Dong Nguyen removed the top-ranked game on Sunday, provoking death threats.
After millions of downloads, Flappy Bird has vanished from the App Store and Google Play. Dong Nguyen, the game’s Vietnamese developer, permanently grounded Flappy Bird – a title that was allegedly bringing him $50,000 a week in ad revenue – in an apparent bid to clear his conscience.
For the uninitiated, Flappy Bird was the top-ranked free game for both Apple and Android, with more than 50 million downloads since going viral last month. It was described by many as frustratingly difficult, yet incredibly simple – tap the screen to make a bird flap its wings as you try to avoid green pipes. If you crash into one, it’s an automatic “game over.” There is no “end,” either – players simply try to stay alive for as long as they can, with many taking to Facebook and Twitter to boast about surviving for more than 30 seconds.
The pixelated animation style (and, of course, the pipes) drew many comparisons to Super Mario Bros. It led many to speculate that Nintendo may have been behind the game’s disappearance – something that Nguyen denies.
Nguyen claims that he coded the game in his free time after work over the course of two or three days. His sudden success was viewed by some as an opportunity for Vietnam’s fledgling community of developers to break onto the scene.
Despite Phuc’s optimism, Nguyen took to his Twitter account ahead of killing the game to tell his 120,000 followers that its rapid success had taken an emotional toll on him. Some rabid fans went as far as lodging death threats when they found out that the game would be removed.
Gaming addiction is a much more serious issue in Asia than it is in the West, and likely something that Nguyen considered in pulling Flappy Bird from app stores.
In its absence, Flappy Bird clones – with uninspired names like Flappy Fish, Flappy Pig and Flappy Chicken – have appeared in droves. Used smartphones and tablets with Flappy Bird installed have flooded auction sites like eBay, with reserve prices in the thousands of dollars.