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Adobe Shockwave will be discontinued on April 9th

Adobe Shockwave will be discontinued on April 9th

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In news that made us go “That’s still around? Huh,” Adobe announced that Shockwave will be discontinued, and the Shockwave player for Windows will no longer be available to download starting on April 9th. Adobe cited declining Shockwave usage for the shutdown, as interactive content has moved to platforms like HTML5 Canvas and WebGL in recent years. Enterprise customers will still be able to use Shockwave until their contract runs out in 2022. Everyone else, say your goodbyes now.

The multimedia platform was used for interactive apps long before the word “apps” was even a thing. It’ll probably be most remembered for the browser-based games on sites like Miniclip and Newgrounds. Anyone remember Donut Boy?

The process of shutting down Shockwave has been a multiyear procedure. Adobe Director, an authoring tool for Shockwave content, and Shockwave for macOS were both discontinued in 2017. Coupled with the news that Adobe will finally kill Flash in 2020, it won’t be long before these interactive relics from the early days of the web are gone forever, left only to be archived in a YouTube compilation video.