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Flappy Bird will fly again, but it's going to take a while

Flappy Bird will fly again, but it's going to take a while

By Gopal Sathe | Updated: 21 March 2014 10:06 IST

After a meteoric rise in popularity, the casual game Flappy Bird was taken down from the iTunes and Google Play app stores by its developer Dong Nguyen. In a tweet on Wednesday, Nguyen confirmed that the app will be back to the stores, but added, "but not soon".

The app of course remains available to those people who had installed it before Nguyen took it down from the app stores, and he has continued to earn revenue from advertisements shown to those users. However, with the app being out of circulation, a lot of the attention has moved towards both copycat applications and also new games - the turnover for games in the App Store remains high, and with great new games coming in regularly, it's safe to say that the number of people who play Flappy Bird has been dropping.

Earlier this month, Nguyen told Rolling Stone that he is thinking of bringing the app back to iOS and Android app stores. He also told the magazine that the new version of his game will contain warnings about its addictiveness so that people don't lose too much time to the game.

Nguyen also revealed during the conversation that he is working on two new games, one of which is a vertical flyer called Kitty Jetpack. Almost immediately after the interview, a Flappy Bird clone called Kitty Jetpack was released on the Android app store by someone else.

On Wednesday, after a fan asked if Nguyen will indeed be bringing back Flappy Bird, he confirmed this with a tweet.

@painfullpacman Yes. But not soon.
-- Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) March 19, 2014

He had taken the app down in February saying that the game was too addictive, and that he was facing a lot of stress because of its sudden popularity.

The game was quickly replaced by dozens of copycat apps, while independent developers rallied to support Dong holding the Flappy Jam, creating unique games inspired by Flappy Bird.

Nguyen hasn't mentioned when the app will return, or if it will be back as a free app, but with this much time having passed in a market where people's attention spans are notoriously short, will Flappy Bird be able to get new downloads once it is back online? Only time will tell.

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