After 11 years of operation, the popular Facebook casual game, FarmVille, will be shutting its digital doors for good. The announcement that Zynga would stop support on the game came out in early September, however, with the New Year officially beginning, the game has shut down.
FarmVille became a huge hit when it first released years ago on Facebook, all the way back in 2009. At its height, the game reached a total of 32 million players. Think of FarmVille as the early version of Animal Crossing: New Horizons – players would invite friends over to show off their farm and how much progress they'd made, and they'd be able to farm together as well. It was the epitome of casual online gaming (at the time).
However, the closure of FarmVille isn't because of declining users or anything like that. Adobe Flash, a popular software platform that was often used for animation and online video games, has been fully discontinued and is no longer supported on browsers and Facebook. This means that FarmVille was one of those games that had to go. Zynga could have had the chance to possibly upgrade the game so it would be playable without the software but they decided it was better to let it close down. For fans of the game that don't want it to go, FarmVille is succeeded by three FarmVille sequels, FarmVille 2, FarmVille 2: Country Escape, and FarmVille 2: Tropic Escape, the latter two which are extensions of the sequel.
Apparently, Zynga has said that a FarmVille 3 is coming but there hasn't been a confirmed release date set yet. The rest of Zynga's game catalog should remain intact since the other games do not use Adobe Flash. It is a sad day though. Many popular online games of the past have used Adobe Flash, just as FarmVille had. Games like Club Penguin, Bloons TD5, Crimson Room, and more.
It's a shame that games like this had to shut down when they were so popular at some point. While there are games that are decently close to FarmVille, like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, no game is quite going to match up with the craziness that FarmVille once had. At the time of its launch, social media had really only just begun and it made FarmVille explode, but with how much is available now, it's hard to believe that there will ever be something so uniting as this game again. But what can make players happy is that, at the very least, FarmVille 3 is on its way.
Source: Zynga