Zynga to Shut Down Farmville by December 31st

FarmVille developed by Zynga is a social network game that was launched in 2009. From plowing, planting, to growing, harvesting crops and trees, the game involves every aspect of farmland management that you can imagine. You can still find the game on Microsoft’s MSN games and the social media giant Facebook. It is free-to-play; however, it does encourage players to spend Farm Cash that can be purchased with real-world money to progress faster through the game. This was one of the sources of revenue for Zynga as the game reached the peak of its popularity somewhere in 2010, one year after it was released.  

One year after it was released, FarmVille had 83.6 million monthly users in March 2010, while its daily users reached a whopping 34.5 million a day at its peak. It remained the most popular game for two consecutive years on Facebook before it started declining significantly in 2011. In just a few years, it was ranked 110th most popular game on Facebook, which is measured by daily user count. Looking at its downfall, one might wrongly assume that Zynga’s recent decision to Shut it down might be because of its decreasing popularity. While it was an essential factor that must have played a role but the final blow came from Adobe which has decided to kill Flash Player by December 31st. 

 Following Adobe’s decision, Facebook has also decided not to support Flash games after 2020. However silly it might sound, the end of FarmVille does feel like the end of an era. The game did change everything for Zynga which went on to create a sequel and mobile version; however they were never able to be as successful as the original game. 

 Farmville’s success came with a lot of criticism as well. The addictive nature of its genre was the point of controversy after several case studies. Analysts condemned FarmVille for its addictive nature as well as for taking real-world money for Farm Cash. But the most controversial aspect of the game was the social networking which prompted users to invite as many friends or acquaintances to play. This got prevalent with time and earned FarmVille notoriety for its annoying invites. Anyone who was using Facebook around 2010 can relate with these FarmVille requests that bugged them from time to time. 

The game’s in-app purchase payment system will be available till November 17th before being turned off for good. After that, it won’t be possible to make any in-app purchases, and one can’t ask for refunds as well. All the credits that players have can still be used till December 31st, and Zynga has recently officially announced that mobile version of FarmVille 3 is under development which will soon be available worldwide.

Indeed, FarmVille is not as relevant or popular as it once used to be, but it serves as a reminder of a much simpler time. No matter how annoying the invites were, one can’t ignore the success that it had over the years. Very few games can claim to have 83 million monthly users, and even though the game was simplistic, it did achieve the seemingly impossible, and it does deserve credit for that. The newer version of the game has not been nearly as successful as the original game; we will have to wait and see if FarmVille 3 can change that for Zynga when it is released.

Source: Zynga to Shut Down Farmville by December 31st

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Created on Oct 3rd 2020 01:41. Viewed 184 times.

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