If you can get hold of an old Windows 7 machine, either an old laptop or re-imaging and existing one with an old install of Windows 7, might. Also, the “Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player” will be included as part of the “Cumulative Update” and “Monthly Rollup” this point forward.
This blog from September 2020 says that the removal of Flash from Windows machines will happen via a Windows update:Īll the APIs, group polices and user interfaces that specifically govern the behavior of Adobe Flash Player will be removed from Microsoft Edge (legacy) and Internet Explorer 11 via the latest “Cumulative Update” on Windows 10 platforms and via “Cumulative Update for Internet Explorer 11” or “Monthly Rollup” on Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Embedded 8 Standard. Note that officially speaking Flash is being deprecated for security reasons, so its better to run it inside a virtual machine to be safe - or use it on an air-gapped computer with no Internet access.ĭepending on how much your stepfather wants to keep playing FarmVille 2 and if you can't get it running with the launcher, there is one way that might still allow Flash to function, although I'm not 100% sure and it depends on how the kill switch is triggered.
So install a version of Chrome from 2017, ensure to completely disable its auto-update functionality and then check back on January 13th 2021 to see if you need to download a special patch or use a different workaround to force Flash to run on your machine permanently. I would also expect Flash enthusiasts to come out with patches to the latest Flash client that would block the killswitch functionality entirely. We won't know for sure until the EOL date comes along, but it shouldn't take too long to figure out which is the latest version without a killswitch.
This will most likely work, as long as the browser version is old enough not to have the killswitch-enabled version of the Flash plugin, so anything prior to ~2018 should work. What I didn't know, however, is that apparently Adobe will flip a killswitch and disable Flash entirely, regardless of your browser version. So that's one way you could keep playing online-only games, if they switch over to Ruffle. But looking at it again - if major sites like Farmville are Flash-only, it seems like they'd have a major incentive to keep their sites running. Originally I only thought this was worth a comment. Ruffle will detect all existing Flash content on a website and automatically "polyfill" it into a Ruffle player, allowing seamless and transparent upgrading of websites that still rely on Flash content. Ruffle puts Flash back on the web, where it belongs - including iOS and Android!ĭesigned to be easy to use and install, users or website owners may install the web version of Ruffle and existing flash content will "just work", with no extra configuration required. Leveraging the safety of the modern browser sandbox and the memory safety guarantees of Rust, we can confidently avoid all the security pitfalls that Flash had a reputation for. Ruffle runs natively on all modern operating systems as a standalone application, and on all modern browsers through the use of WebAssembly. Ruffle is a Flash Player emulator written in Rust. You described it as a local-emulator, but that's not all it is.
If you're having trouble installing the launcher, they also provide an installer walkthrough about how to download and open the file and install the game, including a video tutorial.Īlthough you may not be able to, it's possible the websites themselves will be able to, using the Rust language project called Ruffle, a Flash Emulator.
We are working on making it available to Mac users and on other browsers. The FV2 Launcher+ is currently available only to users of Windows 7 and 10, on Chrome and Firefox browsers only. The launcher states that these are the supported platforms - possibly your issue is that you're trying to run it on Internet Explorer or a non-supported version of Windows? This is the only official way to continue playing Farmville 2 after the Flash shutdown occurs. It sounds like you've already discovered Farmville 2 Launcher +, which is Zynga's official solution to the impending Farmville 2 shutdown. However, many clever and wonderful people have been working on archiving old Flash games, and some game companies have released non-Flash updates in order to preserve their games. (It would also require a great deal of programming experience.) The Flash shutdown really, really sucks for older Flash games, including some of my own favorites. Unfortunately, there's no current (legal) way to disable the Adobe Flash killswitch, and I would obviously not recommend trying to illegally "crack" copyrighted games unless you want angry lawyers coming your way.