Unity CEO David Helgason has taken to the firm's blog to announce it is to stop selling Flash deployment licenses, with support for the platform shelved beyond Unity 4.

According to Helgason, the decision to pull away from Flash was a "difficult" one, but that targeting Adobe's platform hadn't worked out "as we expected."

Lack of confidence

"When we started working on a Flash deployment add-on some 18 months ago we had high hopes for the future of Flash as a gaming platform," said Helgason.

"The performance of early builds was promising, and Adobe seemed to be dedicated to making it a success. Since then much has changed."

Helgason goes on to accuse Adobe of eroding developer trust in Flash as a "dependable, continuously improving platform", in part due to Adobe's decision to introduce and later abandon a revenue sharing model.

"We don't see Adobe being firmly committed to the future development of Flash," added Helgason.

"This is evidenced by the cancellation of Flash Player Next, the instability of recent Flash Player versions and by Adobe’s workforce moving on to work on other projects."

Web player

Naturally, in response to the move, Unity is instead looking to push its own in-browser player, the Unity Web Player.

The firm's plugin allows developers to build 3D content into web browsers, opening the door to what it claims are "rich 3D games", "sizzling graphics" and "immersive physics."

"Developers are moving away from Flash, and while Flash publishing has gotten little traction, our own Unity Web Player has seen unprecedented growth in recent months," concluded Helgason.

"Though we are phasing out Flash deployment, Unity will continue to break new ground when it comes to bringing high-end content to the Web.

"Uptake of the Unity Web Player is growing exponentially, and, given its increasing popularity amongst Facebook gamers and new Facebook-friendly features, we expect this trend to continue over the coming year."

[source: Unity]