Discord is preparing to sell you skins for your favorite games now that it's monetized just about everything else it can

It seems like every other day Discord is bugging me to watch a movie trailer or play a game for 15 minutes to buy profile decorations in its shop. I can put cat ears on my icon for $4.99 or dress it up like Gojo from Jujutsu Kaisen. And according to some API digging by a popular Marvel Rivals dataminer, I'll be able to buy cosmetics for my favorite games soon too.

RivalsInfo on X recently found evidence that suggests Discord is preparing to sell Marvel Rivals skins in the shop. PC Gamer has verified that these text strings exist in the Discord API under the name "MR test" and will be giftable to other users just like profile decorations.

While you can't actually buy any of them yet, each entry includes prices in USD that roughly match the amount of premium currency they're available for in the game. The Jeff the Land Shark's Halloween skin, for example, is listed for $20.49 and is about $22 worth of premium currency in-game. RivalsInfo says buying the skins will grant them to the Marvel Rivals account you have linked to your Discord.

And that right there sounds like the kind of thing Discord would do now that it's pushing game developers to integrate its SDK for things like friends lists and voice chat. The chat app is already synonymous with gaming and now it wants to be the glue that keeps it all together.

Even if there's no details on how this is going to play out, or when, you can start to see how it could go. Discord has its own unique currency, Orbs, and lately all it wants me to do is watch ads to earn them. We might be headed toward a future where watching the trailer for the next Elder Scrolls will let me buy Discord-themed horse armor. Either way, Discord wants a cut of the pay where it can get it and skins are its next frontier.

I'll be curious to see if anyone will care about buying skins on Discord instead of in the actual games, especially if there's no real difference in price or availability. It's hard not to see it just becoming another little popup I have to close while I try to DM my friends in peace.

Discord already tried and failed to sell games on the platform and now it keeps rolling out more and more little features with a price tag. I guess the idea is that if it can't get anyone to buy a $20 game, it might be able to convince them to buy a $20 skin for the game they already own and regularly play. I'm just afraid that it's another move by the chat app that will make using it more annoying than it needs to be because the people in charge of it are desperate to make more money in any way possible.