Game Jolt

Game Jolt

Used to be good, now it's a wannabe Steam.

Developer(s):	David DeCarmine
Initial Release:	January 1, 2004
Platform(s):	Microsoft Windows Mac OS X Linux
Languages:	Indonesian Malay German English European and Latin American Spanish French Croatian Dutch Norwegian Polish Brazilian and European Portugeuse Romanian Finnish Swedish Greek Russian Simplified Chinese
Website:	https://gamejolt.com/

Game Jolt is a hosting service for video games co-founded by David DeCarmine, where indie devs can distribute their games. They can also give updates to their games and announce if the game is in development.

However, Game Jolt used to be a solid site for indie devs but nowadays it has a ton of flaws now.

Why It Sucks Now

It has lately become a wannabe Steam. This may not be as bad as an alternative to Steam as was the case years ago. But now it has over a million (or at least a good estimate) shovelware games and asset flips. Even worse...
...Game Jolt has barely any quality control, making shovelware, poor quality games, and even asset flips as common as Steam has. The quality control is so bad, that it makes it difficult to find a good game. In some cases, shovelware devs PROFIT off their shovelware. In one instance, there were thousands of generic and poor quality FNAF fan games.
Some games never make it out of development. Some games are too good to be true, that they are sometimes fake, are hard to find, or the project is abandoned entirely. Some never get out of early access either.
Just like the previous items, many Steam shovelware devs flock to Game Jolt and in some cases, use both Steam and Game Jolt. Ata Berdiyev is a prime example, although he's said to be better on Game Jolt.
Sometimes the "developers" use botted/fake reviews or bribe others to download the game to get it promoted. For example, the horror games section has poor quality horror games, even in the best section.
Lack of system requirement tab to give an idea if the game runs on your system. fortunately, some devs give system requirements in their game descriptions.
Many developers can't handle the slightest form of criticism.
Tons of generic horror games, FNAF fan games, FPS games, Sonic.EXE fan games, and Undertale fan games (poor quality ones).
As with the previous items again, Game Jolt doesn't do anything about the poor quality or shovelware games. This makes Steam's quality control actually decent (Steam rarely removes these games but at least there's something and they have curators albeit flawed). Some of these games are so bad, that they might've been rejected by Steam Greenlight and other places.
Some games even have viruses or adware, sometimes malware, even though Game Jolt claims they check the games for it.
A lot of games require a specific system requirement in order to run, even if the developers use engines like Unity. Though there are games that are not well optimized to begin with.

Redeeming Qualities

There are a number of enjoyable games that deserve attention.
You can now make money from your games.
A lot of YouTubers/YouTube channels play the games and give honest critiques...most of the time.
The community admits that Game Jolt has problems.
There are a number of good fan games on Game Jolt, but unfortunately, they're hard to come by due to the problems listed above.
YouTubers/YouTube channels can get a discount on games there.