Portals

Since 2001Changed

Miniclip

Portal closed Jul 2022; now a mobile publisher

Robert Small and Tihan Presbie launched Miniclip on 30 March 2001 with a budget of £40,000. By July 2009 it hosted over 400 games. Tencent bought a majority stake in February 2015. In July 2022 Miniclip shut down its browser game portal to focus on mobile, and the site kept only Agar.io and 8 Ball Pool.

Since 2002Changed

Addicting Games

Still up; owned by Enthusiast Gaming since 2021

Bill Karamouzis and Ira Willey founded Addicting Games in 2002. AtomShockwave bought it in November 2005, and it passed through Viacom (MTV) and then Defy Media, which bought it with Shockwave in 2014. Karamouzis bought it back in 2018, and Enthusiast Gaming bought it in September 2021.

Since 1995Still up

Newgrounds

Still up

Tom Fulp started Newgrounds in 1995. Through the 2000s it was a key home for Flash animation and independent games, where users rate each new upload during "judgement" and low scorers get "blammed". Since August 2019 it has backed the Ruffle Flash emulator to keep its old Flash games playable.

Since 2006Changed

Kongregate

Still up; closed to new uploads in 2020

Siblings Emily and Jim Greer opened Kongregate in alpha on 10 October 2006. GameStop bought it in 2010, Modern Times Group in 2017, and the developer Monumental in 2024. The portal stopped taking new user submissions in 2020, but games uploaded before that are still there.

Since 2004Still up

Armor Games

Still up

Daniel McNeely founded the site in 2004 as Games of Gondor and renamed it Armor Games in October 2005. Based in Irvine, California, it curates and sponsors browser games, including Crush the Castle, Kingdom Rush and Fireboy and Watergirl. Since December 2020 it has used the Ruffle emulator for its Flash catalogue.

Since 2004Still up

Nitrome

Still up

Matthew Annal and Heather Stancliffe founded Nitrome in London on 10 August 2004. It is a studio rather than an open portal: it published its own pixel-art Flash games on its site and licensed them to portals such as Miniclip. It released its 100th game, Nitrome Must Die, in 2011. In 2020 it partnered with Poki to port its Flash games to HTML5.

Since 1997Still up

Coolmath Games

Still up

Cool Math Games went online in 1997 and only hosts games its team considers non-violent. Sandbox & Co. bought its parent company in November 2018. In 2019, rumours spread that the Flash shutdown would kill the site, and 100,000 people signed a petition to save it. The site moved its games to emulators and HTML5 instead.

Since 2014Still up

Poki

Still up

Sebastiaan Moeys and Michiel van Amerongen founded Poki in Amsterdam in 2014. It bet on HTML5 browser games while much of the industry moved to app stores. Bloomberg reported about 100 million monthly active users in November 2025.

Since 2014Still up

CrazyGames

Still up

Brothers Raf and Tomas Mertens started CrazyGames in 2014 as a hobby project. It is based in Leuven, Belgium. It opened a developer platform in October 2018 so studios could upload games themselves, and it now carries about 4,500 games.

Since 2013Still up

itch.io

Still up

Leaf Corcoran launched itch.io on 3 March 2013 as an open marketplace for indie games, inspired by Bandcamp. Anyone can publish on it. Game jams such as Ludum Dare helped it grow, and it hosted over 1,000,000 products as of November 2024.

Since 1995Changed

Pogo

Still up; Flash games removed Mar 2020

Pogo grew out of the Total Entertainment Network, formed in 1995. Electronic Arts now owns it, and it hosts casual card, board, puzzle and word games in chat-enabled rooms. In March 2020 Pogo dropped all its Flash games, and it later brought some back in HTML5.

Since 1998Shut down

Yahoo! Games

Original service closed May 13, 2016

Yahoo! Games launched on 31 March 1998, built on Yahoo’s purchase of ClassicGames.com. It was best known for Java multiplayer classics such as chess. Yahoo closed most of it on 31 March 2014 and said the whole section would be gone by 13 May 2016. Yahoo! Japan kept its own games service.

Since 1996Changed

MSN Games (The Zone)

Still up; Windows Internet Games shut Jan 2020

Microsoft bought the small game site The Village in 1996 and relaunched it as the Internet Gaming Zone. It started with card and board games such as Hearts, Spades and Backgammon, and had 600,000 users by 1998. It is now MSN Games. The Internet games built into Windows were shut down in 2019 and 2020.

Since 1999Changed

Shockwave.com

Still up; changed hands several times

Macromedia launched Shockwave.com on 2 August 1999 to promote its Shockwave and Flash players. It merged with Atom Corporation in 2001; the company was renamed Atom Entertainment in 2006 and bought by MTV Networks for $200 million. Defy Media bought the site in 2014 and sold it to Addicting Games in 2018. It was sold again in April 2024. Adobe discontinued the Shockwave Player plug-in in April 2019.

Since 2007Changed

Facebook games

Web games still run; Gameroom closed Jun 30, 2021

Facebook opened its platform to third-party apps on 24 May 2007, and games such as Scrabulous (2007) and FarmVille (2009) became some of its biggest hits. Facebook stopped accepting new Web Games submissions after 31 December 2020, when Flash games were removed, and closed its Gameroom PC client on 30 June 2021. Flash-era hits such as the original FarmVille closed at the same time.

Since 1999Still up

Neopets

Still up

Adam Powell and Donna Williams launched Neopets in 1999. The virtual-pet site was also a hub of more than 100 minigames, most of them in Flash. After Flash ended, it rebuilt some games in HTML5 (2020–2021). In July 2023 it restored most of the original Flash games through the Ruffle emulator.

Any year

Own website / independent

Most games in this directory were never tied to a big portal. They run on their own domain, published by their developer. A game is listed under a portal only when a source says so: its Wikipedia article, the developer, or the portal’s own game page. Every other game is filed here, with its official site as the source.