Flash needed for China

[Lawrence15B9]

I'm caught in a unique predicament here.

I'm residing in Singapore. And I do play some online RPG games in China sites. They use flash. And they are still using Flash.

With the current EOL, I am not able to do so. I tried to install the China Flash version. Got an error message stating something about different region. With one swoop, my game is in limbo in China.

I spent the last two days trying alternatives/solutions. I won't mention the frustrations.

Anyone with advice or suggestions greatly appreciated.

[_maria_ · Accepted solution]

The Flash version that runs in China is only for mainland China region, it will not work anywhere outside of China.

It doesn't matter what country the web content is hosted in, Flash Player has reached end-of-life and all supported browser vendors will soon deprecate Flash Player as well, meaning they won't load the plugin at all.

[Lawrence15B9]

I understand 2144 is managing the software over there. Am I correct to say they will also retire the software in around 2023?

[jeromiec83223024]

We're not in a position to speak on behalf of 2144 about what they will or will not do.  We license technology to them for distribution.  We don't run their business. 

For more information about 2144's Flash Player in China, you can contact 2144 support at: 

support@flash.cn

[Elias5C1F]

Use a vpn.

[Lawrence15B9]

vpn into china, is very difficult. there's not many servers inside china that works well with rest of world. bad ping times. that option is the only way to allow flash to work. some broadcast platforms (similar to facebook live/tiktok) i'm in do restrict access when they know the IP is outside china.

[SiUsPlauTancat]

I think you can try to install an old version of flash, you need one without the kill patch.... 32.0.0.255 for sure works...

[Lawrence15B9]

i'm still working on the issue. won't reveal more since adobe has made its stand.

but i can tell you this: the game which i'm on, which uses the latest flash in china currently, showed a box prompt today, stating that the flash is outdated (they are at 34.0.0.118 now). and i'm not using v33 (which was the last one before it was killed). perhaps v32 you proposed will get the same prompt.

[jeromiec83223024]

To be clear, running an unmaintained version of Flash Player is a terrible idea.  There are known security issues with old builds.  There are attackers still working on finding vulns in unmaintained copies of Flash Player, but now that Flash is EOL (outside China and supported enteprise use-cases via HARMAN), nobody shipping proactive security updates or patches.  There's also a sophisticated set of automated scanning and malware deployment infrastructure running on the web that will inevitably target old Flash versions.  

If you're going to run unmaintained software (who's job is primarily to run untrusted content) on the open web, you really want to do all the things to ensure that if the software is compromised, that it's well-contained.  This generally isn't worth the hassle for a game, and I'd strongly recommend finding a different game.

There are ways for game developers that build games on Flash to deploy those games in formats that don't put your machine at risk (Adobe AIR, etc).  The best course of action is to ask the game developer to package their game in a way that allows you to continue to play it.