It's now been a month since developer Dong Nguyen took the decision to remove flappy bird from both the App Store and Google Play Store. The move was met with a wave of speculation about the reasons behind the decision ranging from things such as a lawsuit threat from Nintendo and death threats from angry gamers. However the developer continued to stick to his original story about his reasons and stated that it was due to people overusing the game and the amount of criticism and attention he had received as a result of creating flappy bird. Dong was hounded by the media after creating flappy bird and was apparently overwhelmed with the amount of requests from press organizations.
Not long after flappy bird was taken down a plethora of copycat apps flooded the App Store and Google Play with developers trying to cash in on the success of flappy bird including myself, though mine was more for fun and I didn’t try to monetize it either. Apple and Google have since taken action and are removing some of these apps that are either too similar or use the word ‘flappy’ in the title, that being said there are still a large number of these available to download in each store.
Just as we were all beginning to move on and forget about flappy bird and the news coverage had all but died a death, Flappy Bird is again back in the limelight after the magazine Rolling Stone managed to bag an interview with the 28 year old Vietnam developer. The interview is very interesting and talks about the reasons for creating flappy bird and the inspirations behind the app as well as revealing that Dong is considering re-releasing the app again but this time it would include a warning about safety and not over playing the game and the importance of taking regular breaks (sounds more like long distance driving advice) whether or not this comes to fruition remains to be seen and we have to question whether anybody really cares whether or not the app makes a return. The world of technology and apps moves very quickly and what is hot one week may not necessarily be hot the next. Personally I think flappy bird has flown the nest and that’s where it should be left, if Dong Nguyen decided to release a new game though that would be a different matter.