Firefox and Google Chrome presented a roadmap disabling plugins like Unity for good since these plugins use the NPAPI standard. Flash works with the newer PPAPI standard, effectively whitelisting the plugin from being “banned”.
Is Unity working on rewriting their plugin to the PPAPI standard? This is super important for many developers. Unity Tech has been quiet in this front, which surprised me.
As they have dropped development in regards to exporting to the Flash player after only a year of development (announcing it with big fanfare, making spend people $$ on licenses and invest in this tech to clients), the news on PPAPI makes me nervous. Is the platform still viable for web games in the long run? What is the future Unity roadmap about?
I don’t think Google or Firefox is banning anything… they basically plan to block all these NPAPI Plugins by default, but all that means is people will receive some extra warning prompts asking if they want to install those plugins. I am web game publisher, and one of my most successful games is Apocalypse City a Multiplayer FPS Game based on Adobe Shockwave. Google has Blocked Shockwave for sometime now, but still people can install it and play my game and I have not seen any drop in the number of players or hits to my game even with a Blocked Plugin like Shockwave. So I think people are misunderstand what Google and Firefox mean by Blocking these Plugins. Doesn’t mean you can’t install them anymore… just will be extra warning prompts to the user asking if they are sure they want to Install.
then click on the words “already blocked” which links you to another page on Google’s site that talks about already Blocked Plugins: Google Chrome Help, they mention "Examples include Java, RealPlayer, QuickTime, Shockwave, Windows Media Player and Adobe Reader prior to Adobe Reader X." but you can still install all of these… just get some extra security warning about them. Atleast I know we can still install Shockwave that’s for sure! and rarely does anyone use this plugin anymore… so it’s been blocked by default for some time…
honestly I don’t think there is much to worry about… i’m pretty sure Unity and Google will figure something out.
hell if Google worked with Adobe to integrate Adobe Flash, why wouldn’t they do the same for Unity? Unless there some behind the scenes politics we don’t know about…
It looks like they say they are going to remove the NPAPI’s which it seems like unity uses. Unity was gloating that flash was on its way out and even dropped support for it, but now tables have turned.
I believe the reason they dropped support for Flash was because Adobe lacked in the area of communicating further updates with Adobe Flash or something along those lines, and it just wasn’t in alignment with Unity’s Standards. I don’t think Unity would say they think “Flash is Dead” or something, as it sure as hell is not, it’s one of the most widely used Plugins in the World and should probably be considered a standard or something by now.
But of-coarse they very well could pull the plug and we won’t even be able to have an option to install all these plugins anymore… so that’s what they seem to be saying. I just don’t fully believe it yet until it happens lol.