King’s browser games portal, home to some of the company’s biggest hits such as Candy Crush, Bubble Witch and Farm King, will shut down in December after 18 years of operation.
RoyalGames.com (formerly King.com) was the birthplace of the company’s biggest franchises, before they were transferred onto Facebook and mobile apps.
It has also been home to paid versions of such games, where players can pay a fee to enter tournaments or play head to head games. The highest ranking players or top scorer is then awarded a money prize, and can cash out.
Earlier this year, Eurogamer reported on a startling six-month wait for users who had requested cash withdrawals from the site.
The business, part of the enormous Activision Blizzard empire, had quietly paused withdrawal requests while it was investigated by Paypal over its business operations in certain territories.
But despite repeated assurances of an impending fix, players were left for months without the money they had played for and won, with little to no communication from King on what was actually going on.
The situation finally changed in the past week – some 10 months after withdrawals were initially paused – when users finally starting to receive their winnings.
There’s no mention of this saga at all in today’s blog post, which announces the sunsetting of RoyalGames.com and notes how the site has suffered since the widespread move away from using Flash in browsers.
“Hello Royal Gamers, for 18 years, players around the world have enjoyed Royal Games’ competitive tournaments,” the blog post begins. “At the end of 2020, we shared an update with you that due to changing web-based technology on major browsers, we would be adjusting the game services we are able to offer to players. This evolving landscape has led us to the make the difficult decision to close down the Royal Games site.”