According to The Verge, Discord is launching a new commerce feature that lets users buy and gift digital cosmetics for video games without leaving the platform. Starting today, the first integration is with the upcoming team-based shooter Marvel Rivals, which will have a dedicated store page inside its official Discord server. Users can browse, purchase, and create wishlists for items, with those wishlists visible on their profiles for friends to see and fulfill. Discord cofounder and CTO Stan Vishnevskiy highlighted the wishlist and gifting aspects as offering the biggest opportunity for both the platform and game developers. The feature allows purchases without launching the actual game client. This marks Discord’s significant step into direct game-related commerce.
Discord’s Big Bet on Social Commerce
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just about adding another storefront. It’s a clever play on Discord’s core strength—its social graph. Think about it. You’re in a server with friends, talking about a game. Normally, if someone mentions a cool skin, you’d have to tab out, open the game’s store, find the item, and buy it. Now? You can just click a link right there in the chat. But the real magic, as Vishnevskiy says, is the wishlist and gifting. It basically turns your Discord profile into a digital birthday registry for games you play. Your friends can see what you want and buy it for you in two clicks. That’s powerful social glue, and it turns passive browsing into active, peer-driven sales.
What This Means For Gamers and Developers
For users, it’s a mix of convenience and potential pressure. Sure, it’s convenient. But will it feel weird having your wishlist out in the open? Could it create a subtle social pressure to buy gifts? Maybe. For game developers, especially smaller or mid-sized ones, this is potentially huge. Discord handles the entire storefront infrastructure and payment processing. They also tap directly into Discord’s massive, engaged communities. It’s a lower-friction path to impulse buys. Instead of hoping a player logs into the game and visits the shop, developers can market skins right where players are already hanging out and talking. That’s a shorter, hotter sales funnel.
The Broader Platform Play
So, what’s Discord really after? Revenue, obviously. But also deeper platform lock-in. They want to be more than just the place you talk while gaming; they want to be central to the entire gaming *activity*, including commerce. If this takes off with Marvel Rivals, expect a rapid rollout to other games. It also positions Discord as a direct competitor to parts of Steam, the Epic Games Store, and even the Xbox and PlayStation networks. They’re not selling the games themselves yet, but they’re selling the lucrative accessories *for* those games. It’s a smart, asset-light way to capture value. The question is whether users will embrace it as a handy feature or see it as a step toward a more commercial, cluttered Discord. I guess we’re about to find out.
