Even the greatest must meet their maker. Facebook is ending support for Flash games, including the original FarmVille, on December 31st. Now’s your last chance to experience the 11-year-old game in all its seed-planting glory—presuming that Flash Player doesn’t give you any trouble.
FarmVille is one of the first browser-based games to amass universal popularity, generating over $1 billion in revenue thanks to its millions of daily users. It’s also a defining piece of Facebook’s early development strategy. Anyone on Facebook from 2009 to 2015 remembers the intrusive, never-ending notifications and invites from game-playing friends and relatives, along with the boom of Facebook-only apps that generated revenue by stealing and selling user data.
Sorry, FarmVille, but your legacy is forever tied to user privacy scandals and addictive freemium game design. We hope that you enjoy eternity behind the pearly gates—or wherever you end up. Of course, this isn’t the absolute end of FarmVille, as Zynga plans to re-release FarmVille 3 for mobile devices later this year.
FarmVille players can make in-app purchases until November 17th. Facebook will remove FarmVille and all other Flash games from its website on December 31st, the same day that Adobe is ending support for Flash Player. Just think, some dedicated FarmVille fan will play the game until its final moments on New Years’ Eve.
Source: Facebook via The Verge