No more user-submitted video games can be added to Kongregate, the company announced Wednesday. The website as the players knew it will change as the company shifts its focus toward “internal game development and acquisitions,” a spokesperson said in a statement to Polygon.
Kongregate launched in 2006 and has grown to include more than 120,000 games. It is widely known for its web gaming portal, which allows users to play thousands of free games. Developers could also upload their games to the platform, making Kongregate a place to find strange and interesting games, many of which were made in Flash. In 2018, it expanded to retail sales with an independent platform called Kartridge.
Adobe will no longer support Flash at the end of the year. Kongregate and other heavy Flash websites have been working to preserve their Flash titles, by converting to HTML5 or using emulators. Even then Kongregate has to change. The company said its current 128,000 games will continue to be playable as normal, and that developers will be able to update their titles. Social functions, such as some forums and chat rooms, will be closed. He listed the details, which will take effect “around July 22” on his website:
• Chat rooms not associated with a particular game will be closed, including Badge of the Day chat rooms.
• Many game-specific chat rooms will no longer be available, but some games (approximately 20) will continue to have chat.
• Certain non-game forums (off topic, serious discussion, arts, and forum games) will be removed from the site.
• Most other forums will move to a read-only state in which administrators can make announcements but players will not be able to post. This will not affect the forums for Animation Throwdown, Bit Heroes and other games created by Kongregate.
• People who want to create a new account should verify their email address.
“To be more specific, we are focused on our internal game development and acquisitions rather than our legacy flash game platform,” a Kongregate representative told Polygon. “As we describe on our website, all current games on Kongregate.com will continue to be playable, we simply do not allow new games to load at this time.”
The representative also confirmed that Kongregate has made layoffs as a result of the restructuring. The statement continued:
Over the past few years, we have been transitioning our focus to better align ourselves with our strengths and the gaming industry in general. This year has been especially difficult for us and for the rest of the world, with COVID 19 negatively affecting our business and changing the overall gaming market. That is why we had to take this unfortunate step to reshape our organization.
However, there are a number of games on Kongregate that can only be played with Flash. We contacted the company to inquire about the fate of those titles.
