After announcing he would remove Flappy Bird from app stores, developer Dong Nguyen went silent, but has now told Forbes a little about his motivations. He designed the game to be a five minute time killer, and was shocked that people got so addicted to it. He said he has lost sleep, and his life is worse as a result of all the attention and success.
The phenomenal rise of Flappy Bird resulted in a lot of negative feedback aimed at Nguyen. He received death threats on Twitter, and major games site Kotaku accused him of stealing graphics from Super Mario World (it has since apologized). His somewhat dramatic announcements on Twitter lead some to accuse him of attempting viral marketing, but it seems he was just being open and honest.
Nguyen said Flappy Bird became,
“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.”
If you already have it, you can still play, but it can’t be downloaded anymore.
If you missed out on this frustratingly addictive game, there are plenty of copycat games out there: Floppy Penguin, Flappy Angry Bird, Flappy Pants Bird, Flippy Flappy Bird and of course the Android exclusive, Happy Poo Flap.
Nguyen will continue to make games, so we’ll make sure to keep an eye on his indie company .GEARS to see if he can replicate the success of Flappy Bird. The .GEARS About Page states ‘everything is pure, extremely hard and incredibly fun to play’, so expect future games to be just as frustratingly difficult!
