Jump is a newly announced monthly subscription service that bills itself as "Netflix for indie games". According to the company's Cade Peterson and Anthony Palma, Jump's main benefits are twofold: users get instant and unlimited access to a library of award-winning indie games, and indie game developers get a better chance of being discovered.
Having entered into beta yesterday through July 24, Jump plans to charge prospective users $10 per month for access to a 60-game strong library at launch—and sign ups for the beta are now live over here.
"Think of it like Netflix," says Palma in conversation with Gamasutra. "You go in there now and you get these very specific categories, like indie horror movies with strong female leads. That's what we want to be able to do. So we will be able to serve up not only games that you particularly will like, but we're also gonna be able to resurface games. So just because your game launched in month three and now its month 12, it's not going to be buried and unfindable."
Palma adds: "We're not going to do any sales of DLC, no ads, this is a very pure experience. But to incentivize doing DLC, what we'll do is bump you back up into a top row that would say something like 'New Content'… and so even if it's 12 months after launch, all of a sudden you're being discovered again by everybody.
"So we'll have ways for devs to bring their games back up into the queue, so they're not just going to get buried. And we're going to grow the content library very linearly, so hopefully our users will outpace our content, so there will be a chance for good revenue on the platform."
Speaking to IGN, Peterson underscores the above: "Because we’re doing a very curated catalogue, each of the games will get enough of their time in the sun to earn money. This adds a whole new stream of revenue [developers] wouldn’t have gotten before, because a lot of the games will be able to earn money from customers who either passed on buying it in the first place or have never heard of it."
Expect Jump to arrive later this summer. More information can be found via the service's website. Head here for Gamsutra's interview with Palma in Peterson in full, and over here for IGN's.
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