A decade ago, at the end of 2013, the world witnessed the rise of Flappy Bird - a mobile game with simple design yet a high skill ceiling, piquing the desire to overcome challenges in many players. Thanks to that, Flappy Bird became a worldwide phenomenon and trend at the start of 2014. However, not long after, on the same date as today (February 8th) 10 years ago, Nguyen Ha Dong - the father of Flappy Bird - couldn't handle the overwhelming negative public opinion anymore, and took the billion-dollar game off all app stores.
This historic event, despite happening 10 years ago, still left many suspicions and misunderstandings in many people's memories. Today, I want to deny some false allegations that were made towards Flappy Bird.
Before that, I want to thank SoullessPuppet for helping me check and translate this entire article into English. Thank you and happy holiday!
Disclaimer
No one is completely free of bias, nor perfectly neutral. I, myself, am a Vietnamese, and also an aspiring game developer, so I have a lot of sympathy towards Mr. Dong. I just want to clarify that, although I try to be as fair as possible, I still have a bias towards Flappy Bird. But the points I will make do come with evidence.
PLEASE DO NOT HARASS ANY INDIVIDUAL OR ORGANIZATION MENTIONED IN THIS POST !!!!!
I know there will inevitably be some readers who feel the need to punish those who victimized Mr. Dong. But I'm asking every reader not to do so. Harassment is the same thing the media and internet did to the man, and we should not stoop so low. Moreover, it has been 10 years, so we should let the past stay in the past. Those who made mistakes 10 years ago are likely very different people today.
Allegation 1: Used bots
"Smoke & Mirrors"
Most news articles point to "Flappy Bird's Smoke & Mirrors - Is Something Fishy Going On?" (on Bluecloud) as the source when mentioning this allegation.
The argument presented by the post is as follows: Games that DotGears released during mid 2013 all became popular during November of the same year - roughly the same time. Yet there were no cross-advertisements in the games, nor were there any marketing campaigns ran at the time.
Quoted from An interview with Dong on Chocolate Lab Apps:
Elaine: Is your success due to organic downloads only, or did you use any other methods?
Dong: 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.
These arguments may sound suspicious, but if DotGears used bots to inflate their numbers, then wouldn't it be super obvious? Apple would have intervened and deleted it from the platform. During the 2012-2013 period, botting was a prevalent issue on the App Store, and Apple worked on resolving this problem to some success. Apple and Google would have taken some actions, if an extremely trendy game often accused of cheating was actually cheating.
The official twitter account of the App Store even made a post about Flappy Bird:
We got to 99. What's your high score?
The "Smoke & Mirrors" article then provided some evidence to back up their argument: There were some suspicious reviews...:
Here’s another nice little tidbit. Read through the reviews. Check the word count. Do an analysis on how many times the word "glitch" "pipe" "addicting" are used relative to the review length. Also check how many negative reviews give 5 stars.
Here’s a quick snapshot from a 3 minute scroll through Flappy Bird’s reviews.
I don’t think there is any app on the app store that has this many consistently morbid reviews that use the same words over and over and are posted in such regularity.
On the image provided by the article are 9 reviews. The term "addicting" appeared twice, "pipe" appeared once and "glitch" never appeared... All 9 reviews are very different and had no signs of being copy-pasted. I'm not sure if the author is being ironic or not? These reviews are less like bots reviews and more like an example of groupthink, more specifically, a joke where everyone pretend they are a victim of this frustrating game. Almost everyone was in on the joke, except the author.
In a data research, the author of "Flappy Bird by the Numbers" bởi Zachwill concluded:
I was originally planning to focus on the December/January Flappy Bird reviews — I thought it’d be fun to prove that they were most likely bots. After loading the reviews into
pandasand playing around with the data, though, it became pretty clear those had little to nothing to do with the success of Flappy Bird.
"It doesn't matter"
In the article "Is Flappy Bird Cooking its iTunes Rank?" posted on February 4th on Newsweek, an article putting Flappy Bird's ranking into question, Reporter Joe Kloc asked Dong on Twitter about the legitimacy of Flappy Bird's download count:
Joe Kloc: @dongatory Hello. I'm a reporter at Newsweek. Is there an email address through would I could contact you directly about Flappy Bird?
Dong: @joekloc Hi Joe, I think press should give my game some peace. Its success is really overrate! I'm sorry, I refuse to answer questions.
Joe Kloc: @dongatory I'm just curious about the post going around saying the download stats are false. Can you definitively say they aren't?
Dong: @joekloc It doesn't matter. Don't you think? If I did fake it, should Apple let it live for months?
Joe Kloc: @dongatory If it doesn't matter, did you?
Dong's line "It doesn't matter" implied that it didn't matter what his answer to the bots question was, because the press and the internet community are going to find a way to hate on him regardless. The question asked by the reporter was a double bind:
- If he denied the allegations, people would say that he's a liar.
- If he didn't deny the allegations, that is the equivalent of pressing a self-destruct button.
- If he stayed silent or refused to answer, he would be seem cowardly and suspicious.
Despite having a solid argument: "If I did fake it, should Apple let it live for months?", that argument could still be seen as the third case above.
"Dark Pattern"
When Flappy Bird became popular, many experts found it hard to explain what led to this success. An article named "A 'Dark Pattern' In Flappy Bird Reveals How Apple's Mysterious App Store Ranking Algorithm Works" on Business Insider proposed a theory that Flappy Bird used "Dark Pattern" (a clever design to trick users into doing something):
In earlier versions of the game, there was a "rate" button at the end of each play session, and this button was placed in the same location that the player would tap to play. As a result, when the user wanted to continue playing, it was easy to hit the rate button instead.
Below is a photo taken from a video on IGN's Youtube channel demonstrating an older version of Flappy Bird on IOS:
And below are the same screens in later updates:
On both screens, the Play button was consistently on the left, and the Rate button isn't even on the Game Over screen. Tricks such as using colors to draw attention, or swapping placement of buttons are nowhere to be found.
If you think it's suspiciously not user-friendly to put the Play button on the left side, and that this was done in hopes of getting people to click on the Share button, then here are some counter-arguments:
- Around 10% of the world's population are left-handed.
- Most languages are read from left to right, so placing the Play button on the left makes players see it first.
Allegation 2: Isn't a good game
Empty design
When Flappy Bird became popular, many people deemed it to be too simple and hollow - there wasn't even any music, and sounds were minimal too. Therefore, it was undeserving of its popularity:
Quoted from "Six Ways Flappy Bird is Actually Pure Evil":
Once you've passed one gap in Flappy Bird, and scored one point, that's the game. There's nothing else to be gained from it.
After that it is nothing but a repetition of that first successful act for as long as you can muster.
There is no escalation, no alteration in the size or regularity of the gaps, and it offers no sense of fun either in its visuals or its sound design. Flappy Bird is a simple evil, like stubbing your toe, kneeling on a piece of Lego or a swift kick between the legs.
The writer of this article used pretty strong language. Perhaps they were feeling extreme, or perhaps it's just an act to bring in more views.
A critique of Flappy Bird often cited and praised was "The Squalid Grace of Flappy Bird" from The Atlantic. This article was passionate and detailed, though also a bit too lengthy. The author recognized Flappy Bird's design as simple - even simpler than Tetris or Go, but without the depth found in the latter two. They also deemed the game flow to be too static, lacking ups and downs.
I can somewhat understand where the author was coming from, but I still disagree. For simple games like Flappy Bird, having depth is ideal, but a lack of fluctuation in flow is not always a downside. Because the design is as minimalistic as possible: no music, no special effects, and very little sound - the game easily puts the player into the state of flow (highly concentrated mentally, or "the zone"). The difficulty of the game works to its advantage: it forces players to focus harder on every action, which then leads to them entering "the zone".
Rather than comparing it to Tetris or Go, Flappy Bird should be compared to skipping rope or juggling in real life. These games are difficult at first, but once you get used to them, the difficulty starts to stem how long you can stay in the zone and not make mistakes. Judging from this point of view, Flappy Bird has an advantage over other, more complex endless runners like Jetpack Joyride.
The legendary game developer Benett Foddy, creator of classic "Getting Over It" even said:
Unrealistic physics
We all know Flappy Bird is a hard game, but many people think the game is hard because the game's physics are not realistic. This is both true and false, according to a scientific article on Action-Reaction that delves into the physics of the game:
TL;DR: Is the physics in Flappy Bird realistic? Yes AND no.
- YES: The gravitational pull is constant, producing a constant downward acceleration of 9.8 m/s/s (if we scale the bird to the size of a robin).
- NO: The impulse provided by each tap is variable in order to produce the same post-tap velocity. In real life, the impulse from each tap would be constant and produce the same change in velocity.
But being realistic or not doesn't really matter much, because fun is always more important than realism. Why does Mario, a human, jump 3-4 times as high as their own height? Why do we have floating dirt blocks in Minecraft? It's all because that made those games more fun, and the player experience smoother.
Allegation 3: Negative impact on players
Around the start of 2014, Flappy Bird spread everywhere as "the simple game that was somehow addictive". Of course, most people only exaggerated it as a joke on social media. However, the press and media didn't get the joke, and presented this phenomenon in an absurd light, treating Flappy Bird as some kind of new addictive drug. Worse still, a few news publishers even accused the game of being intentionally designed to negatively impact players...
Quoted from "Why Flappy Bird Was So Addictive" from Esquire:
Flappy Bird has a relentlessly habit-forming quality that's hard to explain.
There's got to be a psychological explanation for Flappy Bird's massive success.
More than a few have tried to crack the code, usually pointing to the just-one-more effect (it was even printed on shirts!!). The just-one-more effect is when we tell ourselves "just one more bite/episode", or in this case, "just one more round". But when that round ends, you still want "just one more round", and the cycle repeats itself... With Flappy Bird, this effect was more pronounced, since each round is only a few seconds, and the player can easily retry immediately. The player's flow doesn't even have to end before a new round starts. But claiming this to be intentionally designed to cause addiction is far-fetched.
It is unfair to label a game as "intentionally creating addicts" just for its design of short rounds and simplicity. As mentioned above, Flappy Bird should be compared to skipping rope or juggling - the length of each round is short, and starting a new round is near instant. Would you say that those traditional games were also designed to be addictive?
In an exclusive interview with Forbes, Nguyen Ha Dong said:
Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed.
Mark Griffiths, Director of the International Gaming Research Unit and Professor of Gambling Studies at Nottingham Trent University wrote an article named "Flappy Bird obsession is not necessarily an addiction", explaining that being attracted by Flappy Bird doesn't necessarily mean being so addicted it negatively impacts your life.
Fabricated events
During the Flappy Bird craze at the start of 2014, more than a few news sites saw this as an opportunity to publish articles with shocking and dishonest titles about it to generate views. For example, many English news sites published about a teen stabbing his brother to death because he played Flappy Bird too well. After some digging, I've tracked the news back to the blog Huzlers, an obvious fake news site.
This article was debunked by more trustworthy sources. A video by TheGamerFromMars: "The Flappy Bird Murder - Internet Mysteries" debunked the article in great detail from an overview perspective.
Dong's reaction
Despite almost all stories of "Flappy Bird ruining someone's life" being fake or overexaggerated, Nguyen Ha Dong seems to have believed some of them. In the same interview with Forbes as above, Dong said:
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.
Quoted from his interview with RollingStone, from the perspective of the reporter
He hands me his iPhone so that I can scroll through some messages he’s saved. One is from a woman chastising him for "distracting the children of the world." Another laments that "13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it’s addicting like crack." Nguyen tells me of e-mails from workers who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her kids. "At first I thought they were just joking," he says, "but I realize they really hurt themselves." Nguyen - who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike - genuinely took them to heart.
On Twitter, Nguyen Ha Dong had shown to be a bit gullible to overexaggeration jokes from the internet, advising players to take breaks and play Flappy Bird in a more healthy manner:
Twitter User: lol im never gonna get some sleep now with these games 😭
Twitter User: i have been flappy bird for 3 hours straight its the most addicting thing ever
Dong: That is too much. Please give yourself and the game a break :D
Twitter User: FLAPPY BIRD HAS RUINED MY LIFE! I'VE BEEN PLAYING IT FOR 8 HOURS STRAIGHT AND I SWEAR MY AYS ARE BLEEDING
Dong: It's just a game. Take care of yourself first. I don't make game to ruin people lives.
He often had to receive such messages, and they all added pressure to his psyche. Eventually, he couldn't take anymore. As we all know, Mr. Dong had removed Flappy Bird from all app stores, hoping to end the "addiction" of his game.
Allegation 4: Violating Mario's copyright
We have arrived at the important part. This allegation what motivated me to write this blog post. Most news sites cite Kotaku's article "Flappy Bird Is Making $50,000 A Day Off Ripped Art" when making the copyright argument. Reading through the article, we can easily see how sensational the author is being:
Firstly, the author mentioned how Nguyen Ha Dong made a lot of money from the game:
Flappy Bird has gotten so big that its creator, Dong Nguyen, told The Verge he's making $50,000 a day on ad revenue. $50,000 a day! That's $18 million a year, FYI.
This is a manipulation tactic to create distance between the reader and the target that the article wants to criticize. By first mentioning how much income he was making, the readers would feel like Mr. Dong is nothing like them, and therefore would empathize with him less. Then the author added:
Most people acknowledge that it's a terrible game - which it is.
As elaborated in the Allegation 2 above, this is debatable. And at the end of the article, the author concluded:
Let this be a life lesson: if you want to make $50,000 a day, put ripped art in a terrible game.
By doing so, the author seems to want to hammer in the fact that Dong is an unethical game designer who did not deserve his success. Overall, this article wants to cause anger. A research from MIT showed that posts that caused anger were 3 times as likely to be shared on social media compared to other emotions. I think it's safe to assume that the author was intentionally trying to achieve the same effect by presenting heavily biased claims.
Now let's take a closer look at the arguments stated in the article. Most of them revolve around Mr. Dong stealing art and sound assets from Nintendo's Mario series.
Stealing sound effects
Quoted from the article from Kotaku:
The twinkly sound effect when your bird flies between pipes is heavily inspired by Mario's coin-collecting chime, to the point where they sound nearly identical.
This is the collecting coin sound effects throughout the history of Mario games:
And this is Flappy Bird's:
They are both chimes, but they are definitely not identical. Many platformer games like DuckTales or Shovel Knight use similar sound effects. For example, this sound plays when collecting rings in Sonic:
Sounds in Flappy Birds were not only not taken from Mario, but also had a different style. This becomes even clearer when we hear Dong's comment. A month before releasing Flappy Bird, Dong posted on Twitter:
This is common practice for indie game developers who don't have enough resource to hire sound effect artists, and also what's recommended for most beginners. Mr. Dong also has a Soundcloud account where he posts sound effects that he makes and uses, you should check it out!
Stealing background
Quoted from the article from Kotaku:
The backgrounds also appear to be heavily inspired by Mario.
I also managed to find every background of Big City in "Donkey Kong" (Game Boy) and Mario Toy Company in "Mario vs. Donkey Kong", both also rare appearances of modern cities in Mario:
And they don't look similar to Flappy Bird's background at all. The only commonality is that they're both pixel art modern cities. That hardly counts as "heavily inspired", because if so, then games like Mega Man, Kero Blaster, River City Ransom, etc. would all be "heavily inspired by Mario"?
Green pipes and Faby
Quoted from the article from Kotaku:
Look at the pipes, for example:
On the left is Flappy Bird; on the right is Super Mario World.
To reiterate, the only commonality between these images are that they are both green pipes. Flappy Bird did not steal from Mario. I even gathered images of pipes in almost all 2D pixel art Mario games for comparison:
(You can choose other Mario games to compare.)
Flappy Bird's pipe matched none of them. Next, we have the bird, Faby:
Quoted from the article from Kotaku:
What about the bird itself? While the eponymous Flappy Bird isn't a direct ripoff, it appears to be a cross between the Spike and Cheep Cheep enemies in Super Mario Bros. 3. See if you can spot the similarities:
(Left: Flappy Bird. Right/Top: Spike. Right/Bottom: Cheep-Cheep.)
Here, the author did admit that it wasn't "direct theft" so I won't be compiling similar assets from Mario.
Fair use
Flappy Bird haters (if they still exist) might be thinking: "Not stealing directly doesn't mean free of plagiarism, Dong admitted himself that he was inspired by Mario!"
It is true that he took some inspiration from Mario.
The year before, he’d drawn a pixelated bird on his computer that riffed on Nintendo fish, called Cheep Cheeps. He drew green pipes - a homage to Super Mario Bros. - that the bird would have to navigate.
When the internet suspect him of copyright violation against Nintendo, he answered:
Dong: I think I stole their games' spirit but I didn't rip-off their work.
He's right. Those who claim copyright infringement between Mario and Flappy Bird are ignoring Fair Use. Fair use allows the use of a copyrighted work or components of a copyrighted product for educational purposes or for evaluation purposes. Fair use also considers the quantity and quality of the work used to determine whether a product infringes the copyright of other products.
This law exists to limit individuals and organizations that may use their monopoly to limit the development of science and art, and at the same time, allow others to be inspired, transform, and improve products that already exist. Let's compare Flappy Bird with Mario:
Firsly, Faby. I won't be comparing it to Spike because honestly, the only thing they have in common are think beaks. Comparing it to Cheep-Cheep, here are some commonalities:
- Round shape.
- Big mouth.
- White wings.
- Large eyes.
And for the differences:
| Faby | Cheep-Cheep |
|---|---|
| Is a bird | Is a fish |
| Yellow body | Red body with white belly |
| Have no tail nor fins | Have tail and fins |
They are not only two entirely different species, but even the parts that they have in common have slight differences:
| Faby | Cheep-Cheep |
|---|---|
| Thin, long beak | Thick, round lips |
| Small wings at low position | Large fins at high position |
| The eye is 1/4th its size | Smaller eyes |
It's not enough to compare only looks. They are also used for completely different purposes, and interact with the world differently:
| Faby | Cheep-Cheep |
|---|---|
| Player-controlled character | Hostile enemy |
| Flies infinitely in arcs | Swim straight underwater or hop in and out of water |
What about the green pipes? Well, you know, those actually exists in real life:
Pipes that are big, bright green, and has thick edges like Mario exist in real life, not just a brainchild of Nintendo. But if you think about it, the concept of "green water pipes" is very general and has existed or been applied in many fields. It itself cannot be copyrighted by any individual or organization. But just to be sure, let's compare the pipes in Flappy Bird with Mario:
| In Flappy Bird | In Mario |
|---|---|
| Player character dies on contact | Blocks the player's movement |
| Can't be interacted with | Can sometimes go into and out of or warp between worlds |
Once again, the way pipes are used is very different between the two games. So why did Mr. Dong use pipes like Mario and not something else like a brick wall or laser?
No art exists in a vacuum, neither does Flappy Bird. Flappy Bird is a video game, video game is art, and art is a conversation. A conversation between artists, from generation to generation, to learn, cultivate, grow. Nguyen Ha Dong used the image of a green pipe like in Mario not to piggyback of Mario's popularity or because he was lazy to create another image. He uses it precisely because it is a symbol of video games in general in the childhood of his generation. He seems to want to give players a ticket back to childhood, taking them back to simpler times. Simple like the design of Flappy Bird it's self. Remember, simplicity is what he really aims for.
Nintendo and inspired games
There are many games on the market that are much more strongly inspired by Nintendo games than Flappy Bird, yet have not received much criticism, or are even praised for bringing back nostalgic memories. Classic examples include Braid, inspired by Mario Super Mario Bros:
An enemy in Braid, Monstar, has almost identical sprite and behaviors to the Goomba from Mario:
The same is true with Claw (Braid) and Piranha Plant (Super Mario Bros):
Level 4-2 in Braid is heavily inspired by the game Donkey Kong, and the level's name is also "Jumpman" (nickname for Mario before Mario was renamed):
At the end of each world in Braid, a character will appear to tell the player that "the princess is in another castle", a reference to Mario:
Both games are even from the same genre (Platformer). But Braid is absolutely not a copycat. This game focuses more on puzzle elements with time manipulation mechanics. It uses many images from Mario because it wants players to quickly understand the basic mechanics of the game, then focus on the puzzle element. Not only that, it also creates a feeling of nostalgia, fooling players into thinking that the game is just a simple, fun game, then twisting that expectation. I want to avoid spoilers so I won't go into more detail.
Mario wasn't the only product that became inspiration. 2nd example: TUNIC inspired by The Legend of Zelda, both are action-adventure games that focus on the player's exploration of an open world:
Tunic is heavily inspired by Zelda, but once again it's not just a clone. There are three videos on Youtube that elaborates this point quite well:
- "Tunic is more than just a Zelda clone" by KevynTheJar
- "The Legacy of Zelda | How Tunic Embraces a Classic" by Transparency
- "The Legend of Zelda (and how Tunic honors it)" by Liam Triforce
There are lots of other examples: Digimon inspired by Pokémon, Axiom Verge from Metroid, Antonblast from Wario...
(Also, all of the games mentioned above are sold on eShop, Nintendo's own game platform for their console line)
Below are some videos listing the times when non-Nintendo games were inspired by, reference, easter eggs or parodied Mario, whether officially collaborating with Nintendo or not:
Other games from Nintendo also get reference:
Nintendo itself gets inspiration
Steve Jobs once mentioned an interesting quote:
Good artists copy. Great artists steal.
Nintendo have a lot of great talent, so of course they also "stolen" from elsewhere, such as the game Donkey Kong (the first game in which Mario appeared):
Donkey Kong was heavily inspired by 1930s American media. It was originally conceived as a Popeye game, based on the 1930s comic and animation, with Bluto being in the role of Donkey Kong, Popeye being Mario, and Olive Oyl being Lady.
Nintendo at that time owned the license to make games with characters from Popeye but for some technical reason, they had to change.
The 1930s film King Kong would serve as another inspiration and the setting of the game was New York City.
Like the movie King Kong, the villain in Nintendo's game is also a giant gorilla.
And in the game Super Mario Bros: In an interview with Geek Culture, Toru Iwatani (father of Pac-Man) recounts:
I worked on the sequel "Pac-Land" and "Pac-Mania" and my favorite is "Pac-Land," which is the pioneer of action games with horizontally running background. Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto, who developed "Super Mario Bros." told me that the game was influenced by Namco’s "PAC-LAND".
Official response from Nintendo
After announcing the "death" of Flappy Bird on social networks, Nguyen Ha Dong wrote a disclaimer:
Dong: It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore.
Because of aftereffects from Kotaku's allegations, many people were skeptical of Dong's statement. But that is true. In an email to The Wall Street Journal, Nintendo spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa reiterated the company's previous statements, saying that Nintendo has not complained about Flappy Bird's similarities to the game Super Mario Bros:
Quoted from Nintendo's spokesperson on an article from The Wall Street Journal:
While we usually do not comment on the rumors and speculations, we have already denied the speculation.
If you thought Nintendo just said that because it wanted to avoid petty drama and maintain its image, you're wrong! Nintendo has a scandalous history of abusing copyright laws to satisfy an antiquated view of intellectual property:
- Nintendo has sent requests to remove many fan game products that Nintendo fans are passionate about. There are many large projects of equal quality to the games that Nintendo itself makes, for example "AM2R", "Pokémon Uranium", "Ocarina Of Time 2D", ... You can watch it through the video "Fan Projects Taken Down by Nintendo" by T3rr0r for more details.
- While other game companies want Youtubers to make video about their games, even have to pay for it, Nintendo blocks monetization of all video with Nintendo's game. It wasn't until 2015 that the "Nintendo Creators Program" was open, allowing Youtubers to only receive 60% to 70% of video revenue. Not only that, Youtubers must register themselves to participate in the program and be accepted by Nintendo. It wasn't until the end of 2018 that Nintendo removed this program and allowed all YouTubers who played their games to make money freely.
- Many game companies spend their own money to organize e-sports tournaments, some even fail to attract fans (like Overwatch's esport tournament). Not only does Nintendo rarely organize tournaments, but they had also shutdown many tournaments that their dedicated fans organized.
Not to mention there are many other cases, EmpLemon's Video "Sacrifices to the Church of Nintendo" summarizes many cases where Nintendo abused copyright law. And they didn't even sue the billion-dollar app Flappy Bird. This says it all!
As for Kotaku
On February 8th, two days after Kotaku's accusatory article was published, another author of the news site wrote an article "The Flappy Bird Fiasco" apologizing to Nguyen Ha Dong:
Nguyen also wound up receiving some negative attention because of the art in his game. That's where Kotaku comes into the story more than I'm comfortable with. And that's where I believe we owe Nguyen an apology. I'll say it now...
Dong Nguyen, I'm sorry about what we wrote about your game's art. And I'm sorry if what we wrote contributed to any harassment you received about your game. Even if it didn't I wish we could do that one over.
The author of that piece, Jason Schreier, has also asked to say the following...
"Over the past couple of days, I've spent a lot of time reading reactions and feedback to the article I published last week, and I've spent a lot of time regretting it. The post was rash, and hasty, and below my usual standards. To Kotaku I apologize for allowing that to happen. To Dong Nguyen, I apologize for my poorly-chosen words, and I hope that you find peace."
Much has been made about that article we ran last Thursday, which originally was headlined "Flappy Bird Is Making $50,000 A Day Off Ripped Art." The word "ripped" was too strong, and the article's author has come to regret it. I do, too, and wished I'd caught it. The headline's been changed since then.
I wish that partially because I disagree with the opinion of the piece. I see Flappy Bird as being inspired by Mario art. I think it's as fair an inspiration as the many inspirations we've seen of classic Nintendo art in games from 3D Dot Game Heroes to Guacamelee to Braid. There's room for debate there, but that's where I stand.
Some other misinformation
Impersonation video
During the time Flappy Bird was being taken down, the video "Flappy Bird - Message From Developer Dong Nguyen" appeared on Youtube, attracting a significant number of viewers:
Ignoring the fact that the person in the video doesn't even look like Dong:
The title of the video is also very unusual compared to videos announcing serious issues on social media. The title is stated in the third person. The video content is just a reread of what Mr. Dong said on Twitter about removing Flappy Bird...
Pewdiepie made Faby famous?
Many people (including myself back then) thought that Flappy Bird was just a sinking game, that was luckily featured by the most famous YouTuber at that time - Pewdiepie. New gold spreads its wings and flies. The video "FLAPPY BIRD - DONT PLAY THIS GAME!" posted on January 28 on the PewDiePie Youtube channel is believed by many netizens to be the direct cause of the Flappy Bird became famous.
Based on Google Trends data from January to April of 2014 in America:
Statistics show that the Flappy Bird keyword had already reached 9% of its popularity compared to its peak. And the keyword Flappy Bird did not have a sharp increase following Felix's video.
Not only that, the data table below also shows that Flappy Bird has climbed to the top 1 on the App Store rankings since around January 15th:
Not to mention, Flappy Bird was still mentioned a lot before the 28th on Twitter, made popular thanks to everyone joking about Flappy Bird being too difficult and "addictive". There is also a parody video of Twitter posts called "FLAPPY BIRD RUINED MY LIFE" posted on January 25, released 2 days after Felix's video.
It becomes even clearer when you actually watch the video of Felix playing Flappy Bird, starting at minute 4:02 in the video.
There's another game that you bro brought up...
Later, he also said:
I kind of know what it's about, but I never actually never played it myself.
Flappy Bird wasn't chosen by Pewdiepie by dumb luck. It was chosen because it was a famous rage game and many of his fans wanted him to play. PewDiePie's video, more or less, made Flappy Bird even more famous. But it is not the main or direct cause, and certainly not the core reason why Flappy Bird became a phenomenon.