No more web player support in chrome and firefox

Just found this;

http://blog.chromium.org/2013/09/saying-goodbye-to-our-old-friend-npapi.html

And I guess it means there wont be any webplayer support for chrome or firefox.

 

Boo,.....da man is try'in ta keep us down!

will portals like Kongregate and Wooglie be affected?

 

So how do we play web made games with Unity now?

 

Can't they use Pepper?

 

Same way you always do; they haven't disabled Unity yet and won't for a while. Also, you could always use another web browser.

--Eric

 

Well Unity has until the end of 2014 to do something.

 

Perhaps its time to rethink HTML 5 support?

 

Problem with HTML5, is that, similarly to Flash, it lacks support for locking mouse. No browser based FPS games made in Unity for you!

 

Meh... not surprising, a browser is content browser, not an operating system. Browser based gaming filled a need at the time (and helped change gaming in general), but that need is now served in better ways.

 

Lol, yeah, thats the problem! And I'm pretty sure you can lock the cursor in HTML5.

 

It would be nice to hear something from an actual Unity representative about what their plans are for this. This is a big deal for web developers.

 

Silverlight is used by Netflix, so there's more than one big company with a financial stake in figuring out how to handle this change. (In addition to all the games that use Unity in the web browser.) There might be some growing pains, but I would bet that ultimately we'll just transition to the next big thing... until that architecture is replaced by the next bigger thing just as is happening now.

 

Holy crap?!

 

With Chrome you can export to NaCL, and with Firefox it looks as if they still support the plugin - it's just that the user will have to click on it to get it to run.

 

Ugh. While Unity will probably be able to export something that works with each of the relevant browsers, it's still less than ideal to need multiple builds to hit them all. How unfortunate.

 

Obviously it's being discussed at Unity Towers. We don't have any official response yet, but obviously don't want all the games made by all our customers to suddenly stop working. We'll figure something out.

 

Presumably they will simply replace it with something better and Unity will adapt.

 

Netflix for some time has been working towards using HTML5 and "Premium Video Extensions" where possible. The move from Silverlight has been in progress for some time now it would seem.

I don't currently target the web player for anything more then quickly testing small project iterations between coworkers and friends, but I am very curious to see how Unity deals with this arising dilemma.

 

OMG I am working for client who is building facebook game... is untiy-facebook gaming in trouble now ???

 

No. Not unless you have a time-machine and are using the forum from December 2014.

 

It's certainly going to be an awkward period for games and other plugins in the browsers, they are caught between many forces.

For example Google are the only browser maker with a strong incentive to maintain alternatives, mostly because of Chrome OS. Mozilla love the pure web, and Apple and Microsoft are far more interested in their own app stores for delivering games.

For tasks historically done by plugins and not related to fancy games, HTML5, CSS3, WebGL, and other stuff including fonts, audio, local storage, streaming, etc are steadily coming of age. A temporary reprieve for plugins like flash for delivering video was only won because of squabbles over H.264 support in certain browsers, and even more importantly for commercial premium content delivery services, DRM. And now a HTML5 DRM solution for video is well on its way.

And its certainly possible to see a time when a variety of games will be well possible using 'pure web' technologies. This doesn't seem to be a perfect fit for the likes of Unity though, for a number of reasons. Let alone various technical issues, it seems to me that it will be a challenge to make this stuff work for a product like unity that makes use of important 3rd party licensed technologies. As if the challenge of the languages they are written/runtimes they use in is not enough, there are also big issues with how the 'pure web' delivers these things to users in a manner that isn't locked down or at least heavily obfuscated. Similar issues apply to the art, model etc assets used in games, and we could look at licensing issues with web fonts for an approximate equivalent issue in the world of the pure web.

I don't have any easy answers. Unity can certainly work with Google and dedicate engineering effort towards using Googles modern plugin/native client alternatives, but that only solves the problem for one browser. I wouldn't be surprised if ambitious timescales for abandoning plugin support in Chrome also slip somewhat, but that only buys time. In other browsers on traditional OS's we will probably see this legacy stuff lurking on for ages, with an additional click or two required by users (I don't think Firefox is the only browser about to do this). And the 'education' of consumers on mobile OS's to use native apps from an app store instead has come along way from the initial period of moaning at Apple for refusing to allow Flash on iOS. Also, it is easy to imagine Unity losing out on the 'pure web' to open source WebGL efforts that are not encumbered by the same sophisticated but license tech minefielded 3rd party features. But I expect it to be a long time before such solutions would be appropriate for all types of games or offer developers the multi-platform development ease that Unity currently provides.

I suppose there is an outside chance that some DRM that goes beyond video/audio media, or other obfuscation etc tech could emerge at some point, or that the likes of Facebook may have an interest in solving the same sorts of issues facing Unity, but I still struggle to imagine quite how these hurdles can be overcome. Either have to stick with legacy stuff for longer than is currently envisaged, jump forward to a brave new tech legal/licensing world, or rely on consumers being educated even further away from using browsers for this stuff in future.

 

Google has replaced it with PPAPI. Which, judged by the quality of it's Flash plugin, is really, really bad.

 

What a dilemma...a lot of my analytics for webplayers show most people play using Chrome, followed on by Firefox. There is no way we can tell a player they have to use a certain browser to play your game. I have tested and built some of these NaCL builds, but they run like crap and look to me like a lot of things like FX and such get dropped out and don't appear in my game.

 

So chrome might block Java and NAPA(Or whatever the plugin is called). This will disable the Unity webplayer because it relies on NAPA.
I read this in a Norwegian newspaper so I'm not sure if it's true.


-GamehubDev

 

Use the google native client thingy.
I mean build your project with the google native port.

 

.

 

NPAPI, and it's true.

 

Woah! A webplayer that uses something more modern than NPAPI would be cool, but I hope it will happen for real, and without too much retro-compatibility mess. I wouldn't want to be the Unity guys right now: lots of work ahead *_*

 

lol, do you do anything at work besides browsing the web and reading tech articles?

 

Oh please forgive me for having taken the time to post detailed thoughts on subject I have been watching for years now. In my own personal time, thank you very much.

I realise my posts are no of a fashionable length but its not like I make them very often. But sure, with responses like yours it is questionable as to why I bother.

 

Well this is bad, I'm currently developing a pretty succesfull game on Kongregate and I dont want to tell everyone to change their web browser.
Luckily I can build to any other port on unity. (Windows phone and pc)(Android)(Not IOS)(Flash(not a flash game))(Standalone(I only have a windows pc))
(Google native thingy)

 

Yeah, the first thing I thought of when I read this was, "Kongregate and Facebook". We're cool for now, but decisions that are made now are based on the perceived landscape as it will be in a year. That's true for developers, for site's like Kongregate, or any other major 'flash' portal that was thinking about supporting Unity web games. End of 2014 affects what I do now....

We should all want more game portals (especially the really large ones) to support Unity web games like Kongregate does. They are fantastic 'free' marketing channels for our games. News like this reduces the likelihood of other game sites adopting the unity web player. I was all excited about the facebook announcement because I thought that might finally start the avalanche and other sites would follow with Unity web support. Now this...

 

i'll be concerned once the date gets closer and if we haven't heard an official update from unity yet

 

Wow, this is a major issue for my company! Not to mention Kongregate, miniclip and other Unity based game portals!
This really needs to be adressed asap, we are spending a lot of money on the webplayer build of our game and need to know if we're throwing money by the window or not!

 

If we've not announce anything by this time next year, then I guess it will be time to panic.

 

You can continue with your game, and your players on Kongregate can continue to enjoy your game in their browser of choice. What you need to remember is that Google is giving the Unity webplayer an exemption for the next 16 months or so. After this, the existing webplayer will stop working in Chrome. Every single game out there, included the demos on our website will not work. That's a big enough problem to get lots of attention from Unity. Also, other browsers will probably follow suit, so Unity has no real option but to find a solution.

 

Any idea of what the proposed solution may entail?

 

This pretty much confirms my thinking, which is "this is a bigger problem for Unity than it is for me, so it's highly likely that they'll get a solution in place without me having to worry about it".

 

Not really. There are a lot of projects going on in this space, though.

 

Web publishing support was one of my major criteria for choosing Unity in the first place. If they lose that, I'll end up forced to pick up some other technology instead. I'm surprised they haven't said anything on the subject yet, even just to say, "We know, and we're researching the alternatives."

 

What do you want them to do? They've acknowledged that this will be an issue and they are looking at what web publishing method they can compile to. That's all they can do at this stage, you can't make these decisions in such a short space of time. The one thing I think will be sure is that there WILL be a solution, but they are not in a position to announce anything yet.

 

Not for me.. webplayer stopped working in my browser(s) over six months ago ..perhaps i am in the future? If so, i can confirm its not working anymore..

 

Go back a few posts and you can basically read what you want to hear...

 

We know, and we're researching the alternatives.

 

What OS, what browser, what game?

 

Brrrrr got a cold feeling in my neck

 

Elbows I enjoy reading your posts, keep them coming.

 

iMac, OSX 10.8.5
Chrome: no matter what, it just wants to install plugin (all games)
Safari: crashboombang.. sometimes also crash the OS (all game)
Firefox: still working, so i havent had to try other ones yet (only few games crash after loading)

My previous iMac had only problems with chrome. Newer crashed. I believe it has something to do with graphic card. Previous one was radeon and the new one is nvidia.

edit: installed Opera, seems to work just fine ..and btw, all other browsers are latest versions..

 

@Graham Dunnett

What will be the plan for IE then? Will IE continue to support the Unity web player, and thus Unity will continue to support it too?
Sounds like a bit of an admin nightmare for UT, now having to support multiple web platforms.