The end of GameJacket?

I blogged about GameJacket about a year ago in the post Monetize your Flash game with GameJacket.

I never tried, but it was the biggest MochiAds competitor

Sadly, today I received this email:

« Last month, GameJacket learned that the funding round it had engaged it had failed with the proposed venture capital investor withdrawing its offer due to the uncertain current economic climate. Since this time GameJacket’s management has been actively seeking a buyer for the continuation of the business. Despite initial strong interest, all active lines of enquiry were concluded yesterday resulting in no buyer being identified.

We’re sorry to report that GameJacket ceased to trade as of yesterday and the company will make a further announcement in due course.

The employees and management of GameJacket have worked tirelessly to build and maintain the GameJacket concept and we’re disappointed in this outcome. The company would also like to take this opportunity to thank developers for their generous support and to apologise for the inconvenience this situation will cause. »

As said, I never tried it but I am a bit worried because it was a company operating in the casual games market that seems to be the new Eldorado.

I would like to hear someone having an active balance on GJ.

7 Responses

1. Scarybug says:

   June 11, 2009 at 7:50 pm

   There’s a discussion thread on FlashGameLicense.com about this. Apparently they were offering $1000 advance and guaranteeing $0.50 CPM minimum on all games they approved. Many games did not make that much money, so they lost a lot of money. They were relying on investors to keep them afloat, but investors like to see a good business plan. One of the founders of Mochi just tweeted “Giving away money was never a solid business plan”. I assume this means that Mochi knows how to make money from providing ad services to games, so it won’t be going under anytime soon. CPMStar has a similar plan to Mochi’s so I assume/hope they’re doing fine too. (I use CPMStar for Chronotron, and I love it!) Casual games are still safe. Only spending imaginary money is not safe anymore.

   Reply
2. jeanpier says:

   June 11, 2009 at 11:04 pm

   I got an similar e-mail… lost about $90 for unpaid ads. Nothing big but what really bother me is that some days ago they said they don’t have financial problems…aggrrrrrr

   Reply
3. Ivan P says:

   June 12, 2009 at 5:46 am

   I lost $260 =( but the biggest loss is my games going down on hundreds of sites because of their server dependent ads serving system.

   Reply
4. SJB says:

   June 13, 2009 at 11:37 pm

   Their distribution was crap, I’d say that was their biggest downfall.

   Reply
5. Daniel says:

   June 14, 2009 at 7:12 pm

   Sometimes when you clicked the Next button on the ad to get to the game it would just hold for a while and not let you actually play the game. I’m sure many players experienced this and did not play the game because of it.

   I think also mochiads had more features than them, such as the high scores service they provide.

   I think that the $1,000 advance was to attract a bunch of developers to grow their company fast. Maybe they hoped that when they grew big enough they could actually make money off of it. In any case, they made a solid effort, but I guess I’ll be switching to mochiads now.

   Reply
6. Badim says:

   June 20, 2009 at 4:15 pm

   I just get answers from GJ.
   http://blog.elite-games.net/blog4.php/2009/06/19/important-message-from-gamejacket-2

   I was swamped with task to fix GJ versions of games. It takes almost 5 days. it takes a lot of time when you get 20 own games, 10 sponsored, and own portal =(((

   In money I earn 2k$(2008), lost -1k$ and -1k$-2k$ in short-term =(

   Reply
7. mike cann says:

   June 20, 2009 at 4:57 pm

   As an (ex) GameJacket employee and GJ developer im both doubly gutted about the loss of GJ. Its sad that the flash games arena has lost a direct competitor to Mochi, which will now undoubtedly monopolize the market.

   In response to Scarybug who says: “I assume this means that Mochi knows how to make money from providing ad services to games”. You have to remember that GJ was founded on very little funding and no investment other than the initial founding investors. Whereas Mochi has gone through 3 (i think) rounds of investment worth tens of millions, so perhaps you have to wonder why it is they need so much investment and aren’t self sufficient yet?

   Perhaps its just that no one can make money in this industry. That is no one other than the portals like Kongregate and others who make money from their own adverts and block adverts from the advert providers. For example looks at http://www.agame.com/ who use div layering to pop up an advert over the top of the GJ or Mochi advert. All this does is benefits the portal owner and severely reduces the click through rate of the advert running in the game.

   In response to Daniel who writes: “I think that the $1,000 advance was to attract a bunch of developers to grow their company fast”. This is exactly correct. When GJ entered the fray Mochi was already over 1 year old and so to grab a slice of the pie the $1000 advance was launched. It was always intended to be turned into something else be it monthly competitions or whatever.

   The 50cent guarantee however was genuine and was sustainable as GJ was going for different territories to Mochi. Because GJ was advertising in European and Asian territories rather than just US they were able to guarantee the 50cents, often the developer was earning way over that however.

   Anyways this comment is long enough already but if you want to discuss this further you can email me: mike.cann@gmail.com

   Mike

   Reply