Owner GameStop Commercial Yes | Website Kongregate.com | |
Type of site Online gaming website (Social Network) Revenue Advertising
In game currency ("Kreds")
Corporate sponsorship
Premium memberships(Kong+) Alexa rank Global Rank 1,558(July 2016) | ||
Kongregate is a leading mobile and PC publisher and web gaming portal owned by Gamestop Corporation. Kongregate’s 30+ mobile games have over 100 million downloads and the web portal features over 100,000 free games played by tens of millions of players per month.
The portfolio touts an impressive and innovative line-up, with a focus on mid-core games, but spanning a wide range of genres. Kongregate pioneered the Idle/Incremental genre with big hits including AdVenture Capitalist.
In 2016, Kongregate received Apple Editors' Choice for BattleHand and The Trail, and 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.
Recent Steam releases include Spellstone and Slashy Hero, with Animation Throwdown and The Trail coming soon.
On the web portal, users can upload Adobe Flash, HTML 5/JavaScript, Shockwave, Java or Unity games. Users can rate the games and search games by its user rating. It features an API that Flash, Unity, and JavaScript developers can integrate into their games which allows users to submit high scores and earn achievement badges. Badges and local score submissions are available only on games whose developers choose to use the Kongregate API. Players can earn badges, challenge friends, and collect Kongpanions, as well as participate in forums, chat rooms, and guilds.
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. In December of the same year, the site was formally opened to the public. The site formally entered the beta testing phase on March 22, 2007. As of July 2008, Kongregate had raised around $9 million in capital from investments by Reid Hoffman, Jeff Clavier, Jeff Bezos, and Greylock Partners.
On July 23, 2010, GameStop announced an agreement to acquire Kongregate. Because of Gamestop's purchase of Kongregate, developers who work through Kongregate can have their content promoted to people who shop at a GameStop store. Kongregate also provides a way for creators of games on Facebook to expand their potential audience.
In early 2013, Kongregate announced a $10 million fund devoted to mobile gaming. The new mobile division is led by former Zynga executive Pany Haritatos. In 2014, the site introduced Kongpanions, acting as a trophy system and metagame in the form of small creatures, whether animals or personified objects. The Kongpanions players collect can then be used in some games on the site.
Kongregate announced plans in October 2016 to help developers bring their games to the Steam distribution platform with an updated software development kit to make it easy to port games between their web, mobile, and the Steam platforms (Windows, macOS, and Linux), and to support data sharing between these for players. This will enable games to take advantage of microtransactions through the Steam store for titles otherwise normally free-to-play.