Bad news for your aunt Janet
In what really feels like the end of an era, perennial Facebook annoyance
FarmVille is shutting down on December 31st, 2020.
It is due to Flash games being discontinued on Facebook.
"Following an incredible 11 years since its initial launch back in 2009, we are officially announcing the closure of the original FarmVille game on Facebook," write
developer Zygna in a blog post.
"As previously stated, Adobe will stop distributing and updating Flash Player for all web browsers, and Facebook will stop supporting Flash games on the platform completely after December 31st, 2020.
FarmVille will therefore be directly affected as a result of this."
Launched in 2009, agricultural simulator
FarmVille was incredibly popular in its day, having had 83.76 million monthly active users at its peak in March 2010.
The game becuase infamous though for bombading Facebook users with endless notification from your friends, even if you didn't even play the game.
Sure, it was really, really annoying, but it is hard not to feel like a little bit of the old Facebook is dying, and feel nostalgia for the days when you'd poke the person you had a crush on, and you would write a status that started with "[Your name] is...".
If you are somehow still playing the game, you still have a few months to get some microtransation-action in. "In advance of sunsetting the game, we would like to point out that in-app purchases will be available up until November 17, at which point the game’s payment system will be completely turned off," advise Zynga.
"Thereafter the game will not be accepting any in-app payments and any refunds will not be processed during this time.
FarmVille will, however, continue to be playable until December 31st, 2020, at which point it will be shut down completely."
"Any remaining credits that you have during this period should be used before December 31st, 2020. We are also working on fun in-game activities to be announced soon that are designed to make your remaining time with
FarmVille even more enjoyable."
And don't worry - Zynga clarifiy that
Farmville 2: Tropic Escape and
Farmville 2: Country Escape will continue, and that we should look forward to the "upcoming worldwide launch of
FarmVille 3 on mobile."
