When Google released Chrome 66 last month, one of the most notable changes was a restriction on web content that automatically plays audio when you visit a website. Intended to keep your browser from unexpectedly making sounds as you surf the web, the new restriction also had the unintentional impact of casing many web-based games to stop be unplayable in Chrome 66.

Earlier this month Google solicited feedback from developers who had noted the problem in the Chromium issue tracker, and now the company says it’s temporarily rolling back the feature… or at least part of it.

Most web video and audio still won’t autoplay, but the company is delaying implementation of the policy for the Web Audio API used by most games, meaning games should work again… for a few months.

Google says it plans to re-implement the policy in Chrome 70, which is due to launch in October. That gives developers time to update their code so that web games will work properly in Google’s web browser.

While the delay provides a bit of a reprieve for users (and developers), some folks are still worried that the move doesn’t go far enough… because there are a lot of online games that probably won’t ever receive another update either because they’ve been abandoned by their developers or because it’s too much work to make the changes.

That means that when October comes around, some games may work… but it’s likely that many will not, because Google is putting the responsibility of ensuring compatibility on developers rather than ensuring that its web browser is compatible with existing website.s

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2 replies on “Google temporarily rolls back Chrome’s autoplay restrictions that keep web games from working”

  1. Don’t play in Google’s ecosystem if you want to be sure of a stable landscape…

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