Jump was a cloud gaming service for indie developers founded by CEO Anthony Palma with early team members Russ Mester, Cade Peterson, and Sam Hain. The service launched September 19, 2017 with 63 games, after a successful closed beta running during the month of July before. [1] Striving to be a 'Netflix for Indie Games', Jump offered a subscription-based model that provided access to a catalog of games by independent developers with little to no brand-name recognition, offering 70% of revenues to game developers. [2] [3] Jump offered indie games such as The End is Nigh and Ittle Dew. [4] As of February 2019 [update] , Jump offered 120 games. [5]
On February 14, 2020, CEO Anthony Palma announced that Jump had officially shut down. [6] [7]
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a film and television series library through distribution deals as well as its own productions, known as Netflix Originals.
Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront by Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to distributing and offering third-party game publishers' titles in late 2005. Steam offers various features, like digital rights management (DRM), game server matchmaking, anti-cheat measures, social networking and game streaming services. It provides the user with automatic game updating, saved game cloud synchronization, and community features such as friends messaging, in-game chat and a community market.
The Codemasters Software Company Limited is a British video game developer based in Southam, England, which is a subsidiary of American corporation Electronic Arts. Founded by brothers Richard and David Darling in October 1986, Codemasters is one of the oldest British game studios, and in 2005 was named the best independent video game developer by magazine Develop.
GarageGames was a game technology and software developer. GarageGames was the parent company of GG Interactive, developers of educational technology in the areas of computer science, video game development and programming. In addition, the company has been a video game developer and publisher. GarageGames created several game engines targeted for indie development. Founded in Eugene, Oregon, the company had offices in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States and its headquarters in Vancouver, Washington. In 2007, GarageGames was acquired by IAC and the company was renamed TorquePowered. In 2011, the company was purchased by Graham Software Development and reverted to the original name GarageGames.
Gameloft SE is a French video game publisher based in Paris, founded in December 1999 by Ubisoft co-founder Michel Guillemot. The company operates 18 development studios worldwide, and publishes games with a special focus on the mobile games market. Formerly a public company traded at the Paris Bourse, Gameloft was acquired by media conglomerate Vivendi in 2016.
GameFly is a privately held American online video game rental subscription service that specializes in providing games for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft systems starting from the sixth generation onwards.
Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 110,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchased by GameStop Corporation in 2010 before being acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB in 2017.
An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. However, the "indie" term may apply to other scenarios where the development of the game has some measure of independence from a publisher even if a publisher helps fund and distribute a game, such as creative freedom. Because of their independence and freedom to develop, indie games often focus on innovation, experimental gameplay, and taking risks not usually afforded in AAA games, and may explore the medium to produce unique experiences in art games. Indie games tend to be sold through digital distribution channels rather than at retail due to lack of publisher support. The term is synonymous with that of independent music or independent film in those respective mediums.
Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and the rest split between the game developers. Humble Bundle continues to offer these limited-time bundles, but have expanded to include a greater and more persistent storefront. The Humble Bundle concept was initially run by Wolfire Games in 2010, but by its second bundle, the Humble Bundle company was spun out to manage the promotion, payments, and distribution of the bundles. In October 2017, the company was acquired by Ziff Davis through its IGN Entertainment subsidiary, though operates as a separate subsidiary.
Unity Software Inc. is a video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment (OTEE) and changed its name in 2007. Unity Technologies is best known for the development of Unity, a licensed game engine used to create video games and other applications. As of 2020, Unity Technologies has undergone significant growth despite reporting financial losses for every year since its founding in 2004.
In the video game industry, digital distribution is the process of delivering video game content as digital information, without the exchange or purchase of new physical media such as ROM cartridges, magnetic storage, optical discs and flash memory cards. This process has existed since the early 1980s, but it was only with network advancements in bandwidth capabilities in the early 2000s that digital distribution became more prominent as a method of selling games. Currently, the process is dominated by online distribution over broadband Internet.
Desura was a digital distribution platform for the Microsoft Windows, Linux and OS X platforms. The service distributed games and related media online, with a primary focus on small independent game developers rather than larger companies. Desura contained automated game updates, community features, and developer resources. The client allowed users to create and distribute game mods as well.
Devolver Digital, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Austin, Texas, specializing in the publishing of indie games. The company was founded in June 2009 by Nigel Lowrie, Harry Miller, Graeme Struthers, Rick Stults, and Mike Wilson, five executives who had been involved with Gathering of Developers and Gamecock Media Group, which published games on developer-friendly terms, but due to the high cost associated with releasing retail games saw themselves acquired and dissolved by larger companies. To avoid this, Devolver Digital instead turned to digital distribution channels.
New World Interactive LLC is an American video game developer founded by Andrew Spearin and Jeremy Blum in 2010. The company is primarily known for Insurgency (2014), Day of Infamy (2017), and Insurgency: Sandstorm (2018).
tinyBuild Inc. is an American publisher of indie games based in Bellevue, Washington. The company was established by Alex Nichiporchik and Tom Brien in 2011 to expand Brien's game No Time to Explain into a commercial release. Building from the success of the game's Steam release in 2013, tinyBuild partnered with DoubleDutch Games for the development and release of SpeedRunners, which landed tinyBuild further publishing deals. Since March 2020, the company has been founding or acquiring new studios to expand. It became a public company on the Alternative Investment Market in March 2021.
GeForce Now is the brand used by Nvidia for its cloud gaming service. The Nvidia Shield version of GeForce Now, formerly known as Nvidia Grid, launched in beta in 2013, with Nvidia officially unveiling its name on September 30, 2015. The subscription service provided users with unlimited access to a library of games hosted on Nvidia servers for the life of the subscription, being delivered to subscribers through streaming video. Certain titles were also available via a "Buy & Play" model. This version was discontinued in 2019, and transitioned to a new version of the service that enabled Shield users to play their own games.
Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass are video game subscription services from Microsoft. Both services grant users access to a rotating catalog of games from a range of publishers and other premium services, including Xbox Live Gold and EA Play, for a single monthly subscription price. Xbox Game Pass provides this service on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One consoles, as well as Android, iOS, and iPadOS devices via Xbox Cloud Gaming, while PC Game Pass provides the service to personal computers using Windows 11 and Windows 10 with support for Xbox Cloud Gaming. The service was launched on June 1, 2017, while Xbox Live Gold subscribers received priority access on May 24.
Akupara Games is an American video game publisher and developer. Based in Los Angeles, California, the company was founded in 2016 by David Logan. The company also does contracting work for development and porting to console and mobile platforms.
Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey is an adventure game developed and published by British independent studio Salix Games for Windows in 2019. Set in 1888 London, the game features the legendary figures of Lancelot and Morgan le Fay as well as the historical Mary Jane Kelly in their joint hunt for a mysterious serial killer known as the Ripper.
IndieGala, s.r.l. is an Italy-based digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Indie Gala Bundles, a collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and the rest split between the game developers. IndieGala continues to offer these limited-time bundles, but have expanded to include a greater and more persistent storefront.