Google Chrome’s autoplay blocker has an unintended victim — web games

Google rolled out its Chrome 66 update last month, and its biggest feature is that autoplaying content will be muted by default. This might be a positive for people who are sick of rogue videos as they’re browsing the Internet, but it has had a negative effect on game developers who embed their HTML5 games on the web.

Developers who upload their games on their personal sites as well as to places like the indie platform Itch.io can enable players to run their games in the browser. This is a popular option for smaller projects, like those made for the Ludum Dare game jam. Itch.io founder Leaf Corcoran says that “a pretty significant number of games” on the platform have been affected by Google’s update, causing games to run without a way to turn on audio.