It's been a long time since Facebook feeds were awash with requests to water friends' crops and feed their animals, but anyone who lived through the online demanding hell that was the popularity of Zynga's Farmville, will remember it all too well and still bear the mental scars. Fortunately, after more than a decade of operation, Farmville is finally being put out to pasture.
A megahit in the early days of Facebook, Farmville rose to prominence in 2009, becoming one of the most popular games in the world, with over 100 million active players all around the world. It lead to Zynga becoming one of the biggest and most profitable developers in just a few short years, receiving major investments from companies like Google, and even going public to drum up more funds.
Zynga has had other majorly popular and profitable games in the years since Farmville's peak, including CSR Racing, Words with Friends, Dragon Academy, and Toy Blast. But nothing's quite matched Farmville, even though that game fell from grace as far back as 2011.
Still, it's trundled along since, with a much diminished player base. Now, with the end of Flash looming, Zynga is looking to kill it off for good, and is encouraging anyone still playing to move over to its sequel, Farmville 2: Tropical Escape, and potentially Farmville 3 (coming soon!) where they'll get some free rewards for doing so.
Farmville microtransactions will halt on November 17, with the game officially shutting down on December 31.