After dealing with all the AI slop, the founder of itch.io has announced that Flash games are set to make a fun return thanks to open source.
How? They're now using Ruffle, a free and open source Flash Emulator that is made to run on all modern systems and browsers. It's a pretty amazing project for preservation. In a recent Blog Post, the Ruffle team noted some of the advancements made to the project.
As for Flash games getting reimplemented on the itch.io store, the founder [said](https://itch.io/t/7319247/the-return-of-flash-games):
We've got an update for fans of [Flash games](https://itch.io/games/flash)!
We've re-implemented Flash support on itch.io using Ruffle, an open source Flash emulator that runs entirely in your browser. Ruffle has been around for quite some time and compatibility is quite good from our testing. We've gotten a few requests over the years to add it to help make older games playable. The day has arrived!
If you're a developer with an existing Flash project, there's nothing to do! The old swfobject embed has been replaced with an iframe embed that runs your .swf file with a recent build of Ruffle (nightly build from 2026-11-03 as of this post). This is available for both old and new .swf files, in case you've got a backlog of games you've been meaning to host. Games that use site-locks may need some additional hacks. If a game doesn't work, feel free to leave it in the comments here and we can investigate.
I recommend this game (I made its title screen music like 13 years ago 😅) and browse all the Flash games here https://itch.io/games/flash
There's currently 2,581 Flash games on the store.
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