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Unity Web Player Games Depreciated Completely?

A topic by NoAudibleDialogue created Dec 17, 2017 Views: 2,517 Replies: 5
Viewing posts 1 to 4

Hello everyone! 

It appears to me Itchio has made all Unity Web Player games (Not WebGL) refuse to load in, even when using an appropriate browser to do so. At first I thought Web Player had been completely removed even past Chrome doing so years ago, but just recently connected the dots that the only games that don't load are on here. Gamejolt, blogs, Ludum Dare, etc. - all load just fine. 

It may seem silly, but I would very much like to download some of these little gems. I have been passionate about freeware gaming since 2007, and have around ten thousand freeware PC games on my backup drive today. I have been developing games myself the last five years or so and a lot of the games made by developers on here, or I discovered through here are extremely nostalgic for me and important in the way any good video game is to a gamer. 

It never fails to surprise me how many gamer's not only are unaware of how big the indie scene is, but how vast the freeware gaming scene is these days too. The massive collection of freeware games I have has been essential to starting friendships and opening up a common ground with people I otherwise wouldn't get to do. 

So, what I'm getting at is I would very much like to get a few of these games while still possible. I just found out Firefox and several other browsers are making NPAPI completely unusable like Chrome in early 2018. With tech like the web player so old as it is, there will only be so much more time left to use old builds of web browsers just to utilize even older plugins. 
I can understand if Itch is trying to completely move away from the web player format all together. At the same time I want to voice some way of obtaining the .unity3d file for offline play in the future. 

It's impossible to download the file if it isn't loaded in the plugin, so that's why this is an issue. There are dozens of silly prototypes and couch co-op games that I have fond memories of as well as talk about to my fellow devs and gamer friends almost every day. I know I'm a broken record saying I would very much like to hear how to go about this, but hopefully it is clear this is important to me, and I can imagine most people here understand why, even if it is a bit excessive! XD

 I apologize for the rant, as well as this being my first post. I have been holding off being active on any site for indie gaming as I have several things that have been in the works for years I plan on releasing in 2018 right outta nowhere like an RKO. however I'm afraid this post is actually more important to me at the moment, especially since it's time sensitive. 

Thank to anyone who even bothered to read all this, looking forward to getting to know more fellow devs and indie gamers. 

P.S. Yes, I know this issue was raised on the GitHub issue tracker. However, nobody has responded to ompuco's issue from October, so I wanted to post here as another six months and these games may be completly gone forever. 

Admin

We haven't changed the loading code on those pages since we added them. I use Linux as my daily OS so I never really had the opportunity to run them. Are you getting an error when trying to run them? If it's possible to play the .unity3d files offline, then I can convert those pages into downloadable games.

Thank you for replying to this so quickly! I went to bed last night with a heavy heart wondering if these games truly were just gone. As far as the error I get, it's always "can't connect to Itch.Zone". Even through force download tools, a few wget commands, etc, it just doesn't load in. If it's possible to make those links downloadable to obtain the .unity3d file with or without the player installed - then that would make me and I'm sure many others quite happy! For me personally it would make the holiday season this year to know I have some of these awesome little games in my collection. Looking forward to this! 

I'm sorry bump the thread, lefo. It's been a few months, and I reached out through email awhile back and it may have hit your spam filter, but I am still hoping for a fix on this. I understand you're busy, I know I am too, but wanted to touch base on this again as the tech is so old I'm not sure how much more time we have here honestly. 

Admin(+1)

Hey, sorry about not getting back to you sooner. I checked our legacy unity webplayer code and noticed it was using a misconfigured cache. I've removed the issue. I don't have webplayer available for my OS to test, but try it out again and see if it's working for you now.

Regarding time left, none of these game files are going anywhere. They will continue to sit on our server, and if in the future a more reliable way to run unity3d files exists then we can make them available using that method.

Thanks

(+1)

Working! Thank you. You came through on this on a day nothing else felt like ti should go well, and I thank you from what's left of my heart in this moment that I get to play all these nostalgic games I haven't in too long. Be well, and again, thank you. 

Is this new, facebook like threads on a normal forum? I love it! 

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