A sad day for millennials as one of the most significant part of their childhood, Miniclip, just went bust and announced that they will be shutting down all their servers except for 8 Ball Pool and Agario.
The news comes after years of decline in daily player count on the site and dwindling revenue of Web Games. An industry-wide push to phase off Adobe Flash player which was a staple to Miniclip’s success in the 2000s only meant the news of inevitable shutdown was close.
A site that was built from the ground on Adobe Flash player and had loads of games that required the plugin to play it was just a ticking time bomb waiting for its end.
Back in April during its March meeting, the UK-based mobile game publisher Miniclip revealed its plan to shut down the web games portal and focus mainly on the success of its mobile games that recently exceeded 4 billion downloads across its mobile portfolio which includes games like Agar.io, Mini Militia, 8 Ball Pool, etc
Miniclip also posted a lengthy FAQ on its support site which explained the shift in the company’s strategy and what it meant for other games and content partnerships. They also went into detail about why handing off the platform to fans would not be possible as “the technology required to make this happen is a proprietary solution to Miniclip”.
Regardless of its early success, the site had a hard time keeping the audience excited enough to visit daily and generate revenue from Web Games service.
With the advancement in mobile games, the already dwindling players count nosedived and now we are witnessing the downfall of an era piece. But nonetheless, the company is now focusing on a better revenue-generating model and we will likely see more successful mobile games in the future.
