Flappy Bird’s creator disavows ‘official’ new version of the game

A decade after the wildly popular game Flappy Bird disappeared, an organization calling itself The Flappy Bird Foundation announced plans to “re-hatch the official Flappy Bird® game.”

But this morning, the game’s creator Dong Nguyen posted a characteristically terse comment stating that he has nothing to do with the revival, and that he “did not sell anything.” He added, “I also don’t support crypto.”

To be clear, Nguyen’s comments don’t exactly contradict anything in the foundation’s announcement, which described the group as a “new team of passionate fans committed to sharing the game with the world,” and said it had “acquired the rights from Gametech Holdings, LLC.” (Apparently Gametech successfully filed to terminate Nguyen’s Flappy Bird trademark a couple years ago.)

But 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.

Flappy Bird — a relatively simple side-scrolling game with retro graphics — was first released in 2013, eventually becoming a viral hit and becoming the most-downloaded app on both the iOS and Android app stores. However, Nguyen took the app down in February 2014, declaring, “I cannot take this anymore.”