Hey guys, we need your support
It’s not like they’re singling out Unity. No plugins will be allowed. That makes the entire internet more secure.
Besides that, this has been on their roadmap for over a year, and the team at Unity is prepared for it. WebGL exports are going to reduce the barriers to new users playing Unity games on the web, because not everyone trusts Unity Tech (as most of us do) to not be malware.
I don’t think 100 People will really convince Google to not drop the Web Player Plugin at all
Google is deprecating the NPAPI (Blogpost) by the end of the year, which means that all Plug-Ins based on this API will get blocked - including the Unity Web Player. But not Google alone is blocking Plug-Ins, Mozilla is doing the same with their Firefox: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Plugins/Firefox_Whitelist
I have little doubt that Apple will follow shortly, too, they just won’t announce it on a roadmap as far in advance as the others do. Apple does love obsoleting old stuff. A dollar says that Safari in OS X 10.11 doesn’t support plugins.
I don’t agree with the petition. It’s a good thing plugins are being blocked from the web. There was never a good reason to have plugins to begin with.
@freeger I have spent way to much energy being upset about the fact that Chrome was wiping out NPAPI… while it may be a big pain in the @$$ now for us Unity Devs who were hoping to build a game for Unity Webplayer (NPAPI version), I think in the long run it will be to our advantage. We won’t have to worry about losing potential new users due to them walking away because they didn’t know how to install a Browser Plugin, or Schools and Company IT Departments Blocking Plugins, or they simply don’t trust installing a Browser Plugin due to possible virus they are afraid of. There are probably many other factors as to why Browser Plugins would cause us to lose potential new users.
Although it seems like it will take my game much longer to launch now on the Browser Platform due to this change, I’m excited about what WebGL will do for the Growth of my game! Especially since I have a brand new game in the works already that is set for Browser Platform.
Freeger you also are working on an awesome Browser Game! It will be challenging for us both, but I think we’ll find much success due to already working on a quality game that will soon come to the Browser Platform with WebGL.
I like to think of it as a new Gaming Console and We’ll be among the first to publish a new Game to it! So look at it as a good thing and not so much a negative…
It’s impressive that Unity is in some places able to squeeze out pretty much native performance.
No, just no.
WebGL will be better.
Have these petitions ever had their intended effect? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a company cave in to one. Not that it actually matters in this case. Unity is ultimately going to abandon their plugin the same way they abandoned Flash. It is being replaced with WebGL which is already functional in Internet Explorer 11, Chrome, and Firefox.
Plugins are insecure. The API was created to make up for the limitations in browsers of the time period that were caused by Internet Explorer taking the lead. Now that other browsers are in control the majority of those limitations are gone. It is time to kill off NPAPI.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any petition have any effect.
Bottom line is the best petition that always has an effect.
While this is a nice gesture, as mentioned, we have been preparing for this shift since it was announced. WebGL won’t be fully featured as the WebPlayer straight away, but over time it will surpass it. Additionally, we won’t be killing the WebPlayer as soon as Google flip the switch.
Better in terms of security. Worse in every other way imaginable.
(Maybe in another decade it’ll be decent. But compiling huge C++ codebases to Javascript will still seem like insanity even then…)
The best solution is to force your audience to use standalone builds until everything is worked out ^-^
Agreed. For each plugin I needed to view certain content I usually spent hours of research whether the plugin was trustworthy at all to begin with. Then there’s also the problem with how stable a plugin is and how it’s supported in the future, very generally speaking.
And as Aurore said: Concering Unity the webPlayer won’t simply vanish at the end of the year, either. So there still is a transition, if needed.
Oh, there was. Before browsers had any video support at all it was the only way. Fortunately they’ve caught up in that respect too, so now you can even watch Netflix without plugins in some browsers.
Well that’s just it. That’s not a good reason to add plugins, but to evolve browser standards instead glad they’ve seen the light - and I know what you mean
Back when they WERE necessary we didn’t actually HAVE browser standards
I’m pretty excited about WebGL replacing Webplayer. People are more likely to play a browser game that doesn’t require the installation of a plugin.
+1 Yep! very exciting times… can’t wait!