Early browser games When the Internet first became widely available and initial web browsers with basic
HTML support were released, the earliest browser games were similar to text-based
multi-user dungeons (MUDs), minimizing interactions to what implemented through simple browser controls but supporting online interactions with other players through a basic
client–server model. One of the first known examples of a browser game was
Earth 2025, first released in 1995. It featured only text but allowed players to interact and form alliances with other players of the game. Browser technology quickly began to mature in the mid-1990s with support for browser plug-ins and the introduction of
JavaScript. More advanced browser interactions, unbounded by the restrictions of HTML and that used client-side processing were possible. Among other browser extensions, these new plug-ins allowed users to run
applets made in the
Java language and interactive animations created in
Macromedia Flash. These technologies were initially intended to provide web page developers tools to create fully immersive, interactive websites, though this use fell out of favor as it was considered elitism and broke expected browsing behavior. Instead, these technologies found use by programmers to create small browser games among other unexpected uses such as general animation tools. Sites began to emerge in the late 1990s to collect these browser games and other works, such as
Sun Microsystems'
HotJava. These sites started to become a popular commodity as they drew web visitors.
Microsoft acquired one such site, The Village, in 1996, and rebranded it as the
Internet Gaming Zone, offering various card and board browser games.
ClassicGames.com was created in 1997 to host a selection of classic, Java-based online
multiplayer games such as chess and checkers; its popularity led
Yahoo! to purchase the site in 1998 and rebranding it as Yahoo! Games. Many Flash games in the late 1990s and early 2000s received attention through the use of shock comedy or
real-world events, like ''
McDonald's Videogame'', a satire of
McDonald's business practices, or
Darfur is Dying, about the
War in Darfur,
Sudan. In 2017, Julie Muncy writing for
Wired said, "Flash games lent themselves to the exaggerated and cartoonish, a style that eventually evolved into an affection-at least amongst its best creators-for beautiful grotesquerie. Like much of the younger gaming internet, Flash games defined boundaries simply to cross them; the best titles straddled a weird line between innocence and cruelty, full of gorgeous gore and enthralling body horror". In ''Pico's School
, based on the Columbine shootings, the player must take down a goth school shooter. There are a few other controversies involving browser games and real-world events, such as the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting reenactment V-Tech Rampage, and NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre targeting the game Kindergarten Killers'' after the
2012 Sandy Hook shootings. Expansion of broadband connectivity in the early 2000s drew more people to play browser games through these sites, as well as added attention as
viral phenomenon. New sites like
Kongregate and
Armor Games arose for hosting Flash-based games while also offering their own titles, while companies like
PopCap Games and
King launched their own portals featuring titles they had developed.
Social media sites also drove more players to browser games.
Facebook, after launching in 2004, added support for browser game functionality that integrated with its
social network features, creating
social network games, notably with
Zynga's
FarmVille. The success of browser games did hurt some developers.
Humongous Entertainment reported that they lost players to Flash games in the early 2000s.
Indie games Browser games were an important platform for the emergence of
indie games. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the video game industry had started to coalesce around
triple-A development, games made by large studios with multi-million dollar budgets. Because of the money involved, the industry took few risks in these major titles, and experimental games were generally overlooked. Browser games gave a venue for such titles during the early 2000s, and the broader interest in browser games by the mid-2000s highlighted several of these titles. Subsequently, a number of early indie games are those based on browser games, such as
The Behemoth's
Castle Crashers, inspired by Newgrounds'
Alien Hominid and
Edmund McMillen's
Super Meat Boy based on his
Meat Boy browser game.
Steve Jobs'
open letter to Adobe in 2010 stated that Apple would not support Flash on the iPhone platform due to security concerns and other factors. Critics pointed out that the move was made in order to promote Apple's own "walled garden" approach, and that Jobs personally "hated" Flash. The move gradually led to a long term deprecation of Flash, with Adobe announcing a move to the open
HTML5 standard the following year, and developers gradually began to abandon the platform. Some browser games did continue to be made in other formats throughout the 2010s, including HTML5,
WebGL, and
WebAssembly. Adobe announced the discontinuation of the format in 2017, and this took place in 2021. Projects such as the
Flashpoint Archive exist for the preservation of these titles.
HTML5 games The development and adoption of the HTML5 standard was a rulechanger for browser game developers. The first experiments with new features, primarily the canvas element, allowed the developers to demonstrate, using the example of the early but popular and attractive games
BrowserQuest and
Contre Jour, that the capabilities of HTML5 as a technology are sufficient for developing projects that provide the player with a first-class gaming experience.
.io games (2015–2021) Agar.io was announced on
4chan on 27 April, 2015 by Matheus Valadares, a then 19-year-old Brazilian developer. In the game, players control one or more circular cells in a large map with many players, representing a
Petri dish. The game went viral on the free online games site
Miniclip, and began a wave of new .io titles, like
slither.io, from around 2016- a new genre of large scale, arena based browser games, identifiable by their hosting at the
.io domain.
Flash emulators (2021–present) Following the shutdown of Flash,
emulators have become a popular substitute to allow players to access old Flash games.
Ruffle was released in January 2021 as an emulation-plug in to allow access to Flash games after its shutdown. Aside from Ruffle, other emulators such as Supernova and Flashpoint Archive have become commonly used to access Flash games. == Original or popularised genres ==