Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 124,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchased by

GameStop GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer, headquartered in Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Dallas). The brand is the largest video game retailer worldwide. , the company operated 3,203 stor ...

in 2010 before being acquired by

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in 2017. The website's portfolio of games spans a wide range of genres. Kongregate is the home for several idle/clicker games, including '' Adventure Capitalist'', '' Clicker Heroes'', ''Crusaders of the Lost Idols'', and ''Anti-Idle: The Game''. On the web portal, users could upload

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a mostly discontinuedAlthough it is discontinued by Adobe Inc., for the Chinese market it is developed by Zhongcheng and for the international enterprise market it is developed by Ha ...

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

Shockwave In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a me ...

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, and Unity games with integrated high scores and achievement badges. The portal was closed to new user submissions in 2020, though previously submitted games remain.

History

Kongregate was released on October 10, 2006, by siblings Emily and Jim Greer into an alpha testing phase, which lasted until December 2006. During that time, game developers and players tested the site's interface and functionality. The site formally entered the beta testing phase on March 22, 2007. In December of the same year, the site was formally opened to the public. By July 2008, Kongregate had raised around $9 million in capital from investments by

Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and former executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily ...

, Jeff Clavier,

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ; born January 12, 1964) is an American businessman best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and clou ...

, and

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, a venture capital firm. On July 23, 2010,

announced an agreement to acquire Kongregate. In 2014, the site introduced digital creatures called Kongpanions, which act as a site-wide achievement system and

metagame A metagame, broadly defined as "a game beyond the game", typically refers to either of two concepts: a game which revolves around a core game; or the strategies and approaches to playing a game. A metagame can serve a broad range of purposes, a ...

. The creatures often take the form of animals or anthropomophized objects. The Kongpanions which players collect can be used in some games on the site. In 2024 it was announced that game development studio Monumental acquired Kongregate.

Games publishing

In early 2013, Kongregate announced a $10 million fund devoted to mobile gaming and as part of this new program, Pany Haritatos, a former

Zynga Zynga Inc. () is an American video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher known for its social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile an ...

executive, was hired to oversee it. The money was used to financially support free-to-play mobile game developers by helping them test and market their games. Some of the developers who benefited from the fund included Synapse Games, RedPoint Labs, and Making Fun. Kongregate announced plans in October 2016 to help developers bring their games to the

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

distribution platform with an updated

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific t ...

to make it easy to port games between Kongregate's web and mobile platforms as well as the Steam platforms (Windows, macOS, and Linux). It also simplified for players data sharing between the platforms. That enabled games to take advantage of

microtransaction Microtransaction (mtx) refers to a business model where users can purchase in-game virtual goods with micropayments. Microtransactions are often used in free-to-play games to provide a revenue source for the developers. While microtransactions ...

s through the Steam store for titles otherwise normally free-to-play. In 2016, Kongregate received Apple Editors' Choice for ''BattleHand'' and ''The Trail'', and the company received

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store, Play Store, or sometimes the Android Store (and was formerly Android Market), is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certifie ...

Editors' Choice for ''Animation Throwdown'' and ''AdVenture Capitalist''. ''BattleHand'' and ''The Trail'' were voted as Best of 2016 by Apple, and ''Animation Throwdown'' and ''The Trail'' were voted Best of 2016 by Google Play. On June 20, 2017, Kongregate announced it had closed a deal to be acquired by Swedish entertainment company

for $55 million. That followed MTG's recent purchase of 51% of

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

-based online game developer

InnoGames InnoGames GmbH is a German video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Hamburg. Founded in 2007, it focuses on the development of free-to-play Online game, online Browser game, browser and mobile games. The company reached ...

in 2016 and 2017. Planned as part of the deal was a change in focus from hosting third-party games to driving game development as well. " ..e'll be deepening our investment in several areas, from marketing/marketing tech to platform engineering. We're also going to be investing in first-party development and potential acquisitions of our own within the games space," said CEO Emily Greer. On October 5, 2017, Kongregate acquired

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

-based Synapse Games, the developer of ''Animation Throwdown''. On May 2, 2019, Kongregate announced that Greer, the co-founder and CEO was leaving the company. She was replaced by COO Pany Haritatos as an interim CEO. In December 2019, Kongregate acquired '' Surviv.io'', a free-to-play online game. On July 1, 2020, Kongregate announced the discontinuation of submissions as it prepared for the end-of-life for Adobe Flash Player by December 31, 2020, during which time the software required to run most of its games would be disabled in some browsers. Other features of the site such as the forums were also halted at the time as the Kongregate team worked on transitioning their internal titles to

Kartridge

In November 2018 Kongregate opened Kartridge, a digital

storefront A storefront or shopfront is the facade or entryway of a retail store located on the ground floor or street level of a commercial building, typically including one or more display windows. A storefront functions to attract visual attention to a b ...

focusing on independent games. The storefront was available via browser or desktop app and features both premium paid games and free browser-based titles. Unlike other storefronts such as

, Kartridge is a heavily curated store. Kongregate hopes this curation will help spotlight quality games and address

discoverability Discoverability is the degree to which something, especially a piece of content or information, can be found in a search of a file, database, or other information system. Discoverability is a concern in library and information science, many aspects ...

issues indie games commonly face. Another incentive offered to developers by the store is an increased revenue share for all games until they reach $10,000 in sales, with games that are exclusive to it having a higher threshold of $40,000. Kartridge shut down in September 2023.

Kongregate.io

In July 2021 Kongregate announced plans for Kongregate.io, a web gaming portal featuring games that use

non-fungible tokens In economics and law, fungibility is the property of something whose individual units are considered fundamentally interchangeable with each other. For example, the fungibility of money means that a $100 bill (note) is considered entirely equi ...

Immutable X

In May 2022 Kongregate announced a team-up with blockchain game tech company Immutable X with a $40 million grant fund for developers who make blockchain games for Kongregate.

Mobile apps

Kongregate has released 25 games for mobile devices that are available on the

Google Play Store Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store, Play Store, or sometimes the Android Store (and was formerly Android Market), is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certifie ...

and the

Apple App Store The App Store is an app marketplace developed and maintained by Apple, for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS SDK. Apps can be download ...

. Their most downloaded apps include '' AdVenture Capitalist'', ''Pocket Politics'', and ''Star Trek Trexels''.

References

External links

*
Kartridge website
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201112013225/https://www.kartridge.com/ , date=2020-11-12 Browser-based game websites Internet properties established in 2006 Webby Award winners GameStop Modern Times Group 2010 mergers and acquisitions 2017 mergers and acquisitions Video game companies established in 2006