“Animal Jam,” the game people knew and loved, is now down to 70-100 online users. This is a devaluation compared to the millions of registered users in 2012. Now the question is what happened to “Animal Jam?
When the game first released back in 2010, they had a partnership with National Geographic Kids. Back in the beta phase, all that there was to do was play minigames, make friends and buy items. All of this changed though when the game was fully released.
Animal Jam introduced memberships, items that were member exclusive and trading. Due to the new trading future this created a game economy because of how the players were adapting the creators’ wild works, and added a rare tag to items showing which items are rare. This became the main motivation to collect as many as possible.
Trading became the meta and players abandoned minigames. This was a big contributor in “Animal Jam’s” success as Youtubers and Instagram users shared their in-game experiences. During this big boom, “Animal Jam” added updates constantly, which was very appealing to kids resulting in millions of active users.
Near the end of 2016, the active users were consistently decreasing. There are many reasons for this. Players were hacking and scamming. People were mainly using the game for trading, therefore, many players fell victim to this and quit the game for good.
This could have been prevented if Wild Works spent more time monitoring the game and took fast action to reports of fraud.
An even bigger reason for non-active players is the lack of content and updates being released. Between the years 2010-2020, the game had only produced four updates. Only three animals were released from 2019-2025. People argued that since the name is “Animal Jam,” creators should add more.
Around 2018 National Geographic ended their partnership with Wild Works for an unknown reason.
“Animal Jam” is still free to download today even after their lack of effort over the years. Will “Animal Jam” be fully restored to the once amusing game it was? Likely not.