Flash End-of-Life Alternatives (Important)
Hey everyone! I knew I made a list of alternatives but I figured I should delete the old one and make a new one since I don’t feel like I’ve emphasized the security issues with Flash plug-ins strongly enough.
The Adobe Flash Player plugin has serious security flaws and it’s highly recommended not to have Flash Player on browsers anymore. If you really want to do it, please do it with extreme caution.
Here are the safer alternatives to using Flash. I cannot validate the safety of them completely (I am not knowledgeable on information security), but they are definitely much safer than the former.
Ruffle web extension. Ruffle is an Flash emulator that was developed with solving Flash Player’s security issues in mind. It is still in development and doesn’t support newer Flash games entirely yet, but it is a good replacement to the Flash Player plugin. Ruffle is really good to run Flash games on the browser!
BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint. Flashpoint (or more specifically, Flashpoint Infinity) is a program that downloads online games from their server and allows you to play the games using the program. What’s nice about Flashpoint is that it allows you to run games that are sitelocked or require internet access by using a “fake server” within the program, such that the games don’t actually connect to the internet.
If you wish to run downloaded Flash games locally, there are two alternatives:
The best way to do it is to download the Ruffle Nightly Build. They are the equivalent of the local Adobe Flash Player, but Ruffle is honestly a lot better. The only drawback to it is doesn’t fully support newer Flash games.
The second best solution is to use a local Adobe Flash Player. I have come to realize that the local Adobe Flash Player (and executable files) still allows online connections and requests, which means that this may be the least safe option among the safer alternatives, although it is still somewhat safe. But you might want to run them with caution.
In the meantime, I’ll keep uploading games to my archive.org account. I won’t upload more on my MEGA drive but keep it open, as I am a little worried about the safety of local Flash Players since there’s not much info on it online. Let me know if you guys know their safety level so I can update this!
