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As a retailer, Gamestop is an unstoppable juggernaut best known for buying used games for a fraction of their worth and selling them for a few dollars less than the brand-new games. The retailer’s online gaming strategies, though, have been something of a mystery. With downloadable content and direct-to-drive purchasing slowly chipping away at its brick-and-mortar market share, Gamestop has long promised initiatives to create a stronger digital foothold. Today, at least one of those initiatives came to fruition as the company announced its acquisition of free-to-play Flash gaming site Kongregate. 
Never heard of it? You might be the only one, then. According to Gamasutra, Kongregate claims to generate 10 million users per month, who spend millions of hours playing games, chatting with other users, acquiring achievements, and wasting insurmountable amounts of productivity they should be spending on work at their 9-5. --article_image.jpg)
Kongregate is also a website run by and for the community of gamers it serves. Users are free to create and upload games for other users to play, rate, and even pay for. While the Flash gaming hub does not charge its contributors to play games or upload them, the company has made significant leaps in revenue – about 30% higher each month- year-over-year – based on microtransactions and advertising from the likes of Microsoft and 2K Sports. Users who generate content can monetize their games through Kongregate and even make a fair bit of money themselves.
Above: It’s cool, man. Take a break. (image credit to original creator, whomever you are)
What Gamestop will bring to this table is currently as uncertain as the actual terms of the acquisition, which remain unknown. While we certainly do not want to monger fear in thinking that Gamestop will begin charging to play games that, logically, one could simply go to another site and play absolutely for free, it’s asinine to think that the retail giant will be able to resist trying to squeeze more revenue out of the site than simple ad sales. We’ll be watching Kongregate and its career over the coming months with great interest.
Source: Gamasutra
Jul 27, 2010
