Yahoo! Games shutting down.

[johnhoftb]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2...tting_down.php

Struggling tech firm Yahoo confirmed today it will shut down venerable online game platform Yahoo Games in May, nearly two decades after it launched the service in 1998.

Though Yahoo's game platform has long been in decline, the fact that it's finally closing is notable in light of the historic role it played in popularizing free-to-play online games. Built atop Yahoo's '97 acquisition of the ClassicGames online game portal, Yahoo Games served as a platform for many budding casual game developers.

In its heyday, Yahoo Games was successful enough to merit ventures like opening its own mobile game studio and offering downloadable, free-to-play games supported by ads. However, in recent years it has not met performance expectations, causing Yahoo to brand it a "legacy product" last month and lay plans for it to be shut down as part of the company's efforts to improve its bottom line.

Yahoo notes it has reached out to game publishers who still have games on the platform and instructed them to formulate a plan to transition their Yahoo Games players off the service ahead of its closure.

[Halicia]

I spent so many hours playing euchre and spades there back in the day. Will be missed, but I'm not surprised. The last couple times I've looked at them they look like a retail site for game demos or somesuch, with nothing of its own to draw people in.

[Dartz1979]

R.I.P yahoo games i just hope they dont scrap email i use yahoo mail for important stuff i dont know any other emails besides gmail

[Gref]

yahoo as a whole should shut down itself and do good to the humanity.

[Kyanion]

I spent so many hours playing euchre and spades there back in the day. Will be missed, but I'm not surprised. The last couple times I've looked at them they look like a retail site for game demos or somesuch, with nothing of its own to draw people in.

Yar I too played a ton of Spades in the early days of Yahoo. When I was stuck at a sucky college intern job that was basically just doing nothing and using their crappy computers.

[Televators]

Many, many hours of canasta played on old ladders back in the late 90s. RIP, yo.

[Ciddy]

yahoo as a whole should shut down itself and do good to the humanity.

Yeah, I think it's long past that point. I can't remember the last time I used Yahoo for serious purposes. Used to have a Yahoo mail account, but it was my "spam" account (ie, if some website required me to go through some bullshit "registration" when all I wanted to do was download something and never go there again, that's the email I gave them, and so it's where all the spam went). If that account still exists, it probably has an insane amount of shit piled up on it.

I did play some of the games there back in the day. There was a chess game I liked to play.

[bbr]

Anything flash game related should consider either upgrading their stuff to html5, or shutting down entirely.

Flash is evil and needs to disappear from the internet.
It's good yahoo games is shutting down,. let's hope more follow suit.