RIP Gamejump

On Monday, June 20, 2011 gamejump.com, one of the largest vendors of ad-supported mobile Java games,  shut down without warning.  It’s no longer possible to download new mobile Java apps and games from the site or its mobile web equivalents wap.gamejump.com or m.gjmp.tw.  To make matters worse every mobile game or app that was distributed with Gamejump’s ad-supported wrapper has stopped working.  When the games start they try to connect to Gamejump’s ad server and download ads.  If the game can’t connect to the ad server it dies with the message “Connection Failure. Unable to connect. Please check to make sure your phone has service“.

I posted about the problem on Gamejump’s parent company Greystripe’s Facebook Wall and got the following response.

“Greystripe has discontinued all support for the Java AdWrap for Publishers and Catalog programs as of June 20, 2011. This only affects the Java AdWrap programs; we are discontinuing the AdWrap platform in order to focus all our resources on our iOS, Android, and mobile web platforms. Should you have any questions, please email us at [email protected].”

So that’s it. Any games or apps that used Gamejump’s ad technolgy are apparently forever broken. It isn’t just the games on gamejump.com either. Lots of sites include GetJar distributed Gamejump AdWrap games. Over the next few days I’ll be removing all the Gamejump games from BoostApps because there is no point in wasting BoostAps vistors time with downloading something that will never work on any phone.

Update: I’ve finished deleting all the Gamejump games from BoostApps.  51 out of the 507 games and apps on the site used Gamejump’s ad-server and have been removed.  It’s possible that I missed a few so if you find any games or apps that fail with the message “Connection Failure. Unable to connect. Please check to make sure your phone has service” leave a comment letting me know so I can remove them.