Games Won't Be Stuffed Into Facebook Messenger Anymore

Heads up to those of you who enjoy using Facebook Messenger to play Words With Friends or Uno with your closest pals: you soon won't be able to do that.

Gamasutra is reporting that Facebook plans to pull Instant Games out of its Messenger app, and will instead push to develop a more centralized location for Facebook users who want to congregate and play some games. The current plan is to remove Instant Games from Messenger on iOS sometime this summer, with Android following suit at an unspecified time later on.

The hope is Facebook Messenger will be faster and less bogged down by having the Instant Games feature removed, though there are undoubtedly some users who found accessing their games through Messenger — while chatting with friends and family — more convenient. Facebook states that the company's primary app will play host to games going forward, though chat will still happen inside Messenger, which will leave users switching back and forth should they want to communicate while playing.

Instant Games first launched inside Facebook Messenger back in November 2016 with a wide variety of titles, including Galaga, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and even a Track & Field game from Konami. And hilariously enough, its big selling point — what Facebook touted as being better than competing apps — was the fact that players could be chatting with friends and start up a game without leaving Messenger. The company's chat app will likely run at a faster clip as a result of losing the Instant Games bulk. It'll be interesting to see, though, if Instant Games takes a hit in terms of active players when the move takes effect.

Despite this change, Facebook seems committed to hosting games on its platform. And the company is still very much pushing into the future of games with Oculus, which released two new VR headsets back in May.

We'll keep you up to speed should Facebook make any other video game-related news.