If you're reading this, it means that you're ready to prepare your game for the Discord store. And we can't wait to have you! You want to know what you need to do to prepare, and we're here to tell you what those things are.
If you're unsure about any of these requirements or want further clarification, feel free to reach out to us with questions.
We have a lot of really great documentation around the Discord store and what we have to offer in terms of technical solutions and integrations, and I'm not just saying that because I wrote them. Read through the docs and decide what pieces may be helpful for your game. Here's some starting points:
- Discord GameSDK: your one stop shop for all things tech
- Dispatch: Discord's lightning-fast build management CLI tool
- Discord Developer Portal: start clicking around!
On Discord, developers can belong to Teams. You can think of teams like organizations, but with a way cooler name. Teams are how your game studio will work together to manage your game on Discord, from uploading promotional assets to building store pages to managing ids and secrets.
Head on over to the Discord Developer Portal and make a team for your game today. You can even go ahead and make applications for each of your games ahead of time.
To get your game build ready for Discord, make sure you can check off the following items:
- It's a full game! No installers or launchers here. Discord needs to distribute the full game build to users
- No ads or references to other platforms. We kindly ask that any in-game advertisements or explicit references to other platforms be removed
- DRM free! If you need a light DRM wrapper for the game, Discord offers that. We'll talk about that a bit later
- Multiplayer functionality. If your game is a multiplayer game, read the next section
- A list of redistributables your game needs, like DirectX. You'll need these when you upload your build.
If you can check off the above boxes, your game build is ready for Discord!
If your game is a multiplayer game, you may or may not need to do technical work to prepare for the Discord store. If your multiplayer game relies on a platform-specific networking integration, a.k.a SteamWorks, you'll need to integration the Discord GameSDK. Read more about that here.
If your game runs on a proprietary/self-implemented networking layer that you've made yourself, you should be all set. We welcome you to take a look at Discord's networking layer for games anyway; it's pretty awesome.
If you need a DRM wrapper for your game, Discord has that! Aegis—great name, right?—is a Steam-like light DRM wrapper for games. It does a basic entitlements check when a user launches your game and will exit the game if the user does not have the proper entitlements. Game executables can be automagically DRM wrapped using this nifty command in Dispatch, Discord's awesome build management CLI tool.
If you have a .NET game, Dispatch will not be able to properly DRM wrap your game. You can instead make this function call when your game starts up for the same effect.
Discord is an awesome place to get player visibility for your game. As such, we want you to put your best foot forward, so we've created a Big Long List of Assets that tells you all the various media that will represent your game across the store and all of Discord. Having all this stuff prepped ahead of time will save you a lot of headache when you're ready to launch.
When you're ready to sell on Discord, we'll need to know that you are who you say you are. We take Know Your Customer compliance seriously; that's why we've partnered with Tipalti, a top-tier KYC and payment solution. As part of the onboarding process, we'll ask you for information about your company, company owner, and preferred payout method, so feel free to gather those documents beforehand. We want to pay you, so help us out!