How it started
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 that time, game developers and players tested the site's interface and functionality. The site formally entered the beta testing phase on March 22, 2007. In December of the same year, the site was formally opened to the public. By July 2008, Kongregate had raised around $9 million in capital from investments by Reid Hoffman, Jeff Clavier, Jeff Bezos, and Greylock Partners, a venture capital firm.
On July 23, 2010, GameStop announced an agreement to acquire Kongregate. In 2014, the site introduced digital creatures called Kongpanions, which act as a site-wide achievement system and metagame. The creatures often take the form of animals or anthropomophized objects. The Kongpanions which players collect can be used in some games on the site.
Kongregate was sold to game developer Monumental in 2024 in a deal that gave MTG a 30% stake in the resulting company.
Games publishing
In early 2013, Kongregate announced a $10 million fund devoted to mobile gaming and as part of this new program, Pany Haritatos, a former Zynga executive, was hired to oversee it. The money was used to financially support free-to-play mobile game developers by helping them test and market their games. Some of the developers who benefited from the fund included Synapse Games, RedPoint Labs, and Making Fun.
From Wikipedia’s article on Kongregate, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2