Most of us remember FarmVille as the game our weird aunt sent us like fifty requests for every day. And some of us remember it as a time of dark, destructive addiction: ducking into coffee shops with good WiFi so you could tend to your crops, begging innocent loved ones to join you in the helpless downward spiral via friend requests “come on man, just try it… everybody’s doing it,” and counting the hours at work or at school until you could finally rush home and drain your cows’ teats of every last drop of digital milk — every last drop of sweet, sweet dopamine.

Whether you ignored the fad or became a full-blown FarmVille junkie, there’s no denying the flash game made a serious impact. It spawned a gazillion knock-offs — I was getting requests for Mafia Wars and CityVille and Empires & Allies long after FarmVille had lost popularity.

But FarmVille’s biggest impact — and the darkest aspect of its legacy for many gamers — is that it ushered in the era of the loot box, the option to pay real money for in-game currency (“pay twenty real-life dollars, and we’ll give you a hundred in-game coins to buy horses and trees and shit”). This was all fine and dandy for a game like FarmVille, where the goal is to build the biggest, prettiest farm and there is virtually no competitive aspect. The problem is, we now have first-person shooters where players can upgrade their characters much faster by paying extra money — the race to level up the fastest and win better weapons is no longer about who has the most skill, but who is willing to pay the most money. It’s a damn shame, and FarmVille laid out the blueprint.

But it’s time to put the turkeys out to pasture. FarmVille will be no more.

Good night, sweet prince. My Aunt Shirley will miss you dearly.

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