Kongregate

Why Web Gaming Died, And How It’s Coming Back

Web-based gaming, which flourished in the early 2000s through portals like Miniclip and Kongregate, experienced a significant decline following the rise of mobile gaming and the discontinuation of Adobe Flash.

• Web-based gaming is experiencing a resurgence driven by modern technologies like HTML5, WebAssembly, and advanced game engines such as Unity and PlayCanvas, which allow for near-native CPU performance.
• The primary competitive advantage of modern web games is frictionless distribution, enabling users to launch games instantly via links without navigating app stores or performing manual downloads.
• Discord is actively re-entering the gaming space by opening its web-based Activities platform to all developers and introducing support for in-app purchases (IAP) to enable more sophisticated monetization.