10 Years After It Was Pulled Offline, Viral Mobile Game Flappy Bird Is Coming Back (ign.com) 27
Mobile video game phenomenon Flappy Bird is set to return 10 years after its creator pulled it offline. From a report: In 2014, Vietnam-based developer Dong Nguyen shocked the gaming world when he pulled viral hit Flappy Bird from the App Store and the Google Play Store at a time when it was making tens of thousands of dollars a day. He went on to say: "I can call Flappy Bird a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it."
Now, Flappy Bird is set to return, with an expanded version aiming for launch by the end of October across multiple platforms including web browsers, and an iOS and Android version planned for release in 2025. But this new Flappy Bird isn't from Nguyen, it's from 'The Flappy Bird Foundation,' which is described as "a new team of passionate fans committed to sharing the game with the world."
UPDATE (9/15/2024): The original creator of Flappy Bird returned to social media after a seven-year silence just to disavow the resurrected game -- and its possible ties to cryptocurrency. PC Gamer also digs into exactly how the Flappy Bird trademark was acquired.
Now, Flappy Bird is set to return, with an expanded version aiming for launch by the end of October across multiple platforms including web browsers, and an iOS and Android version planned for release in 2025. But this new Flappy Bird isn't from Nguyen, it's from 'The Flappy Bird Foundation,' which is described as "a new team of passionate fans committed to sharing the game with the world."
UPDATE (9/15/2024): The original creator of Flappy Bird returned to social media after a seven-year silence just to disavow the resurrected game -- and its possible ties to cryptocurrency. PC Gamer also digs into exactly how the Flappy Bird trademark was acquired.
Ten years?! (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no way it's been ten years. Please tell me it hasn't been ten years.
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It hasn't. Someone's edited the calander around 2020 and added a couple years that never existed.
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As best I can recall, 2020 never happened.
Quarantine made things so monotonous I couldn't distinguish one day from another.
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almost, it will be 10 years next may.
I don't care (Score:2)
I could never make it past the second pylon.
And at the time I was proficient with real aircraft.
Who gets the money? (Score:2)
Is the original author getting screwed, that's what I want to know.
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Screwed? He pulled the game himself despite its profitability. It's not like he's planning to make a single cent off of it.
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Screwed? He pulled the game himself despite its profitability. It's not like he's planning to make a single cent off of it.
By law, he owns the Copyrights (whatever that includes) associated with his game. (This is different than the Trademarks that can possibly expire.) A major part of his Copyrights include the right to control its distribution; he can "pull the game himself" whenever he wants, for example. He still retains whatever rights to the game he had before he decided to stop distributing it. There is no such thing as a default abandonment that gives other people the right to just take it over. (It's a shame that autho
Re:Who gets the money? (Score:4, Interesting)
From the looks of it: some new entity went to court to argue the trademark was abandoned, and thus essentially acquired it. And then they went and purchased rights to the content Flappy Bird was based on. So the creator of Flappy Bird isn't getting jack shit. And the creator pulled the game because of feeling shame for the addictive nature of the game, and wanted to do what was right. This new game looks like it not only brings that back, but adding microtransactions to that addictive nature too!
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The tradema
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From the looks of it: some new entity went to court to argue the trademark was abandoned, and thus essentially acquired it. And then they went and purchased rights to the content Flappy Bird was based on. So the creator of Flappy Bird isn't getting jack shit.
The trademark really has nothing to do with the game or its content. Those are entirely unrelated (except in the sense that the Trademark is limited to his branding in the realm of computer games, maybe sorta.) So it is possible to acquire the Trademark -- even for use on a compuer game -- without having any rights to anything about the game itself. So the question is: (1) What rights did he have as creator of the game and (2) What did these other guys license and from whom?
I have no idea what Flappy Bird i
Expanded version? (Score:2)
The joy of Flappy Bird was the simplicity. Anything you do to change that simplicity will be a negative. Let me take a wild, running, stab in the dark guess: They'll add in-app buyable features. Right? Right.
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Maybe this one, with its expanded features, will both flap...and flop.
offline? (Score:2)
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Bit less easy on an iPhone. Apparently iPhones were selling 2-3x the going rate if they had Flappy Bird on there.
Though, I don't get the big deal - it's not like there wasn't a dozen clones of it the moment he pulled his app.
guilty feelings got no rhythm (Score:3)
He pulled the game because he was losing sleep over its addictive nature and the impact on society. I mean the $50k per day he was making in advertising couldn't assuage his guilt. What a great human being. He should have asked all the folks at Nintendo how they felt about kids playing Super Mario Bros. for 8 hours at a time. Or any Super Nintendo game for that matter. For real though, it wasn't that addictive. None of the current 'casual games' on phone platforms are as addictive as the original Super Nintendo titles. Monotonous and hard, but not as addictive as a really good game.
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50k a day? I would sleep like a baby. There are zillions of apps that don't do anything for society other than waste time. Dong should have put his martyrdom aside and zipped around town in his Lambo.
His heirs may still do that, after they sue a bunch of those cloners.
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He may have sold his soul, but with money like that flowing in he could afford to buy it back.
Meme game (Score:2)
The original Flappy Bird was repetitive and frustratingly difficult. While I'm sure there's probably some truth to at least a few folks playing it addictively, most people downloaded it to see what it was about and then deleted it.
At any rate, the truth of what happened is that the original developer made some sort of exclusivity deal with Amazon as a game for their Fire TV platform and that's where Flappy Bird has been for the last 10 years. [amazon.com] Now, I'm certain Amazon hasn't actually held this bird in a cag
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>At any rate, the truth of what happened is that the original developer made some sort of exclusivity deal with Amazon as a game for their Fire TV platform
Things will get interesting when Amazon, and the author's heirs, begin infringement actions to recover the money that he didn't seem to want.
A QB64 Tutorial Remake (Score:2)
There's a remake of Flappy Bird that was done in 2015 on the QB64 Phoenix Edition tutorial web site here: https://www.qb64tutorial.com/g... [qb64tutorial.com]
It only runs on (Score:1)
...flappy disks.