The extinction of ‘Flappy Bird’: the rise and fall of a frustratingly simple mobile game

Flappy Bird was almost preposterously simple. If you ever played the game, even once, you surely remember how it worked, but here’s a summary just in case. You were a bird. Your job was to fly, left to right, for as long as possible without crashing into the green Mario-ish pipes coming from both the top and bottom of the screen. Tap the screen to go up, stop tapping to go down. That’s it. That’s the game.

Nobody, not even Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen, thought those were the ingredients for a smash hit. And yet for a few weeks in 2014, the game was at the top of app stores everywhere — and became something of a cultural phenomenon. Almost as soon as it took off, though, players began to rebel, annoyed at both the punishing difficulty of the game and the sudden riches it was bringing its developer. Things got so bad, so quickly, that at the peak of its popularity Nguyen did the unthinkable: he simply removed the game from stores.

Last week, The Flappy Bird Foundation announced a game called Flappy Bird. But while the group has been framing it as the triumphant return of a classic mobile game, Flappy Bird’s original developer, Dong Nguyen isn’t calling it a comeback — in fact, he says he’s not involved at all.

Nguyen posted as much on X (for the first time since 2017!) this morning, saying he didn’t “sell anything.” The Flappy Bird Foundation wrote in the announcement it shared with press last week that it had “acquired the rights from Gametech Holdings, LLC,” which had secured the trademark from Nguyen, but it doesn’t appear as though that was the result of any dealings between him and the group.

A self-described “team of passionate fans committed to sharing the game with the world” says it’s acquired the rights to Flappy Bird, the iconic mobile game whose creator took it offline less than a year after it was released. Now, “The Flappy Bird Foundation Group” will relaunch the game on Android and iOS in 2025.

But it’s unclear whether the original creator of Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyen, is a part of the game’s relaunch. The Verge reached out to Nguyen with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back. His account on X and the website for his game development company don’t show any recent updates. The Flappy Bird Foundation said it acquired the rights to the game from Gametech, LLC, which isn’t associated with Nguyen.

Flappy Bird was a hard game. My high score was eight, and it took a long time to get even that far. When I saw people get scores in the dozens, or even hundreds, I was in awe. That brutal challenge is part of what made the game so infamously addictive, but the follow-up from creator Dong Nguyen might just be a step too far. So far my high score in Swing Copters is one. And I don’t see that changing any time soon.

Both aesthetically and mechanically, Swing Copters is a lot like Flappy Bird. The visuals are low-fi pixel art, and you’re once again controlling a tiny dude trying to fly past a never-ending barrage of obstacles. Only this time, the pixelated star is wearing a helicopter hat, and he flies up instead of to the right. The one-touch gameplay has you controlling his direction to ensure he doesn’t spin out of control.

Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen is moving beyond the feathered friend that brought him massive recognition — he just announced on Twitter that he’s building a new game and attached a screenshot to go along with it. There’s no other detail on the game yet aside from a small helmeted human being jumping through a small opening into what appears to be a building — it’s not all that dissimilar to what you need to do in Flappy Bird, in fact. Polygon notes that Nguyen described the game as “some guy jumping from building to building” in an interview on CNBC.

The timing of this reveal is rather surprising — just yesterday, Nguyen said that Flappy Bird would be back in August, but in today’s tweet, he said that he wanted people to “forget about Flappy Bird for a while.” When we’ll see this new project remains to be seen, but we’re guessing from Nguyen’s tweet that it’ll be ready to go before Flappy Bird returns.

The creator of the gaming sensation Flappy Bird now says he is bringing the game back. In an interview with CNBC, Dong Nguyen said the new version would be a multiplayer game that is “less addictive” than its predecessor. Nguyen famously pulled the game from app stores amid worries that the game’s millions of fans were spending too much time playing the game.

Flappy Bird, which asks players to navigate a blob-like animal through a fiendishly challenging series of green pipes, became a sensation earlier this year. Its legend only grew when Nguyen removed it from app stores, leading to an army of clones that dominated the charts for weeks. On CNBC today, Nguyen said the original game has been downloaded more than 50 million times. The resurrected Flappy Bird will be ready in August, Nguyen said.

It’s been just over a month since the creator of the surprisingly popular and exceedingly frustrating mobile game Flappy Bird pulled his creation from the App Store and Google Play. He’s kept a fairly low profile since, but Dong Nguyen broke his silence in a big way in a just-published feature interview with Rolling Stone. In the profile, Nguyen reveals that he’s “considering” bringing Flappy Bird back, despite the overwhelming crush of attention, criticism, and even threats that the game originally brought him. However, if he does bring the game back, Nguyen says it’ll come with a warning imploring players to take a break; last month, the developer said that the game’s addictive qualities were a big part of why he took the game down.

Beyond the tease of a Flappy Bird return, Nguyen also talked extensively about the inspiration for his game and how the culture of his home city of Hanoi influenced the game’s simple mechanics. Citizens rush through the city, eyes trained on their phones — and thus the simple “tap” control made a lot of sense to Nguyen. And as for the low scores that plague most players, Nguyen apparently was influenced by “one of the most masocore analog creations ever: paddleball.” For the whole story on Nguyen and 2014’s surprise breakout hit, read on at Rolling Stone.

The wildly simple yet infinitely frustrating game Flappy Bird is no more, though it continues to live on in countless clones. Now Code.org, the non-profit aimed at teaching people how to write code, has created a tool to make your own Flappy Bird game while learning some code at the same time.

The lesson takes the form of a puzzle that goes through the actual game mechanics of Flappy Bird step-by-step, from flapping the bird’s wings each time you click your mouse, to deciding what happens when your character either hits or misses the large green pipes. At each step along the way, you need to figure out how to reconfigure the game to make it work the way it’s supposed to. The end result is a very basic lesson for what’s required to build the game, something that’s been distilled down to a drag-and-drop interface. And when you’re done learning, you can adjust every facet of the game, right down to choosing whether your bird sounds like a jet engine or a laser every time it flaps.

In the wake of Flappy Bird’s demise, an army of clones has risen up to take its place — but Apple and Google may now be preventing that from happening. Currently when you search “flappy” in Google Play or the App Store, you’ll see game like Flappy Fish, Flappy Pig, or Splashy Fish pop up. However, several developers are reporting that both Apple and Google have since clamped down on obvious clones, disallowing games that are clearly built to cash in on Flappy Bird’s sudden burst of popularity.

On Friday, Ken Carpenter, from studio Mind Juice Media, tweeted that his game Flappy Dragon was rejected by Apple, with the company telling him “we found your app name attempts to leverage a popular app.” After that initial tweet, several developers responded saying that they had seen or received similar responses from both Apple and Google. In some cases, it’s making developers consider changing or resubmitting games they’ve already made. Developer Paul Pridham from Mad Garden, for example, who previously worked on titles like Punch Quest, is debating whether to resubmit his cthulhu-themed clone Flapthulhu to the App Store with a new name. You can currently play the game on Windows.

Flappy Bird is gone. The mobile gaming sensation was pulled from both the iTunes App Store and Google Play by creator Dong Nguyen, but in its place an army of clones has arrived. A quick search for “flappy bird” in the App Store, for example, brings up names like Splashy Fish, Fly Birdie, City Bird, and Flying Flappy Unicorn Bird.

Most of these games are simply reskinned versions looking to capitalize on the surprising popularity of Flappy Bird, letting you play the same exact game, only with characters like doge or a piece of poo in place of the bird. Soon you’ll even be able to play as members of the band Fall Out Boy, and the developers behind games like Super Hexagon and Canabalt have made their own homages. But there are plenty of other games that take Flappy Bird’s simple concept and reinvent it in intriguing new ways. Here are some of the best.

Indie developer Dong Nguyen has broken his silence following the sudden removal of his popular Flappy Bird game recently. In an interview with Forbes, Nguyen says the game was originally designed to be played “when you are relaxed.” However, the notoriously difficult game, created in mid-2013, rose to fame recently, with some social network and YouTube users pointing out comically just how frustrating it is to navigate Mario-style pipes with a pixelated bird. “But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem,” explains Nguyen. To solve that, Nguyen removed the app last weekend, and he notes, “it’s gone forever.”

The popularity of the game, which Nguyen revealed to The Verge, generates on average $50,000 per day from in-app ads, appears to have had its negatives. “My life has not been as comfortable as I was before,” says Nguyen. “I couldn’t sleep.” Forbes reports that Nguyen has spent the last few days internet-free and resting up, while also suddenly meeting Vietnam’s deputy prime minister ahead of the publication’s interview. Despite the time for reflection, Nguyen doesn’t believe the sudden removal of the game was a mistake. “I have thought it through,” he explains.

Mobile gaming sensation Flappy Bird may be gone, but you can still get the same experience with a little help from doge. Flappy Doge is a browser game that both looks and plays exactly like Flappy Bird, except instead of a one-eyed bird, you’re controlling an adorable, pixelated shiba. It’s just as hard as the mobile game, and doesn’t include any ads to interfere with the experience. In fact it’s totally free to play — you won’t need to spend a single dogecoin. Check it out at the source link below.

The notoriously difficult Flappy Bird was created in mid-2013, but it only gained recognition over the past weeks as a sudden rise in popularity brought it to the top of both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store. It’s received both genuine and backhanded praise for its simple design, which asks players to simply navigate between pair after pair of pipes without hitting either one. Just a few days ago, Nguyen told The Verge that he was thinking about a sequel, so this is a sudden turn of events.

Update: This article has been updated to reflect that Flappy Birds was removed from Google Play and the iOS App Store on Sunday and that Nintendo denied sending any formal complaints about similarities to the game and the Mario series.

The enigmatic and oppressively difficult mobile game Flappy Bird has turned into quite the cash cow for Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen. In an interview with The Verge, Nguyen revealed that the game, which has been sitting atop the App Store and Google Play Store charts for nearly a month, is earning on average $50,000 a day from in-app ads.

If you’re only now hearing of Flappy Bird, the game goes as follows: you tap the screen to propel a tiny, pixelated bird upwards. If you hit any of the green pipes in your way as you fly towards some unknowable, unreachable finish line, the game is over. The goal is simply to accumulate the highest score possible. The catch? You’ll very likely spend an hour even reaching a score of five. The app has been downloaded 50 million times, and has accumulated over 47,000 reviews in the App Store — as many as apps like Evernote and Gmail. Mobile games studios generally spend months coding up deliberately addictive and viral titles, but Nguyen did it by spending a few nights coding when he got home from work.