Adobe to retire Shockwave next month

The Adobe Systems Inc. logo is displayed on a computer monitor in an arranged photograph taken in Tiskilwa, Illinois, U.S., on Friday, June 8, 2018. Adobe Systems Inc. is scheduled to release earnings figures on June 14. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Adobe is discontinuing updates of its Adobe Shockwave player for Windows and will stop providing downloads for it, starting April 9.

The browser-based multimedia platform was used mostly for interactive applications and videogames as a predecessor to Adobe Flash.

"In its time, Adobe Director and Shockwave provided a powerful solution for creating and playing web-based animation and game content," says Adobe. 

However, it notes that usage declined with the adoption of mobile devices which run interactive content on HTML5 Canvas and Web GL instead. 

"Retiring the Shockwave player for Windows is the last step in a multi-year process: Adobe Director, an authoring tool for Shockwave content, was discontinued on Feb 1, 2017 and the Shockwave player for macOS was discontinued on March 1, 2017," it says. 

Even Flash will be retired by December 2020, as it suffers the same fate of falling out of popularity. 

It says the public will still be able to use Shockwave without updates, while the company will provide support to enterprise customers who still have contracts with the software. 

While most Internet users may not recognise or remember Shockwave, its demise will likely affect older gaming sites like the eponymous Shockwave.com and Miniclip.