Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen is ‘considering’ bringing Flappy Bird back from the dead after a tell all interview with Rolling Stone about the hit app and the changes it has made to his life.
When Dong created Flappy Birds, he tells the iconic magazine that he did it to offer people something they can play to fill in time. He never intended it to consume so many people’s lives as they push for higher scores, and it seems that a simple fact was too much for him to bear, after he told the world he would be pulling the app down from the iTunes app store. That then led to iPhones with the Flappy Bird application pre-installed selling for $100,000 on eBay.
If you were one of those people who spent big to make sure you always had the game installed because you did not manage to install it before it was taken down, then you’ll be disgusted to find out that Dong just might be bringing Flappy Bird back so it can be installed officially from Apple apps again. That means your iPhone that you bought for 100K would only be worth the recommended price of the second-hand Smartphone if you were to sell it because the app costs nothing to install and will be readily available for anybody to have.
It did not take long for the app to quickly amass $50,000 in revenue a day from advertisements even though downloading it is free. That led to people thinking he was crazy to take it down, but Dong was still making lots of money from the installation that had already happened as those people with it continued to play the game. With that being said, there’s still lots of people who would install it that haven’t yet including myself and his earnings would increase dramatically if it was to come back and be available again.
It was widely believed that Nintendo had threatened to sue Dong because the pipes used were identical to the ones Nintendo used in Super Mario. However, Dong denies these allegations and his stance has not changed.
When other developers saw the success Flappy Birds was having they created many clones of the app that were taken down from the app store by Apple. A few managed to stand the test of time like Jumpy Jack that is still available for being downloaded today. It offers a skateboarder performing the Ollie maneuver between brick walls instead of a bird flapping its way through green pipes.