Flappy Bird

For the 2024 unofficial reboot of the game, see Flappy Bird (2024 video game).
Flappy Bird
App icon
Developer(s).Gears
Publisher(s).Gears
Designer(s)Dong Nguyen
Platform(s)iOS, Android
Release
  • iOS
  • May 24, 2013
  • Android
  • January 30, 2014
Genre(s)Arcade
Mode(s)Single-player

Flappy Bird is a 2013 casual mobile game developed by Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen (Vietnamese: Nguyễn Hà Đông), under his game development company .Gears.[1] The game is a side-scroller where the player controls a bird, Faby, attempting to fly between columns of green pipes without hitting them. The player's score is determined by the number of pipes they pass. Nguyen created the game over a period of several days, using the bird from a cancelled game made in 2012.

The game was released in May 2013 but received a sudden spike in popularity in early 2014, becoming a sleeper hit. Flappy Bird received poor reviews from some critics, who criticized its high level of difficulty and alleged plagiarism in graphics and game mechanics, while other reviewers found it addictive. At the end of January 2014, it was the most downloaded free game in the App Store for iOS. During this period, its developer said that Flappy Bird was earning $50,000 a day from in-app advertisements as well as sales.

Flappy Bird was removed from both the App Store and Google Play on February 10, 2014, with Nguyen claiming that he felt guilty over what he considered to be the game's addictive nature and overusage. Its popularity and sudden removal caused phones with the game installed before its removal to be put up for sale for high prices over the Internet.[2][3] Clones of Flappy Bird became popular on the App Store after the original app's removal, and both Apple and Google have removed games from their app stores for being too identical.[4]

In August 2014, a revised version of Flappy Bird, called Flappy Birds Family, was released exclusively for the Amazon Fire TV. Bay Tek Games also released a licensed coin-operated Flappy Bird arcade game.[5]

  1. ^ Williams, Rhiannon (January 29, 2014). "What is Flappy Bird? The game taking the App Store by storm". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on January 30, 2014. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference techland was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Molina-EBay was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Perez, Sarah (February 15, 2014). "Apple & Google Begin Rejecting Games With 'Flappy' In The Title". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 26, 2024.
  5. ^ Stuart, Keith (January 12, 2015). "Flappy Bird lands on arcade machine". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved May 26, 2024.