Hey all, You know what's really really hard? Keeping secrets. I'm so, so absolutely thrilled that I no longer have to keep the following information a secret: # Kongregate is building a PC gaming platform. That's right-- we are expanding into the world of downloadable and premium games! The new platform is called Kartridge. We're taking everything we have learned from nearly 12 years of Kongregate.com and doubling down on all the stuff that works best: * **Chat** You’ll be able to get other players' input while browsing and hear opinions about what's good, then continue the conversation once you start playing. * **Achievements and leveling** One of the things that most sets Kongregate apart is our achievements. For Kartridge, we're going to develop a richer and more meaningful way to reward play while keeping the core of what makes our badges fun. Longtime community admin [IAmTheCandyman](https://www.kongregate.com/accounts/iamthecandyman) has been working part-time on this for a while now and will go full-time in early April. * **Easy uploads** Making a game is hard work, but adding your game to Kartridge will be easy. We have spent a lot of time making sure that uploading games (and making a sweet-looking store page) involves minimal effort but gives you tons of control over how your game is presented. * **Supporting developers** We'll use the our background as a publisher, combined with our experience on the website, to actively help developers promote their games and find an appreciative audience.

Before we talk more about what Kartridge _is_, I'd like to clarify something about what it _isn't:_ # Kartridge is not a replacement for Kongregate.com. Kongregate.com is healthy and doing well! Chat activity is steady over the past 18 months. Revenue is solid. Revamping our developer contests has resulted in more support (both money and publicity) for small/indie devs. Over half a million times each day, someone loads a game on Kongregate. The site continues to be the best place to find and play web games. We decided to build Kartridge because, as browser support for Flash and Unity Webplayer declined, we saw a lot of web developers move to making downloadable games. The Kongregate mission statement is “To nurture the growth and health of independent game developers and player communities” so we wanted to expand our community focus and developer advocacy to include even more parts of the gaming world. For comparison, think about how our publishing initiative has become a real asset to the website and vice versa. Quite a few of the biggest games on the site today wouldn't have been made without an investment from Kongregate's publishing side. (When we agree to publish a game, we very frequently provide advance funding so the dev can pay their bills while actually making the game.) In other cases, we have "discovered" a Kongregate.com game and then helped the developers expand their reach with a successful mobile version. The various facets of Kongregate work together to benefit both players and developers, and we expect that will only increase in the future.

Now that we've covered that, let's talk more about Kartridge. # Focused on community As mentioned before, **chat** will be an integral part of the Kartridge experience. You can talk to other players while you browse, and keep on chatting while you play. Our goal is to create a deeply social ecosystem around games and gaming. Some of our planning has been influenced by input we got over the last two years in our suggestions thread in this forum [1](https://www.kongregate.com/forums/1-kongregate/topics/908925-fall-2017-suggestions-thread#posts-11612472) [2](http://www.kongregate.com/forums/1/topics/827662#posts-11385120) [3](http://www.kongregate.com/forums/1-kongregate/topics/722301-spring-2017-suggestions-thread#posts-11106185) [4](http://www.kongregate.com/forums/1-kongregate/topics/692420-winter-2016-suggestions-thread#posts-10913703) [5](http://www.kongregate.com/forums/1-kongregate/topics/666098-fall-2016-suggestions-thread?page=1#posts-10730048), so a big shoutout to the regulars who participate in that thread and give feedback about what would make for a better experience. We very much hope that most Kongregate regulars will come try out Kartridge and like it enough to participate in the new community as well. That said, our intention is to create **a _new_ community**, giving it the opportunity to emerge naturally without the expectation that it will be exactly the same as the website community. As the Kartridge community begins to grow and flourish, Kartridge chat and Kongregate.com chat will be separate; you will not be able to talk to players participating in Kartridge chat through Kongregate.com chat and vice versa. Speaking of creating a distinct community, we're going to approach **conduct and expectations** somewhat differently than we do on the website. The conduct guidelines will be updated and more thorough than the current ones [here](https://www.kongregate.com/pages/conduct). We also have plans for how to improve the quality of chat in meaningful ways, but we're not quite ready to discuss those in detail just yet. As I mentioned above, **achievements and levels** will be an evolved, more-rewarding version of the ones you know and love on the website. Our main goal is to provide a balanced and fun system that will offer more incentives to those who participate. Longtime website users should note that one’s Kartridge level will be entirely separate from one’s Kongregate.com level; even if you’re level 75 on the website, you’ll begin at level 1 on Kartridge. In order to avoid fragmenting **forum discussions** unnecessarily, Kartridge players will get to use the same forums as all other Kongregate players-- much as players of our published games coming from other platforms do already.

# All about the games Kartridge will be an **open platform** welcoming developers big and small. Developers will be able to choose which technologies they use and how they would like to monetize their games-- premium, pay-what-you-want, free-to-play, incentivized-ads and free titles will all be supported. Something we understand very clearly is that developers need the **upload process** to be quick and painless. We have taken the lessons learned on Kongregate.com plus our experience bringing games to new platforms as a publisher to minimize overhead and enable developers to onboard their games easily. There will be no manual approval process and no upload fees. In terms of **game discovery**, our front page will be a place for players to find games we think they’ll love, whether it’s popular titles with broad appeal, hidden gems, or recommendations tailored to you as a player. We have a dedicated editorial team that will use their experience in content curation for Kongregate.com for over a decade to make sure that good games are given the chance to find an audience. Games will be showcased based on what is resonating with our players and our team in addition to some surfacing based on a player’s individual preferences. We're currently playing around with a couple of different interesting mechanics to help people discover new categories of games they might enjoy. If you’re an interested game creator, please visit https://www.kartridge.com/developers/ to learn more and reach out to us! We'll be meeting with a lot of developers during [GDC](http://www.gdconf.com/), so please be sure to reach out or find us at our booth if you’ll be there.

Now that I have covered all of those things, I want to show off _my personal most-favorite part_ of all: how great Kartridge looks.  -------------------------------- **home page**  -------------------------------- **sample game page**  -------------------------------- **another sample game page** 

# How can I sign up to be a beta tester? Go to www.kartridge.com and enter your email address! We’re launching a closed beta in a few weeks. We’ll start with a small group of players but let more and more in as we squash bugs and iron out any issues. We’ll hit full open beta this summer!

# A note in closing This post would be incomplete if I failed to acknowledge the degree to which Kongregate.com’s success is driven by our amazing community of players and developers. Most of the community team (and a fair few other longtime employees) started out as players and found ourselves with the opportunity to work on something that we all clearly loved; in many ways, this community has changed our lives. We’re investing time, energy and effort in this new thing because we genuinely believe that this community is remarkable. Thank you all for helping us come so far, and we really, really hope you love Kartridge! <3 <3 <3

Mind if I ask how you plan on making achievements/leveling more rewarding?

I'm really interested in seeing how this goes and how it'll effect kong in the long run. yes Kongs been steady but I'm interested in if this will bring new people to the community as a whole, or if we're going to see a shift more one way or the other.

Oh wow, this all looks really exciting. I trust my email address won't be publicly visible if I sign up for the closed beta? **Edit**: _"To expedite access, make sure you have a Kongregate account registered to this email address."_ ack. If I had known that I would've used the one I use for this account. Changed the email associated with this account. > Longtime community admin IAmTheCandyman has been working part-time on this for a while now and will go full-time in early April. nani does this mean he won't be doing Kongregate stuff anymore

> *Originally posted by **[trickyrodent](/forums/1/topics/1571176?page=1#12486517)**:* Longtime website users should note that one’s Kartridge level will be entirely separate from one’s Kongregate.com level; even if you’re level 75 on the website, you’ll begin at level 1 on Kartridge. Nice, that means the leaderboard would be interesting to see once again. If there ever will be one. It still hurts me to this day that some people joined a few years before me and therefore they can get like 10k more points than me even though they don't have more badges.

> *Originally posted by **[TurkeyPie](/forums/1/topics/1571176?page=1#12486700)**:* > Oh wow, this all looks really exciting. > I trust my email address won't be publicly visible if I sign up for the closed beta? It definitely will not be publicly visible. > > Longtime community admin IAmTheCandyman has been working part-time on this for a while now and will go full-time in early April. > > does this mean he won't be doing Kongregate stuff anymore That's correct-- he won't be involved in the website any more. After six and a half years it's hard to imagine doing this without him!

> *Originally posted by **[trickyrodent](/forums/1/topics/1571176?page=1#12486737)**:* > > > > Longtime community admin IAmTheCandyman has been working part-time on this for a while now and will go full-time in early April. > > > > does this mean he won't be doing Kongregate stuff anymore > > That's correct-- he won't be involved in the website any more. After six and a half years it's hard to imagine doing this without him! RIP :'( My question is, will there be a mobile version at some point? Not to play games on it necessarily, but to do other stuff like how steam mobile works?

Well this was fairly unexpected. At least the fact that Kong is publishing some pretty big titles like Psychonauts instead of just indie/flash devs. Would Kartridge verify if the titles are safe/virus free before releasing them to the public (since security's a pretty big thing and some stuff comes bundled with some malware from time to time)? By the way, would there be any sort of purchase linking/connectivity? Like if a flash game with some microtransactions were put here, and the same game with the same transaction were put over on Kartridge, would there be any ways to link the purchases so one could get two birds at the cost of one stone or would one need to pelt two stones at two separate birds? But this does seem like a way to demo a game here, and sell the full product on Kartridge which could attract/retain some devs or possibly bring some devs that left for Steam. Although about Candyman leaving, that's pretty sad. If Kong throws another Kong live/office photo thing, would he still show up from time to time (like is he still there physically or in another office now)?

Does GDC has anything to do with [GDC](https://www.kongregate.com/accounts/graphicdesignc)?

I'm excited for this but the only way I could really see myself using this often is if it could sync up with your steam library for any overlap (I wouldn't buy a game twice) That, and/or special kartridge exclusives but Idk what would convince me besides Mardek 4. It'll sure be interesting to see this develop and I'll be watching this for sure <3

This looks very exciting! I can't wait to see what it turns out like.

> *Originally posted by **[yeasy](/forums/1/topics/1571176?page=1#12486880)**:* > Does GDC has anything to do with [GDC](https://www.kongregate.com/accounts/graphicdesignc)? No, GDC is the [Game Developers Conference](http://www.gdconf.com/).

> *Originally posted by **[FlyingCat](/forums/1/topics/1571176?page=1#12486877)**:* > > Although about Candyman leaving, that's pretty sad. If Kong throws another Kong live/office photo thing, would he still show up from time to time (like is he still there physically or in another office now)? Oh, he's not LEAVING. He'll be in the same office, at the same desk, the whole nine yards. It's just that on a day-to-day level he's going to be working on Kartridge-related things. :-)

So, i have a few questions: 1) Will it be connected to our Kongregate account ? And if so, will kreds be shared? 2) Will it be possible to share games with gog/steam? 3) what'll be the policy on drm?

> *Originally posted by **[Heather](/forums/1/topics/1571176?page=1#12486944)**:* > > *Originally posted by **[yeasy](/forums/1/topics/1571176?page=1#12486880)**:* > > Does GDC has anything to do with [GDC](https://www.kongregate.com/accounts/graphicdesignc)? > > No, GDC is the [Game Developers Conference](http://www.gdconf.com/). I don't believe you ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°) How would kongregate benefit from telling the truth to me? It's kongspiracy on the biggest scale

Hey all, thank you for all the well wishes and interest! Some of these questions we can answer already, some we'll share more on later, and I'll let trickyrodent and IAmTheCandyman do that. We're very excited about Kartridge and can't wait to start letting players in later this month.

> *Originally posted by **[pokerpo](/forums/1/topics/1571176?page=1#12486684)**:* > Mind if I ask how you plan on making achievements/leveling more rewarding? It's a great question, but one we can't really answer yet because we're still in the development stage of this part. We have a bunch of pretty cool ideas, but it's not yet clear which of those ideas will become reality! > *Originally posted by **[ZeroPride](/forums/1/topics/1571176?page=1#12486982)**:* > So, i have a few questions: > 1) Will it be connected to our Kongregate account ? And if so, will kreds be shared? > 2) Will it be possible to share games with gog/steam? > 3) what'll be the policy on drm? 1. The two accounts will be connected, yes. Regarding whether kreds will work on both, I'm a little unclear! Details to follow at some point. 2. Not at this time. 3. DRM-free.

Will achievements be as limited in quantity within single games as they are on Kongregate?

Lots of questions coming up, so maybe grab a coffee before reading this one. **EDIT:** Although based on trickyrodent's previous post it seems like the answer to a number of them is "We don't know yet". I understand being unwilling to promise features that might not actually exist for whatever reason, but hopefully you can provide at least some indicator of the preferences in vision for this platform, even if not the actual featureset. First up: is the library of free titles (presumably mostly ports of existing Kongregate games) going to be sizeable enough to convince someone to even *install* Kartridge, let alone purchase games there rather than on Steam? Enough people got burned by Desura that even GOG is struggling, despite [being able to port some Steam titles over](https://www.gog.com/connect). In order to get any semblance of a userbase without such a feature, you're going to have to rely almost entirely on "new blood" - users with no meaningful number of games owned on any other gaming platform. I own 6,560 games on Steam and even if I was willing to re-purchase a sizable chunk of them (I'm definitely not), I expect that this vastly outnumbers the entire launch catalogue of Kartridge, so there's very little that Kartridge could have to offer me. So you're relying on people that own 6 games on Steam, rather than 6 thousand, since they don't have a functional investment in a competitor. What's the sell? Achievements are definitely something I can see being a major point here, since Steam's achievement system is currently the strongest on the PC platform and is an absolute joke, but basically all the information that has been given is "they're like Kongregate's but better". I spent enough time talking with IATCM back in the day to know based on his - and Kongregate's - reputation that this system is likely to be pretty solid, but as I said: you're not trying to sell to me, you're trying to sell to people just entering the market. Will the achievement system have a comprehensive and public API allowing for the development of third-party trackers like [AStats](http://astats.astats.nl/astats/User_Info.php?SteamID64=76561198028125071) and [Completionist.me](https://completionist.me/steam/profile/76561198028125071)? Will the achievements all be made by Kartridge staff like is done on Kongregate, or will they be at the developer's whim alone, or even made by the developer but requiring approval? If the former, will they be available for *all* games, or just the "flagship" titles? I'm asking a lot about the achievements because as far as I can see that's the main selling point, but there's a lot of other questions about the environment as a whole that pop up. While no other platforms (as far as I'm aware) explicitly publish their "cut" of sales, it's hardly a well-kept secret; how does Kartridge compare on this front? If a game costs the same on two different platforms (all examples in your screenshots are the same USD price as those games on Steam), then being able to boast a larger cut of the sale going to the developer could win some people over. Your bolding of "open platform" and stressing on the developer page that there will be no fee for publishing suggests to me that you're also intending on having minimal quality control - closer to the Steam model than GOG. How are you intending to handle the inevitable deluge of asset flips that this will encourage? On an ad-supported website this isn't a big concern, but when potential buyers have to second-guess every purchase to make sure that they're not paying $9.99 for a Unity tutorial it can turn people away - especially when these such games become the majority of the store (as they have done with Steam). Do you intend to support a key/bundle ecosystem, or do all purchases start and stop at the storefront page? I live in Australia: are prices going to be tailored to my region, or are they just going to be the same USD price for everyone? There's a lot to ask, but pretty much all of it comes down to the same question: what does Kartridge do better than Steam? There's a frankly staggering number of things you could identify and target as answers to that question, but unless they're explicitly stated with substantiative details, people are just going to stick to the status quo.