14 DAY TRIAL // There are some convincing reports flying around stating that Nintendo forced Apple to pull Dong Nguyen’s popular Flappy Bird game from iTunes, but the 29 year-old Vietnamese developer denies such claims.
In an interview with Forbes, he relays that “Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed.”
“But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever,” he said.
Avid readers will undoubtedly remember that we recently reported on a handsome figure that Nguyen pocketed on a daily basis. The guy reportedly netted $50,000/€37,000 every day from the ads displayed in Flappy Bird.
“I don’t know the exact figure, but I do know it’s a lot,” he told Forbes.
So it’s surprising, to say the least, that Nguyen would retract a cash cow like Flappy Bird purely for doing the right thing. Unless, of course, his other two games rake in similar amounts. In which case he’s probably swimming in cash right now.
“He also denied reports that Nintendo had sent him a legal threat, or that it had anything to do with him killing the app,” Forbes’ Lan Anh Nguyen writes.
“In mulling whether to pull Flappy Bird, Nguyen said that it was guilt – atop the fact that ‘my life has not been as comfortable as I was before’ – that motivated him. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said. He added that his conscious is relieved; he spent the past few days, Internet-free, catching up on slumber,” the interview revealed.
“I don’t think it’s a mistake,” he said. “I have thought it through.”
Nguyen promises to make new iPhone games, telling the mag that “After the success of Flappy Bird, I feel more confident, and I have freedom to do what I want to do.”
Needless to point out, any game Nguyen comes up with next will be an instant hit simply because of the controversy surrounding him and his now-removed Flappy Bird game.