gamejolt.com

A shadow of its former self.

I've been an active user of Game Jolt since 2020. Back then, it felt like magic. I met many of my friends, I downloaded any FNaF fangame I could find and the site actually felt like a game sharing website.But as time went by, that would eventually change. For the worse.Game Jolt added quests and firesides, both in 2021. The firesides were basically just Twitch streams on Game Jolt and quests were these things you could complete for coins to exchange them for sticker packs. It wasn't that bad per se, but things got worse. Over time, Game Jolt forced their aggressive monetization tactics into their site and issues became apparent. In 2022, they removed NSFW. Game Jolt did not warn any game developers who had NSFW games published to their site about it, as they quite literally took all of them down overnight without warning. I believe they also added added a new premium currency that same year called Joltbux. At the time this was added, Game Jolt had the excuse saying "All Joltbux will go towards the Trevor Project." If you don't know what the Trevor Project is, it's a suicide hotline for young people aged 13-24. They used this as an excuse to add in microtransactions to their site which I find despicable and reprehensible. Game Jolt Inc is a very scummy company for that reason. Later that same year they added the Creator program. The creator program on paper isn't a bad idea. After all, you get paid to share your work. My problem with this is that apparently, the pay for creators is so low that the creators themselves have made shitposts about how low the creator pay is. I don't have the exact details regarding the pay for a Game Jolt creator, however, it is likely very, very low. In addition, when you sign up for Game Jolt for the first time, you get nothing but Game Jolt creators in your feed. Nothing else. It's almost as if Game Jolt has bias towards the creators so much so as to show nothing but said creators when you create an account. The final issue I have with their creator program is that they let creators get away with stealing art and breaking rules. Now, I won't act like there haven't been Game Jolt creators that have been banned for valid reasons, however, I do feel like Game Jolt is wayyyy more lenient towards the creators, as I've seen one of them literally steal art from Deviantart and use it as a sticker pack. Something else that launched in 2022 was the Game Jolt app. It's basically a TikTok wannabe. But the worst part is that you cannot even download and run games on there. You can't even play the soundtrack of a game. So then why is it called "Game Jolt" when I can't even download any games or at least download music on their app? Moving on to 2023 they removed the Fireside feature. They say that the cost of keeping up the firesides was too high, so they basically removed that feature. After this happened the site literally just died. For me it did, as many people just stopped using Game Jolt entirely. Fast forward to now, in 2025, Game Jolt has silenced its creators, added in a pay to win feature which users could purchase booster packs to artificially boost views on posts, games and profiles, and have really stepped down in moderation. People including myself have been shadowbanned off of Game Jolt for valid criticism of the moderators' downright predatory monetization tactics. People have even gotten flat out banned off of Game Jolt because they criticized the moderators for doing this shit. Y'all are grown adults, so there is no excuse as to why anyone is getting banned for this. Speaking of people getting banned, Game Jolt also does nothing against any of the controversial people that lurk in their site. I've tried reporting them but Game Jolt does nothing. In addition, they ban people who expose other people, even if they're a pedophile. Not only that but there are instances of people posting suggestive things onto Game Jolt which stay for a long period of time with no action taken. Game Jolt's site guidelines say you need to be at least 13 to use Game Jolt or have permission from a parent to use it, but that rule is barely enforced nowadays. Game Jolt used to be one of my favorite sites to be on. It was one of those sites that singlehandedly raised me. What was once a game sharing website filled with heart and soul has now changed into a website filled with brainrot, pedophiles, weirdos, gooners and iPad kids at every corner. Game Jolt's moderators have asked their users to write "real reviews". So there you have it, you asked for it, here's your "real review", coming from a person who has used this site for 5 years.

Date of experience: Nov 27, 2025