Zynga to sunset FarmVille after 11 years
The publisher's most formative product will be shut down at the end of this year
Zynga will shut down the original FarmVille at the end of 2020, due in part to Facebook dropping support for Flash games.
FarmVille players will be able to continue making in-app purchases until November 17. After that, the game's payment system will no longer function.
It will remain playable until December 31, 2020, at which point it will shut down for good.
An official post from Zynga framed the decision to sunset FarmVille in the context of the decline of Flash as a software platform. Adobe will stop distributing the Flash player this year, and Facebook will stop supporting Flash games on the same day that FarmVille shuts down.
For Zynga, it is the end of an era. FarmVille was unarguably the product on which the company was built, and is one of the most significant games of the last 15 years.
FamVille originally launched on Facebook in 2009, and Zynga followed up with a sequel for mobile devices in September 2012.
FarmVille 3 is expected to launch worldwide later this year.