Old Facebook games filled the News Feed of almost everyone with a profile between 2008 and 2015, and this guide walks you through the whole story up to 2026, one year and one game at a time. You’ll see where FarmVille, Mafia Wars, CityVille, and Candy Crush Saga came from, and you’ll also find the exact dates when most of them were deleted.
If you remember playing FarmVille, where you sent a neighbor a cow or waited for your crops to ripen, but you can’t remember when it all stopped, don’t worry, because the timeline is easier to follow than you might expect. Plus, a few of the shutdowns happened much later than most people think, and Facebook’s older browser game platform only reached its final cutoff date in 2026.
We built this guide by going through each year and checking every launch, record, and shutdown date one at a time. We also update it whenever a date or fact changes, so you can trust the numbers you read here.
What Were Old Facebook Games, and Why Did They Spread So Fast?
Old Facebook games were free browser games that ran inside Facebook itself, mostly built on Adobe Flash, and they spread because almost every move you made could be shared with your friends. Facebook opened its platform to outside developers in May 2007, and within two years games like FarmVille were reaching tens of millions of people every month.
The real engine behind this growth was the social loop. Most games needed neighbors, crew members, or gift partners to move forward, so you nagged real friends for help, and each request put the game in front of someone new.
That loop cost developers almost nothing in advertising, which is why a small studio could reach millions of players within weeks. Most of these games also shared the same basic design, where a timer or an energy bar limited how much you could do in one sitting, and you could wait, ask a friend, or pay a little to skip ahead.
Old Facebook Games in 2008
The first wave of hits arrived in 2008, and many of them were simple copies of games people already knew. Here are the four that mattered most.
Scrabulous
Scrabulous was a browser version of Scrabble that millions of players used to challenge their friends. It was built by two brothers from India, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, and for a while it was one of the most popular apps on the whole platform.
That popularity also brought trouble. Hasbro sued the brothers in July 2008, and Facebook removed Scrabulous for users in North America on July 29, 2008.
The lawsuit was dropped in December 2008 after the developers changed their products. The game then returned on January 1, 2009 under a new name, Lexulous, and that kept the same idea alive even though the original was deleted.
Mafia Wars
Zynga, the studio that later made FarmVille and CityVille, launched Mafia Wars in April 2008 as a text-based crime game where you spent energy on jobs and invited friends to join your mob. The energy bar was the clever part, because it limited how much you could play and gave you a reason to come back every few hours.
The game also hit a legal speed bump. The creator of a similar game called Mob Wars sued Zynga, and the two sides settled in September 2009.
Mafia Wars lasted far longer than most of its rivals. Zynga shut it down on June 6, 2016, which makes it one of the longest-running games of the whole era.
Pet Society
Pet Society from the studio Playfish was a gentler alternative to crime games like Mafia Wars. You decorated a small house for your pet, bought clothes and furniture, and visited friends’ homes to see what they had done with theirs.
Electronic Arts, which owned Playfish, announced in April 2013 that Pet Society would close. It shut down on June 14, 2013, and anyone who had spent months decorating a home lost it completely.
Zynga Poker
Zynga’s first game, Texas HoldEm Poker, arrived in July 2007, and it grew quickly through 2008 as friends invited each other to virtual tables. It’s the oldest game on this list, and it’s also one of the few that never disappeared.
The game continues today as Zynga Poker. In our view, it lasted because card games don’t depend on a Flash farm or a trendy theme, so there was less to replace when the platform changed.
Old Facebook Games in 2009
The year 2009 is when social games stopped being side apps and became the main reason many people logged in. Zynga became the top Facebook developer by monthly players in April 2009, with about 40 million people playing its games that month.
FarmVille
FarmVille launched in June 2009, and it reached 1 million daily players in its first week. It then held the top spot among Facebook games for roughly two years.
The design looks simple today, but it was very well tuned. Crops ripened on real-world timers and wilted if you ignored them, so the game gave you a reason to return at specific times, and neighbors could help you finish tasks faster.
The original FarmVille closed on December 31, 2020, when Flash support ended.
Cafe World
Cafe World was Zynga’s restaurant game, where you cooked dishes, served customers, and upgraded your kitchen over time. It borrowed the timer system from FarmVille and applied it to meals instead of crops.
Zynga announced that Cafe World would close on July 22, 2013, together with CoasterVille, its roller coaster park game. Players with premium currency had to spend it before the closing date, because there were no refunds or transfers.
Restaurant City
Restaurant City from Playfish gave players a more hands-on way to run a restaurant, because you hired staff, chose recipes, and decided how to decorate. That made it a close rival to Cafe World in the same genre.
Electronic Arts retired the Facebook version and its iPhone and iPad version on June 29, 2012. That makes it one of the earliest big games to be deleted, and it closed a year before Zynga and EA began shutting down many more games in 2013.
PetVille
PetVille was Zynga’s answer to Pet Society, and it followed the same idea of caring for a virtual pet and decorating a home. At one point, the game announced that it had more than a million users.
That wasn’t enough to protect it from Zynga’s cost cutting. PetVille was set to close on December 30, 2012 as part of a group of eleven games that Zynga shut down at the end of that year.
Old Facebook Games in 2010
By 2010, the boom had reached its highest point, and the numbers were larger than anything the platform had seen before. Zynga kept adding new genres, but three things defined the year.
FarmVille at Its Peak
FarmVille reached its highest point in March 2010, when it had about 84 million monthly players. That number is hard to picture, because it means tens of millions of people were all tending crops in the same game.
After that month, the numbers slowly dropped. No Facebook game came close to that total until CityVille appeared later in the year.
CityVille
CityVille launched on December 2, 2010, and it passed FarmVille’s player count on December 24, 2010. It then became the first Facebook game to reach 100 million monthly players.
The game worked like FarmVille but with a city instead of a farm, so you built houses, businesses, and landmarks while friends helped you finish buildings. That familiar loop is why it grew so fast.
Zynga closed CityVille on April 30, 2015, which gave it a run of a little over four years.
FrontierVille
FrontierVille took the farming formula to the Wild West, with settlers, cabins, and pioneer trails in place of crops. It launched in 2010 as one of Zynga’s first attempts to bring its biggest hit to a new setting.
Zynga later renamed it The Pioneer Trail. It closed on April 30, 2015 as part of a batch of six games that Zynga retired that day.
Old Facebook Games in 2011
By 2011, big publishers wanted a share of the audience, and Zynga was preparing for its IPO, which is the first sale of a company’s shares to the public. This was also the year when the first cracks appeared.
The Sims Social
Electronic Arts brought its Sims franchise to Facebook in August 2011 with The Sims Social. You built a house, took care of your Sim’s needs, and visited the homes of friends, which made it feel like a small version of the main Sims games.
EA announced in April 2013 that it would close The Sims Social, along with SimCity Social, its city builder, and Pet Society. All three shut down on June 14, 2013, because demand had dropped.
CastleVille
CastleVille was Zynga’s fairy-tale kingdom builder, and it launched in November 2011. It followed the same build-and-wait loop as CityVille, with a castle theme in place of a modern town.
Zynga closed it on April 30, 2016, a full year after CityVille.
Mafia Wars 2
Zynga released Mafia Wars 2 in October 2011, hoping to repeat the success of the original. It never caught on, and at the end it had only about 200,000 monthly users.
Zynga closed it on December 30, 2012, which is only a little more than a year after it launched. That makes it one of the clearest examples of a sequel that couldn’t match the original.
Zynga’s IPO
Zynga went public on December 16, 2011, priced its shares at $10, and was valued at around $7 billion. The stock closed its first day at $9.50, which was already 5 percent below the price.
That drop was an early sign that investors weren’t sure the boom would last. In hindsight, the IPO marks the high point of the whole era.
Old Facebook Games in 2012
By 2012, the warning signs were everywhere. New games were still launching, but older ones were closing and the stock price was falling.
FarmVille 2
Zynga released FarmVille 2 on September 5, 2012, with a more polished look and a crafting system that gave players more to do on each visit. It was meant to bring back players who had left the original.
It worked for a while, but it couldn’t stop the slide. Daily player numbers across the company kept falling, and Facebook players were moving to their phones.
Candy Crush Saga
The studio King put Candy Crush Saga on Facebook on April 12, 2012, and its phone versions followed later that year. The big difference was that your progress carried over between the two, so you could start a level on your computer and finish it on your phone.
By March 2013, it had overtaken FarmVille 2 as the most popular game on Facebook, with about 46 million average monthly users. It showed that a Facebook hit could survive by moving to mobile.
Zynga’s Late-2012 Shutdown Wave
At the end of 2012, Zynga shut down eleven games to cut costs. The list included PetVille, Mafia Wars 2, FishVille (an aquarium game), Treasure Isle (a treasure hunting game), and Vampire Wars (a vampire clan game).
For players, seeing a major publisher close so many games at once was a shock. It also sent a clear message that Zynga no longer saw every Facebook game as worth keeping.
Zynga’s Stock Hits a Record Low
Zynga’s shares fell to $2.48 at one point in the autumn of 2012, which was the lowest close since the IPO and far below the $10 starting price. The company had cut its forecast, and many analysts were asking whether Facebook games had been a fad all along.
Zynga was also tied closely to Facebook, because its fees made up over a tenth of Facebook’s revenue. That meant trouble at one company quickly became trouble for the other.
Old Facebook Games in 2013
By 2013, phones had become the main place people played casual games. Zynga reported a loss of about $209 million for 2012, and the company had little to show for its Facebook-first strategy.
Electronic Arts Closes Three Games
In April 2013, Electronic Arts announced that The Sims Social, SimCity Social, and Pet Society would close on June 14, 2013. It said the main reason was falling demand, and that it would move its development resources to other projects.
For players, this was another case of a big Facebook game vanishing without a replacement. Playfish, the studio behind Pet Society, also closed in 2013.
Zynga Closes Cafe World and CoasterVille
Zynga announced that Cafe World and CoasterVille would shut down on July 22, 2013. This came shortly after it announced the closure of Hidden Chronicles, its hidden object game.
The company was clearly cutting back to a smaller list of games. Anyone who still played these titles had to spend their premium currency before the closing date.
Empires & Allies, The Ville, and Other Closures
In April 2013, Zynga’s chief operating officer announced on an earnings call that Empires & Allies (a military strategy game), The Ville (a life simulation), Dream Zoo (a zoo game), and Zynga City would close. Zynga City was the Chinese version of CityVille.
All four were part of the company’s push to lower costs. The announcement was another sign that the best days of Facebook gaming were over.
Old Facebook Games in 2014
Zynga’s first quarter in 2014 showed how steep the fall had become. This was also the year when the company began to focus on phones.
Zynga’s Player Numbers Fall
Daily active users at Zynga dropped from 53 million to 28 million compared with the year before. That’s nearly half of its players gone in just twelve months.
For a company that had been valued at about $7 billion only a little over two years earlier, those numbers were a shock. It also confirmed that the Facebook-first model was no longer working.
FarmVille 2: Country Escape
Zynga launched FarmVille 2: Country Escape on phones in April 2014. It was a phone-first game that worked without Facebook, and it could even be played offline.
This was the clearest sign of where Zynga was heading. The new game kept the farming formula but no longer depended on Facebook at all.
Old Facebook Games in 2015
By 2015, Zynga had stopped treating Facebook as its main platform. The company spent the year cleaning up its list of games and refocusing on its core franchises.
Zynga Closes CityVille and FrontierVille
On April 30, 2015, Zynga closed CityVille and FrontierVille. FrontierVille was part of a batch of six games that Zynga retired that day.
These were two of the biggest names of the whole boom, so their closure ended an era. Anyone who had built a city for years now had nothing left to log in to.
Mark Pincus Returns as CEO
In 2015, Zynga’s co-founder Mark Pincus returned as CEO after two years away from the job, with the goal of refocusing the company on its long-running franchises and loyal players.
His return also fit the pattern of the whole year, because Zynga was closing games rather than launching them. From this point on, the company talked about phones first and Facebook second.
Old Facebook Games in 2016
The year 2016 brought the end of several well-known games and the start of Facebook’s second attempt at gaming. The new attempt looked very different from the first one.
Mafia Wars Shuts Down
Zynga closed the original Mafia Wars on June 6, 2016. It had run for more than eight years, which makes it one of the longest-lasting Facebook games ever.
Many players had stopped playing long before the end. Still, the shutdown meant one of the first big Facebook hits was finally gone.
CastleVille Shuts Down
Zynga closed CastleVille on April 30, 2016, about four and a half years after launch. Like the others, it had lost most of its players to phone games long before the closing date.
Facebook Gameroom
Facebook launched Gameroom, a Windows desktop gaming platform, in early November 2016. It was aimed at PC players, and Facebook took 30 percent of sales, similar to other game stores.
The platform never reached the size of the old Facebook game boom, and Facebook closed it a few years later when the Flash era ended.
Instant Games
Instant Games launched in late November 2016 as a lighter way to play inside the News Feed and Messenger. The games used newer web technology called HTML5, which loaded quickly and didn’t need Flash.
They were smaller than the old farm games, and most were simple arcade titles. Still, they became Facebook’s main game platform for the years that followed.
Old Facebook Games in 2019
Most of the big titles were already gone by 2017 and 2018, and the next change worth covering came in 2019.
Instant Games Leave Messenger
Facebook removed Instant Games from Messenger in July 2019 and moved them into the Gaming tab. After two years of use in chats, the company decided the new tab was a better home.
For players, this meant that games were no longer part of daily conversations. That made the whole platform feel quieter than before.
Old Facebook Games in 2020
The year 2020 is when the Flash era finally ended, and the last of the original Facebook games went with it.
FarmVille Shuts Down
Zynga announced in September 2020 that the original FarmVille would close on December 31, 2020. It had been running for eleven years, and in-app purchases ended on November 17, 2020.
The reason was Flash. Adobe was ending support for the software, and Facebook said it would stop supporting Flash games after December 31, 2020.
Flash Reaches Its End
Facebook told developers that it would stop accepting new submissions for Web Games, the part of Facebook where browser games like FarmVille ran, after December 31, 2020, and that Gameroom would close in 2021. Games that depended on Flash were deleted.
This was the real end of old Facebook games as most people remember them. Even games that had survived the 2012 and 2013 closures could not run without the technology they were built on.
Old Facebook Games in 2021
The year 2021 closed one chapter and began another for Zynga’s most famous brand.
Facebook Gameroom Closes
Facebook closed Gameroom on June 30, 2021, as part of the move away from Flash. Developers had been told to name where they wanted their players to go instead, and the games on the platform were deleted rather than moved.
FarmVille 3
Zynga released FarmVille 3 worldwide on November 4, 2021 for iOS, Android, and Mac. It was built for phones, with animal breeding and weather, and it was never meant to return to Facebook.
The game kept the farming roots of the original. It also showed that the brand could survive without the platform that made it famous.
Old Facebook Games in 2022
By 2022, Facebook gaming and Zynga were heading in separate directions.
Facebook Gaming App Shuts Down
Meta ended its standalone Facebook Gaming app, which focused on game streams and gaming groups, on iOS and Android on October 28, 2022. Some features, such as groups and following creators, moved into the Gaming section of the main Facebook app.
Take-Two Buys Zynga
Take-Two completed its acquisition of Zynga on May 23, 2022, in a deal valued at about $12.7 billion. The purchase gave Take-Two brands like FarmVille and the word game Words With Friends.
This was a long way from the $7 billion valuation at the IPO. It also meant that the company behind the Facebook boom had finally found a new home.
Old Facebook Games From 2023 to 2025
These years brought fewer headline closures, because most old Facebook games were already gone. The biggest change came in 2025.
Zero Permissions for Instant Games
On August 1, 2025, Meta required all new Instant Games to use a system called Zero Permissions. Games created before that date could keep using the older connection method until September 30, 2026.
The change affects how games connect to a player’s Facebook account, and it gives developers a new rule they have to follow to stay on the platform.
Old Facebook Games in 2026
The year 2026 saw the last major cutoff for Facebook’s browser games.
Web Games Sunset
Meta set September 30, 2026 as the date when Web Games, the platform that had run on Facebook since 2007, would sunset completely. After that date, games that hadn’t moved to Instant Games with Zero Permissions were no longer available on Facebook.
That deadline has now passed. It closes the story that began with Facebook Platform in May 2007, more than nineteen years earlier.
Why Did Old Facebook Games Decline?
There wasn’t one single cause, and we’d point to three that worked together.
Phones Changed Where People Played
Facebook games were built for desktop browsers and Flash, which phones handled badly. As more people moved to iPhones and Android devices, studios that built for apps first could reach players more easily than studios tied to Facebook.
Facebook’s Fees Cut Into the Business
Facebook took 30 percent of the money players spent inside its games, which put pressure on studios that already depended on a few big hits. In 2012, Zynga’s fees alone made up over a tenth of Facebook’s revenue, which meant any change on either side hit both companies at once.
Players Got Tired of the Loop
The timers, requests, and gift prompts felt fresh in 2009, but by 2012 many players were ignoring them. When your News Feed fills with crop requests from fifty people, the whole formula starts to feel more like homework than fun.
What Did Old Facebook Games Leave Behind?
The most lasting legacy is the free-to-play model. Timers, energy bars, daily login rewards, and paying to skip a wait all appeared in Facebook games first, and they became standard in mobile games within a few years.
The second legacy is how games spread. Friend invites, gift requests, and leaderboards that compare you to people you know all came from this era, and modern mobile games still use them. In our view, that makes Zynga’s decline more interesting than it first looks, because the company lost its market while the ideas it popularized won the whole industry.
Can You Still Play Old Facebook Games in 2026?
You can’t play most of them in their original form, because Flash support ended after December 31, 2020, and Facebook’s Web Games platform reached its sunset date on September 30, 2026. Still, there are a few ways to get close to the old experience.
- Mobile Successors: FarmVille 2: Country Escape, FarmVille 3, and Zynga Poker are available on phones, and they keep the same basic design as the originals. Candy Crush Saga from King also lives on mobile, with the same cross-device progress it introduced in 2012.
- Instant Games: Facebook’s HTML5 games still run in the Gaming section of the app, though they’re simpler than the old farm and city builders.
- Flash Preservation Projects: Archives like BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint keep thousands of old Flash games playable offline. However, titles that depended on Facebook’s servers often can’t be revived, so standalone browser games work best.
Where Should You Start If You Want to Relive These Games?
If you just want the feeling of FarmVille again, we’d start with FarmVille 2: Country Escape on your phone, because it’s the closest official successor and it works offline. If you’re more curious about the history itself, the story of Zynga’s 2011 IPO and its 2012 shutdowns explains best why the whole boom ended.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Was the Most Popular Facebook Game Ever?
CityVille holds that title, because it became the first Facebook game to reach 100 million monthly players. FarmVille came before it and peaked at about 84 million monthly players in March 2010.
When Did Facebook Games Stop Being Popular?
Popularity started falling in 2012 and dropped sharply through 2013 and 2014. By the end of 2015, most major studios had moved their main efforts to mobile.
Why Did FarmVille Shut Down?
FarmVille closed on December 31, 2020 because the game ran on Flash, and Adobe ended support for Flash at the end of that year. Zynga had other FarmVille games available, so it chose not to rebuild the original.
Are There Still Games on Facebook in 2026?
Yes, Facebook still offers Instant Games in its Gaming section. The older Web Games platform reached its sunset date on September 30, 2026, which means any Flash-era game that hadn’t moved over is no longer available.
He is a computer engineer by day and a gamer by night. He has played many different games, like retro games like Contra, classic Mario, to AAA games. He likes to share his passion for gaming through his guides.