This Game Was Shut Down Because It Was Doing Too Well 🎮

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Hey — this is Ali from The BotBox.

Yup, the story is as crazy as my title and subtitle sounds.

It started in May 2013, when Dong Nguyen created Flappy Bird. But by February 2014 alone, it had been downloaded by 90M+ people and played over 20 billion times.

But how did Dong reach this point? Let’s start from the start.

How this all started

Dong’s first introduction to the video gaming industry was Super Mario Bros as a child.

This early love for Super Mario Bros. inspired him to start coding his games when he was just 16. After that, Dong started studying computer science at the Hanoi University of Science in Vietnam. Instead of doing traditional programming, he decided to act on his love for games.

And what better way to do it than interning at a gaming company?

He got an internship at Punch Entertainment, a Vietnamese video game company. This experience at Punch sparked his interest in building games and got him super hyped about the industry.

And he stumbled upon an idea — A game for people always on the go.

Idea and its creation

The game idea has two clauses.

• The game should be simple enough for people to start playing.

• And easy enough for people to keep playing.

Unlike Angry Birds (the best mobile game then), it wouldn’t require much thinking.

He developed the game in just 2–3 days.

According to him, the main character Faby was initially created for a different game that never saw the light of day. But after this Flappy Bird idea, Faby found a new home.

Dong drew inspiration for Flappy Bird’s gameplay from table tennis — where the objective is to keep the ball bouncing with a paddle for as long as possible.

He put his spin on it and cranked up the difficulty level to make it even more challenging!

The game and its working

How does the game initially work?

Simple: Keep tapping the screen to stay alive.

That doesn’t sound so difficult, does it? Oh, it was!

Dong made his game that way to keep it from becoming boring to users. You would keep playing and always feel like you’re close enough for a win.

The game was notoriously frustrating. That is what catches user attention. So much so that people became grossly addicted to it.

Some even spent hours playing it every day!

How game get early traction and go viral

Although the game was great. It didn’t blow off immediately after launching for a couple of months. It started getting traction, the moment, Pewdiepie, the Swedish YouTuber, gave it a shoutout on his channel.

Boom! Now, suddenly everyone was playing it.

Flappy Bird blew up because everyone was talking about it on social media and showing off their high scores. It was on all the “top game” lists too, which got even more people hooked.

It was downloaded over 90 million times and at its peak, it was making $50k/day in ad revenue.

As the popularity of Flappy Bird grew, Dong was scrutinized. He was suddenly in the spotlight and was bombarded with interviews and media attention. He even received death threats from angry players who couldn’t beat the game.

It sudden situation became too much for Dong. The game’s success took a toll on him. He became overwhelmed by the attention and the pressure to constantly update the game.

Dong couldn’t catch a break!

He was getting trolled left and right by parents, teachers, and players for how addicting the game was. To make things worse, the paparazzi wouldn’t leave him alone either.

All of this started messing with his head. It had to end somewhere.

End of epic game

In Feb 2014, Dong made the controversial decision to remove Flappy Bird from the app stores.

So, many people were disappointed by this decision, but Dong remained firm in his stance.

Since then, Flappy Bird has become something of a legend in the gaming world. People still talk about it and reminisce about the days when they were trying to beat their high scores.

A lot of knock-offs and copy-paste appeared on the market. But none could catch the craze that Flappy Bird did.

Dong Nguyen has returned to a quieter life, creating new games and staying out of the public eye.

Check out the stuff he’s working on currently, Dotgears.