It’s no secret that Google is on a mission to make intrusive ads a thing of the past, and while a recent Chrome update which aimed to prevent autoplaying audio in web pages seemed like step in the right direction, it unfortunately came with some unexpected side effects. 

According to a story by Waypoint, the Chrome 66 update has majorly impacted countless web projects and games that rely on audio, causing Google to temporarily remove the autoplay policy for the Web Audio API.

QWOP designer Bennett Foddy told Waypoint that he “cannot think of a comparable moment where one team of developers killed so much internet culture in one unilateral move.”

A mute point

“We’re doing this to give Web Audio API developers (e.g. gaming, audio applications, some RTC features) more time to update their code,” explained Google product manager John Pallett in a post to developers.

He continued, “The team here is working hard to improve things for users and developers, but in this case we didn’t do a good job of communicating the impact of the new autoplay policy to developers using the Web Audio API.”

If you were one of the many people who welcomed the prospect of Chrome blocking audio from annoying ads, fear not – Google’s autoplay policy will be re-applied to the Web Audio API in Chrome 70, which is set to drop in October 2018.