FarmVille
The game that colonised Facebook
FarmVille launched on Facebook in June 2009 and became a phenomenon, peaking above 80 million monthly players and turning Zynga into a multibillion-dollar company. Facebook throttled its viral spam, mobile moved on, and when Adobe killed Flash the original game died with it on 31 December 2020.
Timeline [edit]
- 2009
-
19 June 2009
Launch
FarmVille launches on Facebook
Zynga's farming loop hits 10 million daily players within weeks.
- 2010
-
February 2010
Peak
Over 80 million monthly players
The largest social game on earth; feeds fill with farm requests.
-
April 2010
Decline
Facebook throttles app notifications
The viral channel that built the genre is closed off.
- 2011
-
16 December 2011
Funding
Zynga goes public
A roughly $7 billion IPO built on FarmVille's success.
- 2017
-
25 July 2017
Incident
Adobe announces Flash end-of-life
FarmVille's runtime is given an expiry date.
- 2020
-
29 September 2020
Shutdown announced
Closure announced
Flash's death means the original game cannot continue.
-
31 December 2020
Shutdown
FarmVille closes with Flash
The game and the platform it ran on die on the same day.
How it looked [edit]
The site through time
Browse zynga.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:
Ownership [edit]
Key figures [edit]
| Metric | Value | As of | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly active users ▲ | 80 million | February 2010 | Reported Peak monthly players on Facebook |
Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate
Why it shut down [edit]
Official line: Zynga shut the original FarmVille on 31 December 2020 because Adobe ended Flash support, which the game depended on; payments stopped on 17 November 2020.
Our analysis: FarmVille invented the social-game playbook (viral invites, timed crops, guilt mechanics, pay-to-skip) and made Zynga a public company. It also made Facebook throttle app notifications, which crushed the entire genre. In the end it did not lose to a competitor: the runtime under it was switched off.
History [edit]
Crops, invites and guilt
FarmVille arrived on Facebook on 19 June 2009, built by Zynga on technology from its acquisition of MyMiniLife. The loop was simple and merciless: plant crops, come back before they wither, ask friends for materials, wait or pay to skip the wait. Within six weeks it passed 10 million daily players; at its peak more than 80 million people a month tended imaginary farms, and non-players learned to hate the news feed posts begging for a lost cow.
It made Zynga: the company floated in 2011 at roughly a $7 billion valuation, built almost entirely on Facebook's viral channels, and every subsequent social game copied its mechanics. Academics wrote papers about it, and so did people arguing it was not really a game at all.
Killed by its own foundation
Facebook shut off the spam-driven growth in 2010, and the audience drifted to smartphones, where Zynga chased it with mobile sequels. The original stayed on the desktop web, running on Adobe Flash. When Adobe set Flash's end-of-life for the end of 2020, the game had no future: Zynga announced closure on 29 September 2020, stopped payments on 17 November, and switched FarmVille off on 31 December 2020, the same day Flash itself died. The sequels live on; the farm that started it does not.
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Sources [edit]
- Farmville to shut its gates on Facebook at end of year BBC News 30 September 2020 [archived]
- Zynga is shutting down FarmVille after over a decade Game Developer 29 September 2020 [archived]
Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).