Flappy Bird Creator Deletes Game From App Stores

The whirlwind success of Flappy Bird followed by the apparent meltdown of its Vietnamese creator and his decision to delete the app from both iOS and Google Play app stores at the height of its popularity will surely go down as one of the strangest video game sagas in recent memory.

“I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird users,” Dong Nguyen tweeted Saturday. “22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.”

For those hoping Nguyen was playing some joke on the Internet or that his Twitter account was hacked, there was no such luck as Sunday saw Flappy Bird deleted from iOS and Google Play app stores.

It remains unclear exactly why Nguyen decided to pull the game. Flappy Bird’s rapid and enormous success was due in large part to its notorious difficulty and the game quickly garnered a cult-like following.  Judging by Nguyen’s tweets, the developer was simply tired of all the attention.      

“It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore,” he tweeted. “I also don’t sell ‘Flappy Bird’, please don’t ask.”

Due to the game’s obvious visual similarities to Super Mario Bros. it was speculated that Nintendo might have had something to do with Flappy Bird’s deletion, but the Wall Street Journal debunked that rumor Monday. 

“While we usually do not comment on the rumors and speculations, we have already denied the speculation” last week, Nintendo spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa said in an email to the WSJ.

Nguyen was reportedly earning $50,000 a day from ad revenue derived from Flappy Bird, but now that the game has been deleted from Google Play and iOS app stores, a lucrative secondary market has emerged on eBay for phones with Flappy Bird preinstalled. Although there aren’t any bids yet, a 16GB iPhone 4S with the game loaded is listed for $134,295 and the auction has 149 watchers.