The EggPlayer was originally a proprietary player for Cracked Egg Studios productions that was designed to replace use of the YouTube
<embed> code on the web site. Development of the player began on April 27, 2008. Since 2021, EggPlayer is a reskinned version of the bundled media player in VaultWiki.History
When the Cracked Egg Studios Official Web Site first launched in 2005, The Vault was created with the intention that it would display original content on the site using an embedded player. During the first several months, promises of The Vault's completion were stated to rely upon moving to a new host server with more disk space and bandwidth.
At the same time the web site moved to a more viable server solution in early 2006, TK Seya proposed that Pegasus host the videos on YouTube as a director. Ted Phillips began the process of trickling some videos onto YouTube via the channel "CrackedEggStudios." However, upon embarking on this process, he quickly found numerous drawbacks of relying on YouTube, or another third-party service for video hosting:
On April 25, 2008, Ted began his search for an alternative to YouTube, and began development of EggPlayer just two days later, based on a commercial version of FlowPlayer. Within 10 days, a proprietary EggPlayer was launched on the web site. The new player allowed the studio to control and embed its own Flash video content. While developing EggPlayer, the studio also investigated migrating to SSL technology on the web site, and found that spreading embedded assets across multiple domains, such as the web site and YouTube, could result in reduced trust scores and even lead to browsers blocking video content from loading. SSL would remain out of the studio's web site budget until the mainstreaming of the Let's Encrypt service circa 2016, but it nonetheless became a long-term goal. Within weeks of its launch, the studio began removing many videos from YouTube and making them into web site exclusives.
Over the next few years, EggPlayer would occasionally develop issues in response to browser and FlowPlayer component updates. Often, these issues went undiscovered and unresolved for several months.
On December 25, 2013, as part of the aftermath of the CoachZ Infection, the hosting account containing the video files that EggPlayer played was unintentionally erased. It was not realized that the live copies had disappeared until Nick Phillips brought it to Ted's attention in early March 2014. EggPlayer remained broken and all videos missing until April 13, 2014.
On April 13, 2014, Ted Phillips installed a Flash streaming server on the Cracked Egg Studios web site and re-uploaded a handful of the missing videos. He attempted to fix the EggPlayer itself, but had to change it back to a branded FlowPlayer until the correct player component versions were located on April 22, 2014. With these changes, EggPlayer would no longer rely on third-party hosting, could be protected by SSL technology in the future, and would be able to support live streaming.
On July 25, 2017, Adobe announced that it would stop supporting Flash Player at the end of 2020. The end of Flash Player would cause all content based on Flash, such as EggPlayer and its videos, to stop functioning entirely.
On August 14, 2020, Cracked Egg Studios began rewriting EggPlayer as a VaultWiki 4.2.x series component, using HTML video elements and native browser APIs to handle player controls and digital rights management. Streaming the content was now achieved using a custom video transfer format that fed WEBM video chunks to Javascript's Media Source Extension. This new EggPlayer was completed on September 23, 2020; however, VaultWiki 4.2.x was not available on the public version of the web site, so existing videos were unable to benefit from the changes at that time.
On January 12, 2021, all existing EggPlayer content stopped functioning, due to browsers no longer being able to use Adobe Flash Player. Cracked Egg Studios closed the web site for upgrades on January 25, and reopened it February 8, 2022.
Upon reopening, the studio began rereleasing its old EggPlayer content using the new video format. To date, most prior content has been rereleased.
On March 3, 2022, EggPlayer content became viewable on Apple iOS devices for the first time since its inception. Apple devices had never supported Flash content, nor the more modern Media Source Extension API, so the player needed unique features and video files created especially for those devices in HLS format.
Over the years, iOS devices continued to have issues. Due to a lack of iOS test devices supporting HTML5 video among studio equipment, that environment was infrequently tested, so effects of changes to the player's code were often unknown unless a user reported a problem. Issues with the platform's HLS video files also went undiscovered for long periods of time, as there was often no issue with the WEBM files that were more-typically watched.
In 2023, Apple released iOS 17, which finally added support for the Media Source Extension API and WEBM video content, and which was available on all of the iOS devices already supported by EggPlayer. On November 1, 2025, EggPlayer was updated to deliver WEBM content to iOS using the same Media Source Extension code as other devices, thus enabling a more consistent experience across supported devices and reducing the likelihood of iOS-specific issues.
At the same time the web site moved to a more viable server solution in early 2006, TK Seya proposed that Pegasus host the videos on YouTube as a director. Ted Phillips began the process of trickling some videos onto YouTube via the channel "CrackedEggStudios." However, upon embarking on this process, he quickly found numerous drawbacks of relying on YouTube, or another third-party service for video hosting:
- YouTube had a 100 Megabyte file size and 10 minute duration limitation. This led to videos being uploaded at a much lower quality than desired and being split into multiple parts.
- YouTube and its parent corporation regulated video content. In various cases, content was removed, muted, or had the available markets changed, sometimes without recourse.
- Videos were not isolated to the studio web site, and were presented alongside competing or lower quality videos on the YouTube site.
- YouTube dictated when and how advertisements were added to videos. For short 15 second videos, or for the site's flash intro, it made no sense to watch a 30 second advertisement first.
- YouTube's player was not easy to customize to fit the overall look of the site.
On April 25, 2008, Ted began his search for an alternative to YouTube, and began development of EggPlayer just two days later, based on a commercial version of FlowPlayer. Within 10 days, a proprietary EggPlayer was launched on the web site. The new player allowed the studio to control and embed its own Flash video content. While developing EggPlayer, the studio also investigated migrating to SSL technology on the web site, and found that spreading embedded assets across multiple domains, such as the web site and YouTube, could result in reduced trust scores and even lead to browsers blocking video content from loading. SSL would remain out of the studio's web site budget until the mainstreaming of the Let's Encrypt service circa 2016, but it nonetheless became a long-term goal. Within weeks of its launch, the studio began removing many videos from YouTube and making them into web site exclusives.
Over the next few years, EggPlayer would occasionally develop issues in response to browser and FlowPlayer component updates. Often, these issues went undiscovered and unresolved for several months.
On December 25, 2013, as part of the aftermath of the CoachZ Infection, the hosting account containing the video files that EggPlayer played was unintentionally erased. It was not realized that the live copies had disappeared until Nick Phillips brought it to Ted's attention in early March 2014. EggPlayer remained broken and all videos missing until April 13, 2014.
On April 13, 2014, Ted Phillips installed a Flash streaming server on the Cracked Egg Studios web site and re-uploaded a handful of the missing videos. He attempted to fix the EggPlayer itself, but had to change it back to a branded FlowPlayer until the correct player component versions were located on April 22, 2014. With these changes, EggPlayer would no longer rely on third-party hosting, could be protected by SSL technology in the future, and would be able to support live streaming.
On July 25, 2017, Adobe announced that it would stop supporting Flash Player at the end of 2020. The end of Flash Player would cause all content based on Flash, such as EggPlayer and its videos, to stop functioning entirely.
On August 14, 2020, Cracked Egg Studios began rewriting EggPlayer as a VaultWiki 4.2.x series component, using HTML video elements and native browser APIs to handle player controls and digital rights management. Streaming the content was now achieved using a custom video transfer format that fed WEBM video chunks to Javascript's Media Source Extension. This new EggPlayer was completed on September 23, 2020; however, VaultWiki 4.2.x was not available on the public version of the web site, so existing videos were unable to benefit from the changes at that time.
On January 12, 2021, all existing EggPlayer content stopped functioning, due to browsers no longer being able to use Adobe Flash Player. Cracked Egg Studios closed the web site for upgrades on January 25, and reopened it February 8, 2022.
Upon reopening, the studio began rereleasing its old EggPlayer content using the new video format. To date, most prior content has been rereleased.
On March 3, 2022, EggPlayer content became viewable on Apple iOS devices for the first time since its inception. Apple devices had never supported Flash content, nor the more modern Media Source Extension API, so the player needed unique features and video files created especially for those devices in HLS format.
Over the years, iOS devices continued to have issues. Due to a lack of iOS test devices supporting HTML5 video among studio equipment, that environment was infrequently tested, so effects of changes to the player's code were often unknown unless a user reported a problem. Issues with the platform's HLS video files also went undiscovered for long periods of time, as there was often no issue with the WEBM files that were more-typically watched.
In 2023, Apple released iOS 17, which finally added support for the Media Source Extension API and WEBM video content, and which was available on all of the iOS devices already supported by EggPlayer. On November 1, 2025, EggPlayer was updated to deliver WEBM content to iOS using the same Media Source Extension code as other devices, thus enabling a more consistent experience across supported devices and reducing the likelihood of iOS-specific issues.