Online gaming studio Green Jade Games closes

Green Jade had licences in the UK, Greece and Malta but never found a hit game.

Malta.- The CEO and co-founder of Green Jade Games, Benedict McDonagh, has confirmed that the Malta-based online games studio has ceased operations. In a post on LinkedIn, he thanked the people involved with the developer since it was founded in 2017.

McDonagh said that Green Jade has been an “epic experience” that resulted in a diverse range of games but that the studio had never managed to find a major hit.

He wrote: “What started off at Mr Green with me, and some of my trusted colleagues, contributing to ideas streaming from Jesper Kärrbrink‘s questioning of how to change the face of gambling content, managed to grow into an organisation that boasted over twenty nationalities from five continents that delivered the most diverse offering of games our industry has ever seen.

“With no one to copy, it was left to us to learn what could work, what absolutely doesn’t work, and what gives us hope for the future, and being on the journey through this adventure I can tell you was an epic experience!”

As highlights from Green Jades’ portfolio, McDonagh mentioned the arcade skill game Jade Puzzle, which he says was inspired by a block-wood-puzzle game from the App Store that caught the attention of commercial client relations manager Luke Dimech. He said the game he was most proud of was Hammer of Fortune.

“It was the first story-driven slot with chapter after chapter of narrative played out in alignment with players spinning, tracking the battle of Brin vs Gunhild and, on top of all this, we believe it was the first slot that combined skill with RNG – requiring the player to align their loot chests in order to trigger the bonus,” he said.

Green Jade gained licences in the UK, Greece and Malta. In October last year, it announced a merger with GameCo. It has not been announced whether Green Jade will sell its game titles, modules or IP.

As for what went wrong, McDonagh says: “We didn’t ever find our hit. We didn’t ‘luck out’ with a perfect recipe of timing, maths, features, and front-end and we didn’t iterate to a base of good earners quickly enough. 

“Whilst I’m gutted beyond my ability to communicate through my writing, I am not morose, in fact, I am delighted that we achieved so much more than we could have imagined when first started dreaming.”

He added: “I will continue to champion those that want to do it differently, that see the world a little askew like we did, and I’ll applaud everyone that ‘makes it’ even more vociferously now that I know just how freaking hard it is to succeed.”