Flappy Bird

Flappy Bird is an arcade game originally released for iOS and Android smartphones. Initially released in 2013, Flappy Bird became a sleeper hit in 2014 after a sudden spike in downloads. The game gained notoriety when its developer, Dong Nguyen, removed it from the Apple App and Google Play Stores on February 10, 2014, saying he felt guilty for its addictive nature. As of 2023, Flappy Bird is still unavailable for mobile devices, although it can be played on standalone arcade machines available from Bay Tek Entertainment.

Flappy Bird was created by Dong Nguyen and released on the Apple App Store on May 24, 2013. Nguyen, then a twenty-nine-year-old video game programmer based in Vietnam, claimed that it only took him "two or three days" to create the game and that he had created it because he was frustrated with how complex mobile phone games had become. Though not initially popular, Flappy Bird became a worldwide phenomenon a little under a year after its release, being downloaded over 50 million times and earning Nguyen a daily revenue of over $50,000 from ad sales.

A screenshot of Flappy Bird's gameplay. Source: Forbes

Despite Flappy Bird's runaway success, on February 8, 2014, Nguyen posted on X (then known as Twitter) that he would be taking the game down in twenty-two hours, remarking that he "cannot take this anymore." Two days later, February 10, Nguyen followed through with his promise and removed Flappy Bird from both the Apple App and Google Play Stores, saying he felt guilty that the game had become "an addictive product." Fans of Flappy Bird, then the number one downloaded mobile app worldwide, began calling for the game to be reinstated, with some users even attempting to sell their phones with the app installed for tens of thousands of dollars. Despite its popularity, Flappy Bird remains unavailable on both iOS and Android devices.

The goal of Flappy Bird is to navigate a pixelated bird through a series of pipes without hitting them. Users control the bird by tapping on their screen, making the bird leap through the air. Flappy Bird players must time their taps right to avoid hitting the pipes and progress further through the level. The game features no end and instead awards a higher score for making it further through each time.