Miniclip is officially shutting down its online servers

It's a sad time for the internet as one of the big players of those early glorious days looks to be gone for good.

Once upon a time, getting home from school and getting on the internet to play games on Miniclip was the absolute best time you could have.

And let's be honest, you also probably played it at school during IT lessons when you thought the teacher wasn't looking.

Now the chance to walk down that nostalgic road could be gone forever as it looks like the Miniclip online servers have officially been shut down, rendering almost all of their games unplayable from now on.

While the company itself isn't going bust, the site which attracted millions of visitors and brought joy to so many, no longer comes bristling with all sorts of games for you to play.

Sharaf Maksumov / Alamy Stock Photo

If you go on their website now, the only two browser games avaliable are 8 Ball Pool and Agar.io, with everything else having disappeared, as if many flash games cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

The move to shut down most of the games on Miniclip was actually done earlier this year, although many didn't notice it had gone until recently.

And for anyone hoping this is a temporary blip, they are likely to be disappointed as Miniclip have said they have 'no plans to bring back other games online'.

It looks like from here on out, they'll be largely selling mobile games with just a couple of fan favourites on the site for people to come back to.

The company said that since the launch of their mobile games department in 2010, they'd seen more of their users pick up apps of their most popular games to play on their phone.

And since they've seen that most of their players have 'already migrated' to playing on mobile, it looks like that's where they see their future.

They added that they're instead 'focusing on mobile to deliver incredible experiences for both existing and new players', which means all those wonderful browser games are gone.

Twitter/@TheMSeries1

Since the change, people have been saddened to learn that a major part of the internet in their childhood is seemingly gone forever.

Many paid tribute on social media, writing 'RIP Miniclip', while another tweeted: "one day you played the last Miniclip game of your life and never even realised it."

Plenty reminisced about the popular games on the site, with many giving a heartfelt shout out to Raft Wars in particular, while there was also much love for a shooting game where you played as George W Bush.

Others suggested hosting a 'global hackathon' to try and revive all the games on Miniclip in someway, arguing that the content made 'don't deserve the fate of fading into the void'.

It really is the end of an era.