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Game Jolt, a social platform where millions of Gen Z gamers and creators share and discover content around their favorite video games, launched its first mobile app for iOS and Android today.
With over 100,000 mobile installs pre-launch, Game Jolt kicked off 2022 with 4 million monthly active users across its website, mobile and desktop app.
“It’s clear to us that Gen Z is tired of generic social media and they want a place specifically for gaming that supports all types of content they’re creating–art, videos, thoughts, and livestreams all in one place.” said Game Jolt founder and CEO Yaprak DeCarmine, in a statement.
After securing $2.6 million in seed funding in the fall from tech leaders including the founders of Twitch and Rec Room, Game Jolt’s expansion into mobile will capture the next generation of gamers who spend hours a day playing games.
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The team plans to spend the next few months implementing monetization opportunities within the creator economy on the platform and “turning Game Jolt into a 24/7 party where there’s always something fun going on for our users to participate in,” said DeCarmine.
The Game Jolt app is available to install on both the Apple App Store and Google Play today. To celebrate the mobile launch, Game Jolt will be giving away a PlayStation 5 and Alienware x15 gaming laptop through an in-app contest. Yaprak’s husband, David DeCarmine, started the company at age 14 in 2002.
Yaprak met David while playing games and working at the tech startup Zulily. Yaprak grew up in Turkey and immigrated to the U.S. She had become a fan by playing games with her older brother. And she learned how to speak English in part by playing video games. They got married in 2014 and Yaprak convinced David they should quit their jobs to work full-time on Game Jolt.
“Back then, it was just a bunch of hobbyists making games,” said Yaprak said in an earlier interview with GamesBeat. “It really started as kind of side passion project. But here we are. Game Jolt has had so much growth since then.”
Now Game Jolt has evolved into a collection of more than 40,000 communities started by gamers, and its largest communities exceed 500,000 people. Overall, the number of users is in the millions. But the communities aren’t what you would expect based on the popularity of games. For instance, Five Nights at Freddy’s has a much larger community than Call of Duty: Warzone.
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