Original 'Flappy Bird' Creator Disavows New Version - and Its Possible Crypto Ties (forbes.com) 28
Flappy Bird's original creator hasn't posted anything on social media since 2017. Until today.
"This morning, the game's creator Dong Nguyen posted a characteristically terse comment stating that he has nothing to do with the revival," reports TechCrunch, "and that he 'did not sell anything.' He added, 'I also don't support crypto'... The post makes it clear that Nguyen is not involved with the new project, and that he doesn't seem particularly happy about it." As for Nguyen's reference to crypto, while the foundation's current PR materials don't mention anything crypto-related, Varun Biniwale did some digging around hidden pages on the Flappy Bird Foundation website and found a reference to Flappy Bird flying "higher than ever on Solana as it soars into Web 3.0," though it's not clear whether that refers to upcoming features or abandoned plans.
More from Fortune: Exactly what is going to happen with this zombified version of Flappy Bird is unclear, but digging through data and files has revealed things like different birds, loot boxes, and the idea that this is some sort of crypto play by the company involved. From a page on their website about the new Flappy Bird... "[D]evelopers and creators can build, play and earn from the legendary Flappy Bird IP."
Fortune concludes "it's crypto, it's NFTs and everyone is so annoyed by this almost every tweet of the resurrected Twitter account has even been 'Community Noted' revealing its crypto ties and snapping up of Nguyen's trademark."
PC Gamer adds that the Foundation acquired the Flappy Bird trademark from Gametech Holdings LLC. "And here there's a slight whiff of skullduggery." Dong Nguyen originally applied for the trademark in 2014, alongside a little drawing of the logo. This application then seemed to sit in limbo for many years, eventually being opposed by a Delaware-based company called Gametech. As this was going on, the U.S. patent office granted a trademark registration for Flappy Bird in 2018 (four years after the game was removed from sale) to another Delaware company called Mobile Media Matters. While I can't be exact on the link between Mobile Media Matters and Gametech, both companies' legal filings give the same Delaware address.
Subsequent to this there's been a legal disagreement between Gametech and Dong Nguyen, except Nguyen doesn't seem to have bothered representing himself or standing up for the trademark, which has ultimately led to it being classed as abandoned (a decade after he filed for it) and acquired by Gametech...
The Flappy Bird Foundation does have one ready-made comeback. As well as the rights to Flappy Bird it has acquired the rights to Piou Piou vs. Cactus, a mobile title that was the primary inspiration behind Flappy Bird, and employs the game's creator who goes by the handle, ahem, of Kek. "Today is a milestone not just in gaming but for me personally," says Kek. "It's so cool to see how influential Piou Piou has been for developers and hundreds of millions of gamers over the years. It's incredible to work alongside such a dedicated team of fans and creators who are truly passionate about changing the industry narrative and together bringing the original Flappy Bird back to life...." Way back in 2014, Kek said he'd contacted Nguyen about the resemblance, "and he told me he doesn't think he knew about my game when he made Flappy Bird. The games are very similar. And even if I did not invent the gameplay concept, the graphics are very close, and, of course, the concept."
The games are undeniably similar, but there are differences, and obviously the most important one is that, for whatever reason, Piou Piou didn't do much while Flappy Bird went stratospheric with a similar idea three years later.
Needless to say, the announcement and press release of the Flappy Bird Foundation does not mention Dong Nguyen once.
"This morning, the game's creator Dong Nguyen posted a characteristically terse comment stating that he has nothing to do with the revival," reports TechCrunch, "and that he 'did not sell anything.' He added, 'I also don't support crypto'... The post makes it clear that Nguyen is not involved with the new project, and that he doesn't seem particularly happy about it." As for Nguyen's reference to crypto, while the foundation's current PR materials don't mention anything crypto-related, Varun Biniwale did some digging around hidden pages on the Flappy Bird Foundation website and found a reference to Flappy Bird flying "higher than ever on Solana as it soars into Web 3.0," though it's not clear whether that refers to upcoming features or abandoned plans.
More from Fortune: Exactly what is going to happen with this zombified version of Flappy Bird is unclear, but digging through data and files has revealed things like different birds, loot boxes, and the idea that this is some sort of crypto play by the company involved. From a page on their website about the new Flappy Bird... "[D]evelopers and creators can build, play and earn from the legendary Flappy Bird IP."
Fortune concludes "it's crypto, it's NFTs and everyone is so annoyed by this almost every tweet of the resurrected Twitter account has even been 'Community Noted' revealing its crypto ties and snapping up of Nguyen's trademark."
PC Gamer adds that the Foundation acquired the Flappy Bird trademark from Gametech Holdings LLC. "And here there's a slight whiff of skullduggery." Dong Nguyen originally applied for the trademark in 2014, alongside a little drawing of the logo. This application then seemed to sit in limbo for many years, eventually being opposed by a Delaware-based company called Gametech. As this was going on, the U.S. patent office granted a trademark registration for Flappy Bird in 2018 (four years after the game was removed from sale) to another Delaware company called Mobile Media Matters. While I can't be exact on the link between Mobile Media Matters and Gametech, both companies' legal filings give the same Delaware address.
Subsequent to this there's been a legal disagreement between Gametech and Dong Nguyen, except Nguyen doesn't seem to have bothered representing himself or standing up for the trademark, which has ultimately led to it being classed as abandoned (a decade after he filed for it) and acquired by Gametech...
The Flappy Bird Foundation does have one ready-made comeback. As well as the rights to Flappy Bird it has acquired the rights to Piou Piou vs. Cactus, a mobile title that was the primary inspiration behind Flappy Bird, and employs the game's creator who goes by the handle, ahem, of Kek. "Today is a milestone not just in gaming but for me personally," says Kek. "It's so cool to see how influential Piou Piou has been for developers and hundreds of millions of gamers over the years. It's incredible to work alongside such a dedicated team of fans and creators who are truly passionate about changing the industry narrative and together bringing the original Flappy Bird back to life...." Way back in 2014, Kek said he'd contacted Nguyen about the resemblance, "and he told me he doesn't think he knew about my game when he made Flappy Bird. The games are very similar. And even if I did not invent the gameplay concept, the graphics are very close, and, of course, the concept."
The games are undeniably similar, but there are differences, and obviously the most important one is that, for whatever reason, Piou Piou didn't do much while Flappy Bird went stratospheric with a similar idea three years later.
Needless to say, the announcement and press release of the Flappy Bird Foundation does not mention Dong Nguyen once.
Re:What's so wrong about crypto? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd rather be poor than randomly lose my money for someone to buy a lambo with it.
Re:What's so wrong about crypto? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's wrong with crypto? This has been covered many times. It is digital tulips.
You think it is a good thing that a single rich kid can shell out enough money to change the course of the US government? Would you be just as happy if that same money went the other way? No? Well, there's your answer to that one. For anything political, if your opinion changes when you reverse the names then the underlying concept is bad.
Crypto money didn't "come from nowhere". It came from dumb people who got creamed by crypto whales who manipulate crypto "values" in ways that are highly illegal in securities markets. Illegal for good reasons.
And rich kids who provided no value to society driving lambos is a plus for society? Really? Who else drives lambos... how about drug lords? So drug lords must be good for society because they drive lambos, too.
Can't make this shit up.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say drug lords are good for a society in a narrow area:
Before NFTs, if places wanted to launder money, they would make venues, restaurants, and other places. These places offered services that would be impossible otherwise, especially in a smaller community. In fact, they would provide things that that community would have never seen, maybe even something like high end seafood, or other stuff, which nobody could afford, and nobody would ever open up, because the business
Re: (Score:2)
You think it is a good thing that a single rich kid can shell out enough money to change the course of the US government?
Technically, that's what Trump did. Although he did put some effort into it, too.
Re: What's so wrong about crypto? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh of course, how could I not know that, ...
Because you don't do shit to check sources before going off on your tangent? Couldn't be that, could it?
And your tangent doesn't seem to make any sense. Calling out the "reverse names" logic in the context of a country/government wide situation (the banking system) that is present and equally able to (or not) be manipulated under all administrations does not make any sense. Your calling for a system of payment that exists outside of the major parties control. That may well be a good point to make, but how d
Re:What's so wrong about crypto? (Score:5, Funny)
What's wrong with Get Rich Quick Schemes? These schmes help you get rich, quick! Many rich people go that way, quick, using these schemes. The schemes are so good that Wall Street refuses to use them and banks will disavow their legitimacy, this is how you know these are super legitimate schemes to quickly richify yourself. Very prominent congress members who are frequently appearing in tabloid scandal pages use these schemes. Please send your checks, money orders, gift cards, and PayPal passwords to rofl@lol.com.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: What's so wrong about crypto? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem isn't crypto. Bitcoin fulfils a need in communities not served well or at all by banks.
However... it's been a massive transfer of wealth to a lot of extreme right wing conspiracy theorists, criminals and other losers that suddenly got real power and are using that to influence the world. And not in a good way (I'm going to ignore FTX because he seemed to have been playing both sides, and even if he didn't, plenty of others did).
Not that the influence of say, ExxonMobil is benign (see PolicyExch
Re: (Score:3)
The problem isn't crypto. Bitcoin fulfils a need in communities not served well or at all by banks.
Hitmen?
Re: (Score:2)
Argentina. For many reasons, Argentina is one of the top countries using crypto, particularly USDT, for a lot of transactions.
There are many factors. First of all, the capital controls and exchange rates. If you receive money from abroad, you get paid, in pesos, less than the "real" value. This happens because the government sets an artificial value for the peso, but it also makes it illegal to exchange to pesos. So the only way to get dollars is going to the black market. And the rate there is higher (used
Money (Score:5, Insightful)
For the most part, money is just worth what we all collectively agree it's worth. Even gold has limited intrinsic value.
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
Gold has a lot of intrinsic value. It's extremely useful in electronics - it's a great conductor of electricity. It's extremely malleable which is why it's used to bond dies to packages in ICs because you can make extremely fine wires with it and it retains its ductility. Thus those fine bond wires are basically made with gold.
It's also quite unreactive, making gold-plated connections retain their low impedance despite trying conditions.
Gold is a very industrially useful material. Even if you eliminated the need for money (e.g., a Star Trek world), gold would still be a much needed material. Even if you could replicate it at will and thus losing all value, it still has many useful properties
Re: (Score:1)
Gold has a lot of intrinsic value. It's extremely useful in electronics - it's a great conductor of electricity. It's extremely malleable which is why it's used to bond dies to packages in ICs because you can make extremely fine wires with it and it retains its ductility. Thus those fine bond wires are basically made with gold.
It's also quite unreactive, making gold-plated connections retain their low impedance despite trying conditions.
Gold is a very industrially useful material. Even if you eliminated the need for money (e.g., a Star Trek world), gold would still be a much needed material. Even if you could replicate it at will and thus losing all value, it still has many useful properties
The intrinsic value of gold is about 1/100th of its actual value, and that's being VERY generous. If one day aliens blasted Earth with mind-control ray of "hey, it's just a yellow metal, stop obsessing about it" the economic shock would be 99% as severe as if it had no value at all like Bitcoin. But yessir, toooootalliy liek different from Bitcoin!
Some creatives just aint built for this world (Score:5, Insightful)
Dong Nguyen reminds me of some musicians I've known over my 35 years of playing music. Had a hit somewhere in the ancient past but was unable to square it up with a reclusive introverted personality. He seemed like he was genuinely spooked by it when the thing took off. He just wanted to put a fun little toy out there, and people started going bezerk over it.
Unfortunately those reclusive introverts are often rather easy to bully by big corporate types, and he *really* should own ALL the IP for flappy bird but I think the whole dealing with lawyers and soulless corporate suits just did his head in.
The guy should be all rights by stupid-money rich from flappy bird. Now some crypto grifter is instead. It don't seem right or fair to me.
Re:Some creatives just aint built for this world (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of Steve Wozniak. If the stars hadn't aligned with him partnering up with Jobs to form Apple, he'd probably still just be some guy tinkering with computer parts in his garage.
Tech savvy often doesn't translate to business savvy. Sure, we like to imagine that if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door, but the reality is more along the lines of build a better mousetrap and some big company will steal your idea, mass produce it in China, and use their hefty marketing budget to convince the world they're the ones who came up with it.
Re: (Score:3)
While I do feel for Nguyen and understand the whole legal headache with getting ALL the IP, I really don’t think we have to worry about him not being rich. He got that before he voluntarily chose to remove the game from app stores a decade ago, because he didn’t like what it was doing (causing mass addiction).
Sounds like cares more about people’s well being than being stupid-money rich.
Re: (Score:2)
> cares more about people’s well being
Totally agree. I reckon Nguyen would be an excellent friend, and very interesting to know in person.
Name of article is wrong (Score:3)
It should be: "Original 'Flappy Bird' Creator Disavows another game with the same name, made by a trademark drop catcher - and Its Possible Crypto Ties "
So why is this relevant? (Score:1)
It's a silly remake of a silly game for silly people with more money than brains. Granted, this covers the majority of people, but it doesn't make it any less embarrassing for society. It's like the rise of Social Media to something akin to a real news source rather than a podium for people that would probably be better served by just shutting up. What about advertising? Why do we tolerate that? Because Stupid People(tm) actually respond to the ads. In the early days of the internet some moron though
Re: (Score:2)
It's also apparently a misuse of trademark to mislead people as to the source of a product.
Whether or not we think the original game is any good is beside the point. The new registrants of the trade name are using it to mislead the people who liked the game into thinking they're supporting the original developer.
This is a tricky area where you definitely need a lawyer specializing in IP law. Apparently you *can* register someone else's trademark if that trademark hasn't been used in a certain number of ye