Game over for Flappy Bird

The Vietnamese developer behind the smash-hit free game Flappy Bird has pulled his creation from online stores after announcing that its runaway success ruined his "simple life".

Technology experts say the addictive and notoriously difficult game rose from obscurity on its release in May to become one of the most downloaded free mobile games on Apple's App Store and Google's Play store.

"Flappy Bird is a success of mine. But it also ruined my simple life. So now I hate it," tweeted the game's creator, Nguyen Ha Dong.

"I am sorry, Flappy Bird users, (but) 22 hours from now, I will take Flappy Bird down. I cannot take this anymore," he wrote on Saturday from his @dongatory handle - which has seen its follower count grow by tens of thousands in the past few days.

Flappy Bird was not available on the US or UK Apple app stores on Monday.

"It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore," Dong tweeted.

Flappy Bird features 2-D retro-style graphics. The aim of the game is to direct a flying bird between oncoming sets of pipes without touching them.

Dong had said in previous interviews that his brainchild was pulling in as much as $50,000 a day in revenue from online advertising banners.

The free game has been the No 1 app in Apple's iOS App Store in more than 100 countries, according to An Minh Do, editor of the Tech in Asia online media company.

Withdrawing the game "may be a PR stunt or may be due to legal pressure or maybe he's sick of the press. That is not clear yet," Do said.

Some Vietnamese online commentators have speculated that Dong took down the game after being pressured by Japan's Nintendo. Flappy Bird's simple graphics appear to owe some debt to Nintendo's early Mario Brothers games.

But a Nintendo spokesman said on Monday, "Our company has not taken any action at this time."

Local online newspaper VNExpress quoted Dong - who also has two other games in the top 10 in online stores - as saying he created the game in just days, following "a weird design style".

After revealing the sizeable revenues Flappy Bird was bringing in, Dong was subjected to a torrent of criticism and abuse in Vietnamese online forums, leading some observers to speculate that it prompted his decision to withdraw the game.

"The whiff of money created a storm of jealousy, dragging down a shining new talent," Quan The Dan wrote in VNExpress.

Supporting Dong would "help Vietnam start to shine on the world technology map", and it was a shame that parts of the Vietnamese online community turned on him instead, he wrote.

Agence France-Presse

(China Daily 02/11/2014 page10)