The sun is setting for FarmVille on Facebook at the end of 2020

30 Sep 2020

The sun is setting on FarmVille. Image: Zynga

FarmVille, which was once one of Facebook’s most popular games, will shut its gates on the platform on 31 December.

Following an 11-year stint, FarmVille will no longer be playable on Facebook after 31 December 2020. Its developer Zynga said the farming simulation game will be “directly affected” by Adobe’s decision to stop distributing Flash Player to web browsers.

Facebook had said in July that it would no longer support Flash games as of 31 December and asked game makers to migrate to JavaScript-based technologies.

San Francisco-based Zynga was founded in 2007 and since then has developed a number of games, including Zynga Poker and Words With Friends. FarmVille remains one of its most successful games to date, having reached 10m daily active users in its first six weeks in 2009. At its peak, the game had 32m daily players.

In a statement, Zynga thanked fans for their support over the past decade and said they had helped “build an incredible global community of players over the years”.

In-app purchases in FarmVille will stop on 17 November when its payments system will be turned off, around a month before the game shuts down completely. Zynga told players they can use any existing FarmVille currency in the game up until 31 December.

It will not be offering refunds during this period, but players will have the option to migrate to FarmVille 2: Tropic Escape, which is available on the App Store and Google Play. The company is also offering a “bonus package” for users that choose to migrate.

Zynga has other farming games available on mobile and browser, including FarmVille 2: Tropic Escape, FarmVille 2: Country Escape and FarmVille 2. The company also announced that a mobile version of FarmVille 3 will be available worldwide soon.

Lisa Ardill was careers editor at Silicon Republic until June 2021

editorial@siliconrepublic.com