Credit: Zynga
One of Facebook’s original time-sinks is going out to pasture.
I remember back when Facebook was really gaining steam, FarmVille was one of its major draws. If I were to hazard a guess, it was a similar draw to what Animal Crossing is now, i.e. a little nugget of virtual greenery you can waste an hour on a day and tell all your friends to come visit to say how nice it looks. I wouldn’t know, I never touched it. But even if I didn’t care much for FarmVille, I can acknowledge that its presence has been a big part of Facebook for a long time, and that, by extension, its loss would be a big deal. Well, it’s big deal time.
FarmVille’s publisher, Zynga, announced today that the social app will officially be ending service at the end of 2020 on December 31 on the dot. However, it’s not a matter of player bases or popularity; rather, it’s the same reason a lot of sites are going to be overhauled at the end of the year: Flash. It’s been known for a while now that Adobe would officially discontinue support for Flash player when the year rolls over. Back in July, Facebook announced that when that support ends, their own support would end as well. No Flash, no Flash games. No Flash games, no FarmVille.
Credit: GamingPH
If you still play FarmVille, you don’t have to pack up just yet. The game will still be operating normally until November 17, at which point the cash shop will close down and in-app purchases will be disabled. After that, you can still play the game without microtransactions until the closure on December 31. At that point, all versions of FarmVille, on Facebook or elsewhere, will officially be donesky. If you’re still really craving the rush of fertilized crops, Zynga will be releasing a mobile version of FarmVille 3 at some point in the near future with a new, non-Flash infrastructure.
Y’know, I just realized, once Flash dies, my mom won’t be able to play Bejewled anymore. I wonder how I should break it to her…
