The stripped down mobile game Flappy Bird recently came out of nowhere to become one of the most popular apps for both Andriods and iPhones. But this week, the game’s creator, a mysterious independent game developer in Vietnam named Dong Nguyen, shocked fans when he pulled the game from app stores. In an interview with Forbes, Nguyen said that after seeing how addicted people came to his game—which was reportedly earning him $50,000 a day in ad revenue—he decided to take it down for good. He told the magazine, “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.” You can’t argue with his logic.
The game creator was virtually unknown until recently, and only agreed to the interview if the paper promised not to post his picture. According to the story, “The 29-year-old, who sports a close-cropped haircut, appeared stressed. He smoked several cigarettes over the course of the 45-minute interview, and doodled monkey heads on a pad of paper.” In the story, Nguyen said that he walked away from the fortune (though he can still make money from people who have already downloaded the game) and killed his popular game because the guilt he felt knowing that people were addicted to his product actually caused him to lose sleep …
