Flappy Bird 1

Miss Flappy Bird? Well you’re in luck. Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen told CNBC’s Kelly Evans that the wildly addictive game would be back in August of this year. In February, Nguyen pulled Flappy Bird from the app stores for being too addictive. No kidding, the game was downloaded more than 50 million times. What’s more, the game was bringing in around $50,000 a day in ad revenue. Though Nguyen continued to argue that he pulled the game based on its addictiveness and the fact that he was a shy guy, it seems that the closing of the 50K a day stream has him coming back to the app stores.

The fan fare surrounding the game was borderline insane. In the immediate aftermath of Flappy Bird being removed from the app stores, someone sold an iPhone with the game installed on eBay for just under $100,000. After Flappy Bird was removed from the app stores, the was a crazy rush of clones. The rush became so overwhelming that both Google and Apple took steps to keep these clones from reaching their app stores.

 

Further, the new iteration of Flappy Bird will include some sort of multiplayer mode. Additionally, the game will be toned down a bit with, “changes that  will make it “less addictive,” a phrase you certainly don’t hear in mobile gaming often.”1 It is hard to say whether or not Flappy Bird will return to the popularity it once held. With the game being off the (virtual) shelves for so long, it’s likely everyone has moved on or found a good clone by now.

  1. Paul Tassi, Forbes, “‘Flappy Bird’ Will Return In August With Multiplayer,” 14 May 2014