A gaming service with potential has fallen, something we’re never happy to report on.
This past week, perhaps the worst named gaming service ever, Piepacker, which changed their name to the almost as bad Jam.gg, announced they are closing shop. PGM Member Meatball Saucey, that also has an informative YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@meatballsaucey) and recenty released a Pup Pack for Transformers, shared the following in the PGM Discord:
The LinkedIn post Saucey referenced is here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/jamgg-goodbye-b2c-hello-b2b-jamgg/
For those unfamiliar with what piepacker/jam.gg does/did, it is/was a cloug gaming service that allowed you to play games you own with a friend that actually owned the game online together, also the site offered indie and other games for both to play together. Think of it sort of like an Antstream-type service, only you could bring your own games. PGM Member and co-host of High Noon Show Tuesdays on Twitc, Hollywood Polo was a Kickstarter backer. Originally, they had the feature to host your own games locked down to Kickstarter backers, but eventually they opened it to everybody. I never really got that into it, which isn’t a statement on the service being good or bad, it’s just one of those places online that I intended to check out in more detail … and just never really did. Played it a few times with friends and my memory of the service was good, but it didn’t grab me nearly the way Antstream has, whatever that means.
The piepacker website is still up as of this writing, as well as jam.gg. They rebranded in May 2022 after hitting 2 million users, per this article from BleedingCool:
With its expanded 8-player support, new mobile accessibility (beta stage), and Public Rooms feature, Jam.gg’s wish for gaming to be a social experience has been upgraded to make it more enjoyable and easier to do so. Users can now join, or create, private and public rooms that boast up to 8-players, allowing them to play with old and new friends alike. Using our new innovative Safe mode option, players can still chat, with their camera off with the option to use some of our cool AR masks. The platform also introduced Moods to its public rooms as part of their matchmaking system, to match players based on their playstyle and gaming interests. Jam.gg has teamed up with the security-tech innovator, Bodyguard.AI, to ensure rooms remain safe for all users as well.
Sadly, it seems none of these new features helped gain enough following to keep the gaming service running. With millions of gamers registered on the service, it’s a bummer to hear it’s going down. Meanwhile, a competitor of sorts, Antstream, has gotten onto Xbox Game Pass and has been getting a lot of press. The main differences with cloud service Antstream to Piepacker/Jam.gg is that the games released there are curated solely by the service, you can’t play any retro game you or your friends own and you can’t play multiplayer online, except for competing in challenges and tourneys, but it’s not realtime multiplayer. Yes, these are big differences.
As this is written, I’m feeling a bit melancholy that I didn’t spend more time with Piepacker/Jam.gg. Thank you for sharing, Saucey!