Remember the good old days when you’d get home from school and tend to your online farm? Well, kiss goodbye to your childhood because Facebook’s iconic game FarmVille is closing down.
“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,” its developers, Zynga, said in a blog post. “We’re aware that many of you have been with us since the very beginning, helping to build an incredible global community of players over the years who’ve enjoyed this game just as much as we have. For that we say thank you.”
The game is shutting down because Adobe has stopped distributing and updating Flash Players for all web browsers, meaning Facebook will no longer support Flash games – this will come into effect on December 31.
For those who can’t quite face the news yet, Zynga announced that in-app purchases will still be available until November 17, “at which point the game’s payment system will be completely turned off”. FarmVille will then still be playable until New Year’s Eve, when it will be shut down for good.
In the meantime, Zynga is working on “fun in-game activities”, which will be announced soon, while FarmVille’s sequels and upcoming mobile game will still be available to play.
FarmVille was launched in 2009, and enabled Facebook users to create and work on their own farms, buying seeds and planting crops to earn virtual profits. The community element of it allowed users to play with their friends, tending to one another’s farms for rewards. Think: Animal Crossing, but filled with dreams instead of pandemic dread.
