The Flash shutdown, and how Ruffle and Flashpoint keep browser games alive

For about two decades Flash was how the web played. In the early 2000s Flash Player was widely installed on desktop computers and used for interactive pages and online games,^[2] and portals like Newgrounds, Kongregate and Armor Games existed to host Flash games.^[2] Then it was switched off.

What happened, and when

• 2010: Apple announces its iOS devices will not support Flash, one of the two factors Wikipedia credits for the decline of the Flash game scene (the other is mobile gaming itself).^[3]
• July 25, 2017: Adobe announces it will end support for Flash Player on January 1, 2021, and encourages developers to use HTML5 instead.^[1]
• April 9, 2019: Adobe also discontinues Shockwave Player, Flash's older sibling.^[14]
• December 31, 2020: Flash Player is officially discontinued; its download page disappears two days later.^[1]
• January 12, 2021: a “time bomb” in versions newer than 32.0.0.371 stops them playing Flash content, showing a warning instead.^[1]
• January 2021: Chrome 88 removes Flash entirely; by January 26, 2021 Safari, Chrome, Edge and Firefox have all removed it.^[1]

What it did to games

Studios had three years of warning, and responded in different ways:

• Closed: Zynga shut the original FarmVille on December 31, 2020, because Facebook stopped supporting Flash games that day.^[8] Mind Candy closed Moshi Monsters on December 13, 2019, citing the end of Flash.^[9] Kongregate stopped accepting new games on July 1, 2020.^[7]
• Left the browser: Realm of the Mad God rebuilt its client in Unity; the Flash version was discontinued on September 23, 2020.^[10] Webkinz turned its Flash site into a downloadable desktop app in 2018.^[13] Habbo moved to Unity, with an Adobe AIR client released in February 2021.^[15]
• Converted: Neopets released HTML5 versions of seven Flash games in April 2020 and three more in October 2021, though some parts of the site stopped working when Flash ended.^[11] Pogo dropped its Flash games in March 2020 and later revived several in HTML5.^[12]
• Came back later: In October 2025, Ganz launched an early-access browser version of Webkinz Classic with converted Flash content.^[13]

More closures are in the graveyard, and comebacks in revived games.

Ruffle: emulating Flash

Ruffle is an open-source Flash Player emulator written in Rust, with a desktop client and a web client.^[4] The web version compiles to WebAssembly, so it runs inside the browser's sandbox, a big security improvement over Flash Player.^[4] Site owners can add it with a single script tag.^[4]

Its story involves Mike Welsh, who worked at Newgrounds until 2012 and earlier built Swivel, a tool for archiving Flash content as video.^[4] Newgrounds offered Ruffle from August 2019 alongside its own downloadable Newgrounds Player.^[6] Newgrounds sponsors Ruffle along with sites like Cool Math Games and Armor Games.^[6] In November 2020 the Internet Archive announced it would use Ruffle to preserve Flash games and animations.^[4]

Compatibility: as of August 2026, Ruffle supports most older Flash content (ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0), with 99% of the language and 82% of the API implemented. ActionScript 3.0 support has improved significantly since August 2022, with about 90% of the language and 82% of the API implemented.^[4]

Flashpoint: archiving the web

Flashpoint Archive (formerly BlueMaxima's Flashpoint) is a preservation project started in late 2017 by Australian Ben “BlueMaxima” Latimore.^[5] It holds over 200,000 applications from over 120 browser plugins, most notably Flash, played through its own Flashpoint Launcher; the collection has reached 1.68 TB.^[5] Games run through a proxy that answers the web requests they expect.^[5] Its legal status has been described as “unclear”, and creators can ask for removal; Nitrome removed its games in 2020 to remake them in HTML5.^[5]

How to play old Flash games today

1. Check whether the original site still runs it. Many portals now embed Ruffle, so the game just loads. Newgrounds is the best-known example.^[6]
2. Look for an official remake or client. Studios that wanted to keep their games often rebuilt them in HTML5 or Unity (see above).
3. Use Flashpoint for single-player and offline content. It is a downloadable launcher that bundles the plugins and a proxy.^[5]
4. Accept that most Flash multiplayer is gone unless its servers survived. Emulation can bring back the client, but a multiplayer game also needs its servers. That is exactly what this site tracks.

Flash-era multiplayer games still online

Several multiplayer games that launched during the Flash years are still running: Transformice (2010), Neopets (1999, partly converted), Kingdom of Loathing (2003), Gaia Online (2003) and Little Big Snake, whose site announces The new version of the game without flash officially launched! Browse the #flash-era tag and the classic web collection for more.