Flash games site Kongregate has stopped accepting submissions
All 128,000 games will still be playable, though.
If you played Flash-based games in the 2000s, you probably remember Kongregate, a website that hosted over 100,000 browser games. Developers of any experience level could upload their creations, and users could find a host of oddball options that you weren’t likely to find elsewhere. Unfortunately, the site will soon take a step towards being more of an archive than an active part of the internet, as Kongregate has announced that it’ll stop accepting new game uploads. The company does say that all of its 128,000 games will still be playable, and developers will be able to keep updating them, as well.
Additionally, Forbes confirmed that the site is also laying off an unknown number of employees after a number of employees tweeted that they only found out by a direct deposit to their bank accounts. Kongregate said in a statement to Forbes that the way they found out was entirely unintentional.
Kongregate is also shutting down a number of its social features on or around July 22nd. Chatroooms, both general ones and ones associated with specific games, are being closed, and most of its discussion forms are also being removed or moved to read-only state. Kongregate didn’t say why it’s making these changes, but decreased usage seems like the easiest answer.
All this comes as Adobe is getting ready to finally end support and development on Flash, though the once-prominent plug-in has been all but dead for a few years now. Kongregate has supported HTML5 games for a few years now, but it’s not entirely clear how the remaining Flash games on the site will be transitioned so they remain playable. But Kongregate still has some time, as Flash isn’t set to be killed until the very end of 2020.
Correction, 7/3/20 1:30PM ET: This story originally stated that Kongregate would stop accepting game submissions on or around July 22nd; the site has stopped accepting new games already. It plans to disable a number of social features on or around July 22nd. We apologize for the error.
