Boy o' boy this one really hurts to report. Miniclip is dead. The website we all knew and loved as being the ultimate home of entertainment as kids and teens is mostly gone. It's now a hollow shell of what it once was, although Miniclip, the company, lives on in the form of a mobile app. The web browser game website will be remembered as the IT lesson disrupter and the foundation for a love of gaming for many. Rest in peace.
The news circulated Twitter and I, like many others, rushed to see if it was true. And sadly, when you go to Miniclip today, it looks like a random gambling website more than it does a hub of joy and excitement. Only two games remain: 8 Ball Pool and Agar.io. Slim pickings compared to what it once was.
Two factors probably led to this. The first is that Adobe Flash shut down at the end of 2020. Flash Player is what many games lived on back in the day and if there wasn't active support on games that could move them to HTML 5, well, they died. Tragic, but people move on and forget about small browser games they've made, I expect.
- Venerable browser-based MMO Urban Dead is closing this week after a 20-year run, not with a bang but with a whimper
- Hi-Rez will only be giving 'minor updates' to Smite and Paladins now it's laying off around 70 employees, but don't worry, Smite 2 is the 'primary focus of the newly streamlined operations'
The other factor would obviously be that younger audiences just have so much more media these days. It used to be rare for a kid to have a dedicated device to access the internet but now it's commonplace. They have phones, iPads, and other gaming devices which preoccupy time more succinctly than going to places like Newgrounds, Nitrome, and well, Miniclip. And Miniclip has followed its audience to these new gaming platforms.
The blow is heavy. I miss those days, where everything was so simple. Miniclip the company seems to be doing fairly well for itself in other areas: It's now mainly a mobile publishing company with offices all around the world. It even bought the publisher of the highly successful mobile game Subway Surfers in June of this year, so it's safe to say the brand is doing just fine—in fact, the brand said so itself on Twitter.
Miniclip hasn’t gone anywhere!We're humbled by the love & memories shared by fans of the beloved games we sunset earlier this year. Our shift in focus is to concentrate on mobile, with over 7 billion downloads & 75 million of you playing each day!https://t.co/GGqSoEZNjb pic.twitter.com/jyfhHAtk8mOctober 25, 2022
Still, I'll always know the name as that website I spent so many hours on as a kid. You can join me in pouring one out for Raft Wars tonight.
