The Rise And Rise (And Then Fall) Of Miniclip

I downloaded 8 Ball Pool yesterday.

I’ve been playing that game every chance I get since. I’ve been on it since 2011

How does someone play the same game on and off for over 13 years?

Simple. Here’s how you make a very successful game:

• Make the simplest version of a popular physical game (football, carrom, racing, snooker!)

• Make it fun as heck

• Add incentives for users to put in their money

• Repeat for decades

Miniclip was the OG of flash games back when I was in school. It’s now over 24 years old, and is just a shell of what it used to be, but a multi-million dollar business conglomerate nonetheless.

Here’s a brief timeline of Miniclip:

2001: Robert (Rob) starts Miniclip with his buddies as a platform for people to play Flash games.

Miniclip builds games on top of Macromedia / Adobe Flash, and lets users access them through miniclip.com ; 8 Ball Pool is one of them (it still has the same loading screen by the way)

Rob gets on 8 Ball Pool every Saturday and plays with the users on the app. The virality is UNREAL.

2005: Miniclip becomes the world’s #1 online platform for Flash games. Millions of users every DAY, and it just does not stop growing

2011: Miniclip starts building interest in mobile apps, launches 8 Ball Pool mobile

2017: 8 Ball Pool is one of the biggest snooker games on the planet, generating over $100 million USD in revenue for Miniclip

2019: Miniclip now has over 125 games in its arsenal, doing over $400 million USD

2020: Adobe shuts down Flash, meaning no game can now run on browser, if it was built on Flash. Miniclip shuts down over 100 games.

2022: Oooh, we now have Miniclip Group - starts acquiring other mobile game companies, from SYBO (Subway Surfers) to futurLab (PowerWash)

2024: The Miniclip web platform is no more. You can no longer play anything apart from 8 Ball Pool and Agar.io straight from the site.

All the other games are either wiped off the map, or moved into the Miniclip mobile platform (which seems non-existent)

Revenue drops to double-digit millions.

If not for 8 Ball, Miniclip would be another startup lost to time by now.