by improving Verified Servers, extending their ability to add great content to the Activity Feed, and more. We believe if we iterate and work with developers, we can reverse platform fragmentation in the game industry while connecting developers and players closer together.

The last thing we need (on PC) is a different monopoly to take the place of Steam. The best possible outcome for consumers is competing storefronts that don’t rely on onerous DRM, so we can purchase and download from the store of our choice but not be limited to running eighteen launchers—and take advantage of sales that might compete with each other over time.

Consoles are, of course, a different story altogether.