Outside of a handful of tweets, Flappy Bird”s creator Dong Nguyen has been relatively quiet about his decision to remove one of the most popular mobile games in history from the App Store and Google Play Store.
Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed…But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever. – Dong Nguyen
Nguyen is now acting as though the primary reason that he got rid of the game was to help people from becoming addicted to it. No matter why Nguyen removed Flappy Bird from both app stores, it must have been a relatively good reason considering that it was reported that the game was bringing in $50,000 a day from in-app advertising.
The 29-year-old developer only spent a online casino week developing Flappy Bird and while he had previously released games for iOS and Android, none of them garnered the amount of attention that Flappy Bird did. As soon as the game became popular, the download rate skyrocketed, reaching an estimated 50 million prior to the removal.
When Nguyen first announced that he would be taking down Flappy Bird it was speculated that legal issues with Nintendo were to blame, since aspects of the game were similar to Super Mario Bros. However, both Nguyen and Nintendo have now stated that a lawsuit was not in the works, leaving the full reason for the takedown still unknown.
While we usually do not comment on the rumors and speculations, we have already denied the speculation, – Nintendo, speaking with the Wall Street Journal
Even though Flappy Bird may no longer be available for download, millions of people have it stored on their phones and Nguyen seems happy about that. When asked if he wanted to say anything to Flappy Bird”s fans, Nguyen stated, “Thank you very much for playing my game.”
Summary: Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen has revealed that he pulled the game from the app stores because of how addictive the app was.
(Image Credit: businessinsider)