Players of a certain age will no doubt remember the heyday of flash games. Kongregate has been a platform for hosting and curating various different forms of web games since 2006, with thousands of games of all different types playable right in your web browser. This was a scene that had space for every genre you can think of, with thoughtful artsy experiences, political satire, jokey platformers, and intricate shooters all existing side by side on the platform.
For various different reasons this trend has largely subsided now, with fewer web games getting the attention and exposure that they used to. To some extent, these kinds of smaller and more experimental games from small teams or even solo developers have found a home on places like mobile app stores, Steam, and console digital stores. Where in the past for many developers, making a web game was one of the best ways to get it into players’ hands, there are now many different options for games of all different sizes.
Some of the developers who started out making web games have since become successful on other platforms, with developers like Edmund McMillen (Super Meat Boy, Binding of Isaac), Terry Cavanagh (VVVVVV, Super Hexagon), The Behemoth (Alien Hominid, Castle Crashers), and Vlambeer (Nuclear Throne, Luftrausers) all having started out making flash games. These devs have now moved onto other more modern platforms.
It’s across this backdrop of web games’ faltering relevance, that news has just come from Kongregate that as today they will no longer be accepting and new game submissions. Going forward, there will not be any new games appearing on Kongregate. They’re also going to be scaling back or halting entirely some of the social features the platform offers, with many chat rooms and forums being shut down, and new badges will be applied to games.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, Kongregate has pledged to keep “all 128,000” games playable, and developers behind games that are already on the platform will still be able to update them. Nothing is forever, and who knows if or when that might change for now, but there’s at least a stay of execution for the games already on there.
Particularly as Adobe Flash is on the way out, with Adobe completely dropping any support from December 2020 onward, it’s perhaps understandable that this platform is no longer viable as an ongoing concern. Perhaps the best long term hope is projects like BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint, a flash game preservation effort, intending to make as many of these games palatable on modern platforms without flash as possible.
Kongregate the platform for web games is going away, but Kongregate themselves aren’t going anywhere. They still have their store for commercial indie games, Kartridge, although it’s never really garnered huge traction. In the future, they’re looking toward developing their own games. As they scale back the resources they’re allocating to maintaining and supporting their library of web games, they’ll be scaling up the resources they dedicate towards game development.
You can read their post explaining this move in detail over here. I’m interested to see what direction Kongregate go with their game development ambitions, but it is a little sad to see this era come to an end.