14 DAY TRIAL // Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen is removing his Flappy Bird game from iTunes because, as he puts it, he can’t take everyone’s bickering anymore.
The author of one of the most annoying games ever released in the App Store, Nguyen writes on Twitter, “I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.”
In a subsequent tweet, he says, “I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.”
You could say Nguyen is a bit too sensitive about everyone’s backlash at the difficulty of his addictive wing-flapping game. After all, most of the ratings on iTunes are five-star. So what’s the problem?
Well, according to app designer Carter Thomas, Flappy’s traffic trends look very “similar to bot activity.”
Newsweek noticed that a lot of the reviews on iTunes contain “strikingly similar language.” They seem negative in their wording, but surprisingly most of them are coupled with a five star rating. Which is fishy, to say the least.
To which Nguyen responded, “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you think? If I did fake it, should Apple let it live for months.”
Well, it’s not like Apple doesn’t slip up every now and then. In fact, it happens quite often, so Nguyen’s argument is somewhat invalid.
He also said, “I think press should give my game some peace. Its success is really overrate! [Sic].”
You could also say this is a marketing stunt on behalf of Nguyen to get even more people to download the game with the threat that it will no longer be available in a few hours.
At the time of this writing, Flappy is still downloadable from iTunes. In accordance with the developer’s promise, the game will be pulled in a matter of hours.