Kongregate.com
Gaming publisher and flash portal Kongregate announced a series of changes coming later this month which resulted in the layoff of multiple employees and the closing of submissions for new titles on the site, as spotted by GamesIndustry.biz.
As of Wednesday, the site which has been around since 2006, is no longer accepting new game submissions to its massive flash library of more than 100,000 titles. The company cited an increased focus on its own game development as well as the declining popularity of flash games as the reasons behind the shift.
Some employees took to social media to announce they were laid off from the company, with some noting that this occurred without any notice and stating that they were informed via their direct deposit. It is not clear at this time how many employees were impacted.
Kongregate’s existing portal of 128,000 plus titles will still be available to play, and developers will also still be able to update their games already on the site.
The company also announced other changes set to take place later this month on its website, including the disabling of several social features such as certain chat rooms and non-gaming forums. You can find the full list of changes here, which are set to take effect “on or around” July 22.
As of publication time, Kongregate has not responded to a request for more information regarding the layoffs or for comment.
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UPDATE, 7/1/2020: A Kongregate representative has reached out with a comment, clarifying that the method by which employees were told was unintentional and also citing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as part of the shift for the company’s focus. Kongregate also confirmed that 12 employees were laid off. The full statement may be found below.
“We can confirm that we have made the difficult, but necessary decision to let a number of appreciated team members go today. Over the last few years, we have been transitioning our focus to better align with our strengths and the gaming industry as a whole. This year has been especially difficult for us, and the rest of the world, with COVID 19 affecting our business in a negative way and changing the overall games market. That’s why we had to take this unfortunate step to reshape our organization.
“To be more specific, we’re focused on our internal game development and acquisitions rather than our legacy flash gaming platform. As we outlined on our website, all of the current games on Kongregate.com will remain playable, we are just not allowing any new games to be uploaded at this time.
“In regards to how employees were told, a lot of care went into how we planned on informing our team given the current constraints, including a group meeting earlier today. Unfortunately, this involves a lot of moving parts, and in this case, the direct deposit notification got ahead of us. This is not how we intended our employees to find out and for that we are very sorry.”
