Is it the End for the (Annoyingly) Popular Flappy Bird?

The creator of Flappy Bird, Vietnamese Dong Nguyen, seems to have had enough of the attention he has been receiving lately in regard to his game, which he is planning to pull out the game, through an announcement via Twitter. Flappy Bird is a simple game, reminiscent of Super Mario. It is played by tapping on the screen of a mobile device to move the bird up or down to prevent it from bumping into a series of tubes. A player gets a point every time one tube has been passed successfully. Even the slightest bump on any part of the tube causes the bird to fall and the player has to start all over again.

The game was initially available for Android and Apple devices, but is now also available for devices that run on the Windows OS, although the game creator said that he has not built a version that will run on the Windows platform, based on a tweet he posted just last Friday.

Instant popularity

Flappy Bird was launched in May 2013. It is a free app that can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. It became very popular due to the sharing of social network site users. As of last count it has been downloaded 50 million times. The app has gone viral, with YouTube review posts from subscribers reaching 22 million. It is the number one free game in Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

Simple game, short time to create

It only took Dong Nguyen three days to create his simple game. He uploaded it as a free game. Today he is raking in about $50,000 a day in advertising revenues. It might be a simple game but it is a frustrating and annoying game. You need to have a lot of patience to be able to play it. For one thing you have to continue tapping on the screen or the bird will not flap its wings. It seems to be one very heavy bird. Although players of the game share their humorous and pithy reviews of the game through Twitter, it also helped the game gain popularity. They may be exasperated with the game, but they are still addicted to it.

Manipulated popularity results?

The Flappy Bird game is indeed a viral success. And with instant success comes doubts. Some have accused the creator of manipulating the charts by using paid-for promos, although he had denied it.

Is it goodbye for Flappy Bird?

Dong Nguyen sent out a Tweet last Saturday, saying that he was pulling out the Flappy Bird game by Sunday. It seems that he cannot handle all the attention he has been getting since his game became so popular. There had also been criticism that it is very similar to the original Super Mario Bros. game of Nintendo. Mr. Nguyen said his decision to pull out the game is not connected to legal issues.

There are some questions however. Both Nintendo and Dong Nguyen did not respond to media requests for comments. There are some that think that the tweets cannot be verified as authentic. At this point it is not certain if it was actually Dong Nguyen who has been tweeting or his Twitter account has been hacked. The tweets did not specify if he would also be pulling the plug on his other games, although he said that he would continue to develop games and that he had no intention of selling his games to another entity.

Photo credit: Taken by Asadwan under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.