Hello, fans, followers, and friends! There has been some talk lately in the news about the casual gaming industry. Whether it’s one announcement or another about new game streaming services coming out, rumors about the shutdown of other beloved flash gaming sites, or the inevitable fate of Flash finally being revealed. There is a lot of movement going on in the casual gaming world right now. So, you might as well add this announcement to the pile: We are updating with all new games on Thursdays again. As of May 24th, 2019 we have begun updating again, every Wednesday at midnight — or Thursdays for you

What is an io game? What does io even stand for? Am I an io game? Are you an io game?

Look, definitions are tricky. Maybe it’s just me but I’m kind of an “I am not a number, don’t label me with your labels, man” kind of person. But, categories do serve a function and while they sometimes are too claustrophobic or too laissez-faire, it is safe to say that games in general and io games, in particular, can be neatly defined.

To avoid any confusion before we get started, we should be clear that an io game doesn’t need to have the .io domain at the end of its name. The .io domain is just the country code top-level domain for the British Indian Ocean. Much like how Canada uses .ca or India uses .in. The two first and biggest io games --Agar.io and Slither io-- both used .io as their domain of choice, so, it became the de facto standard for similar games and eventually morphed into the name of the genre.