Kongregate moves to PC publishing with first Steam release

Free-to-play web portal Kongregate has announced that it’ll be expanding into Steam publishing, in a move it’s hoping will garner favour with move indie developers. The company’s first title is Slashy Hero by GentleBros and its available now.

Next month they plan to release Spellstone, a collectible card game from developers Synapse Games.

Kongregate, now operated by US games retailer GameSpot is hoping that by bringing games to Steam, they can entice more developers to throw their lot in with them and to make this easier they’ll also be offering a unified SDK that will allow developers to gather consistent analytics data across a series of platforms, while also giving players the ability to have consistent save games between web, mobile and Steam platforms.

Kongregate has 100,000 Flash games on the website, played by millions every month. Many of this titles are supporting solely by ads, although Slashy Hero is a premium title currently selling for £3.29. Players of the mobile version of Slashy Hero will be able to download and play the steam version with their upgrades, characters and saved games from the mobile version.

For now, the web portal remains Kongregate’s bread and butter. The company is hopeful that adding Steam and supporting more platforms will accelerate its business, "But we’re also investing into the Kongregate platform, we really believe in that, not just publishing," Greer said. "We’re still keeping what we’re doing there under wraps but will have an announcement in the next few months."