Kongregate, a San Francisco-based website where Flash games developers post their wares for players to try out, has scored a $5 million first-round investment led by Greylock Partners. Kongregate gives proceeds back to game authors from microtransactions and up to 50 percent of advertising revenue, while helping them retain rights to their productions; since launching in 2006, it claims 1,500 submissions from some 750 developers and 850,000 monthly visitors. There is once again a niche opening up for independent game developers, with Microsoft and Nintendo having announced plans to distribute minor independent titles via Xbox Live and Wii stores - Kongregate could grab a similar slice of action for the web-based sector, it wants to become “the YouTube of games”.

The investment will be used to fund some of the most popular games developers (issuing between $20,000 and $80,000 a time) to write large-scale new titles for the site, particularly multiplayer titles, with around six expected by year’s end. . Kongregate got seed funding from figures including Reid Hoffman, Joe Kraus, Jeff Clavier and Richard Wolpert in March. Release.