Dong Nguyen threatening to take his wildly popular game down despite topping the iOS and Android app store charts.

Mobile game Flappy Bird may be a chart-topping global phenomenon, but its creator Dong Nguyen appears to be struggling to cope with its success.

The free game has been hugely popular on iOS and Android, but its Vietnamese developer says he is now planning to remove it from app stores this weekend.

“I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore,” tweeted Nguyen this evening, before following up with some clarifications on his decision.

“It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore. I also don’t sell ‘Flappy Bird’, please don’t ask. And I still make games.”

Flappy Bird launched in May 2013 for iOS, but inexplicably shot to the top of Apple’s free game rankings early in 2014, around the same time the game was released for Android. According to The Verge, the game has been downloaded more than 50m times, and in the last week has been making $50k a day from in-game ads.

Its basic graphics and absurdly-hard difficulty curve haven’t impeded its success, although they have put the noses of a few gaming snobs out of joint along the way. Even Apple has celebrated the game’s rise, with its official App Store Twitter account tweeting its (surprisingly high) high score of 99 earlier in the week.

Nguyen’s decision to take Flappy Bird down isn’t a complete surprise: his Twitter account has provided plenty of clues that the game’s success wasn’t the bed of roses you might expect.

“I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it,” he tweeted earlier today, while earlier in the week he wrote “Press people are overrating the success of my games. It is something I never want. Please give me peace.”



Nguyen developed the game himself. “I made the game alone so there is no team, and my games are very simple so there is no need for much manpower resources,” he told Chocolate Lab Apps in an interview earlier in the week. “All the programming took around 2-3 days at best with all the tuning to make the gameplay feel right.”

Flappy Bird’s sharp rise to fame has been controversial, including pointed questions about why it rose so fast in the app store charts, as well as accusations about its similarity to an existing mobile game, Piou Piou vs. Cactus.

Nguyen denied that there had been any chart-rigging shenanigans to make Flappy Bird a hit. “I didn’t use any promotion methods. All accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram about Flappy Bird are not mine. The popularity could be my luck,” he told Chocolate Lab Apps.

That, and the recommendation of YouTube’s biggest star PewDiePie – aka Swedish gamer Felix Kjellberg – who published a video playthrough of Flappy Bird on 27 January that has since been watched more than 8.1m times (warning: it includes lots of swearing):

It would be fascinating if one of the spurs – although not the only one – for Flappy Bird’s global success really was the endorsement of a YouTube channel with more than 22m subscribers, rather than traditional factors like promotion from Apple or an expensive marketing blitz.

Despite this, the game’s success means there will be no shortage of potential takers should Nguyen reconsider his refusal to sell Flappy Bird. Although given that there are already more than a dozen clones of the game available, latecomers will still be able to get a crazily-hard bird-versus-pipes fix even after it is removed from the app stores.

Nguyen may also be able to call upon some advice from other developers who have experienced a similar rollercoaster ride on the app stores. Keith Shepherd, co-founder of the developer of Temple Run, has already offered his support. “I’d be happy to talk to him about it. TR’s success was a roller coaster. He can dm me if he wants to chat,” Shepherd tweeted this evening.

In any case, anyone who has already installed Flappy Bird should be able to continue playing it, even if Nguyen removes it from iOS and Android’s app stores. Your high score, whether it’s two or 200, is safe.

• Flappy Bird is not the new Angry Birds – it’s pure rage