The creator of Flappy Bird, the difficult, barebones mobile game whose mere existence roiled video games discussion over the past two weeks, says he will remove the game from the Android and iTunes marketplaces within 22 hours. "I cannot take this anymore," Dong Nguyen tweeted today.
Nguyen added:
Flappy Bird is currently hosted on the iTunes Store and at Google Play. The game is free and supported by advertisements. It was released in May of last year and later became the most popular app downloaded on iTunes for some time. It shot to mainstream notoriety only recently, thanks largely to articles like this one from BuzzFeed. It has skyrocketed into mainstream awareness since then, and is said to earn its creator tens of thousands of dollars a day.
Inside the video gaming community though, Flappy Bird, and its seemingly inscrutable appeal has been the subject of intense debate over the past couple of weeks, criticizing everything from its game design, to its intended audience, to the origin of its visual style.