The Kongregate Story

      

On October 10th, 2006, two siblings released the alpha version of their new game hosting platform to the world with one simple goal, “Be like Youtube, but for games.”

Jim Greer, the brother of the pair, had previously experienced the darker side of the games industry. He was part of a development team that lost all rights to their creation after signing a deal with a publisher. Rather than simply accepting this as a consequence of doing business, he imagined something better. He pictured a platform where independent developers could find audiences and monetize their games without ever needing to give the rights of their hard work away.

While Jim may have had the vision, he didn’t make it a reality on his own. His sister, Emily Greer, had a background in statistics and marketing. At the time, she was considering going to grad school for economics, but instead decided to go into business with her brother and his big idea. The pair balanced each other out almost perfectly. Jim dreamed up the design and Emily analyzed the implementation. The result was Kongregate.

When Kongregate first opened, anyone could upload a game to it and be paid a percentage of any advertisement views that game generated. The popularity of Adobe Flash near this time meant it was easier than ever for just about anyone to create a game that could then be uploaded to the site. As a result, thousands of games began to fill Kongregate’s library. Many well-remembered classics, such as Bloons Tower Defense, Learn to Fly, Sonny, and more, all found a home on the site within the first two years of it opening. This massive collection was further supported by a site-wide meta-game of achievements called Badges and popular social features such as chatrooms and forums. By July of 2010, when Kongregate was purchased by Gamestop, it was one of the top destinations for online gaming, and was on par with Facebook Gaming and even Steam at the time.

There has been much more to Kongregate’s story since those early years, but the mission of the site has remained the same. Now, twenty years later under the ownership of Monumental, Kongregate aims to bring that classic experience into the modern era. On one hand, this has meant optimizing the site’s back-end infrastructure to current standards and restructuring decades of underlying technology, while on the other, it has meant understanding the new challenges indie developers face to continue providing helpful solutions. From data privacy and age ratings to AI usage and more, publishing games online has evolved significantly over the past twenty years. All the while, Kongregate has continued to grow how it provides developers the support they need to find success while ensuring all creative rights remain with the creator.

Celebrate two decades of Kongregate with us beginning next week on Monday when a brand-new twentieth anniversary Kongpanion will be available to earn from the Badge of the Day. Also, watch out for more articles from us throughout the month of October. In the meantime, if you want to be a part of the next twenty years of Kongregate, learn how you can upload your own game by visiting our developer help center.