Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 110,000 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 Corporation in 2010 before being acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB 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 ''AdVenture Capitalist'' is a free-to-play incremental video game developed and published by Hyper Hippo Productions. It was first released for browsers and Android in 2014, for iOS (published by Kongregate), Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linu ...

'', ''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 multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash ...

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

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 med ...

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

, and

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a ...

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 this 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. As of 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 was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for prof ...

, Jeff Clavier,

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former presi ...

, and

Greylock Partners Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $3.5 billion under management. The firm focuses on early-stage companies in the consumer, enterprise software and infrastructure as wel ...

. On July 23, 2010,

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

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 Metagame, Hypergame, or game about the game, is an approach to a game that transcends or operates outside of the prescribed rules of the game, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by th ...

. These creatures often take the form of animals or anthropomophized objects. The Kongpanions that players collect can be used in some games on the site.

Games publishing

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

Zynga Zynga Inc. () is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its missio ...

executive Pany Haritatos 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 benefited by this 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 a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporizatio ...

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 ...

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 these platforms. This enabled games to take advantage of

microtransaction Microtransactions, often abbreviated as mtx, are a business model where users can purchase virtual goods with micropayments. Microtransactions are often used in free-to-play games to provide a revenue source for the developers. While microtransa ...

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 Editors' Choice for ''Animation Throwdown'' and ''AdVenture Capitalist''. ''BattleHand'' and ''The Trail'' also 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

Modern Times Group Modern may refer to: History *Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Philosophy ...

for $55 million. This followed MTG's recent purchase of 51% of Hamburg-based online game developer

InnoGames InnoGames GmbH is a German video game developer based in Hamburg. Founded in 2007, it focuses on the development of browser and mobile games. The company now has millions of registered players and revenues that reached in 2019. History In 200 ...

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-based Synapse Games, the developer of ''Animation Throwdown''. On May 2, 2019, Kongregate announced that co-founder and CEO Emily Greer was leaving the company. She was replaced by COO Pany Haritatos as interim CEO. In December 2019, Kongregate acquired ''

Surviv.io ''Surviv.io'' was a browser based multiplayer online 2D battle royale game created by Justin Kim and Nick Clark. It was released in October 2017 on its website for desktop browsers, and in October and November 2018 respectively for iOS and Andr ...

'', 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 focusing on

independent games An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. ...

. The storefront is 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.

Kongregate.io

In July 2021 Kongregate unveiled Kongregate.io, a new web gaming portal featuring games that use

non-fungible tokens A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the b ...

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 and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating syst ...

and the Apple App Store. Their most downloaded apps include ''

AdVenture Capitalist ''AdVenture Capitalist'' is a free-to-play incremental video game developed and published by Hyper Hippo Productions. It was first released for browsers and Android in 2014, for iOS (published by Kongregate), Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linu ...

'', ''Pocket Politics'', and ''Star Trek Trexels''.

References

External links

*
Kartridge website
{{Kongregate, state=expanded 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