Last week, the store wars began, but now they’re really getting spicy.

With Epic’s store up, running, and offering an 88 per cent cut of earnings to developers (compared to Steam’s industry-standard 70 per cent), Discord has fired back with an even more appealing offer: 90 per cent.

PC has never been a singular platform like, say, PlayStation or Xbox. Instead, it’s a series of disparate landmasses sharing the same turbulent sea.

Nintendo Switch Online went live over a month ago. While the paid service is required for people to play games like Mario Tennis Aces online together, it still doesn’t include any way for players to easily meet and connect with one another. As a result, fans have tried to fill that void with their own solutions, the latest of which is a website called Switcher.

A small but important change to Discord’s terms of service has big ramifications for users. The social app’s terms now include a class waiver, which would prevent participation in larger lawsuits. It’s supposedly meant to prevent frivolous lawsuits, but if you want to protect your consumer rights, a simple email will opt you out of the policy.

Back in June, ubiquitous chat company Discord launched a games tab that bore a slight resemblance to Steam's front page. Now it's launching its own store that resolutely refutes Steam's anything-goes approach.

Most people use Discord to chat with their gaming communities. Some also use it to share anime porn. As Discord has grown in ubiquity and legitimacy, these priorities have come into conflict.

I was having a relatively ordinary morning, until I got a Twitter DM. "Hey, is this you on Discord," a streamer asked.

Last week, Steam added new chat features that took a page from Discord's book - pretty much the entire book, actually. Now, Discord has added a "games" tab that replicates some of Steam's most pervasive features. And thus, the circle is complete.

The long, contentious list of things that divide us - dogs vs. cats, Labor vs. Liberal, tomato sauce vs. mayo - has an entry just for gamer aesthetes. There's a war among Discord users over whether people who use the gaming chat app's "light" theme are wicked, infernal hellbeasts or normal humans who like white backgrounds.

Blizzard's Battle.net service is giving players what they want -- access to their gaming friends on every device, whenever. It's a push for hyper convenience, but will undoubtedly lead many players to wonder which chat service they should use.

Gaming chat client Discord has banned servers and several users linked to white supremacist and Nazi ideologies, according to a tweet sent out from the official Discord account. "Discord's mission is to bring people together around gaming," their statement on Twitter read. "We will continue to take action against white supremacy, nazi ideology, and all forms of hate."

In February, we reported that many Discord users were facing abuse and were given no clear recourse. Among the issues endemic to the voice- and text-chat platform was the anonymous and unsolicited dissemination of child pornography, a problem which seems to have only gotten worse.

Over 25 million users have flocked to Discord, a text and voice platform for gamers, since its launch in May of 2015. Despite the company raising at least 30 million in venture capital funding, the company has only five "customer experience" personnel and no moderators on its staff. From what I've seen, users who wish to engage in harassment, raid servers or bombard chats and users with child pornography suffer no lasting repercussions for doing so. That seemingly any server can become the victim of organised attacks represents the strained and failing infrastructure of moderation -- of Discord, and of virtually any community on the internet.