With the spirit of Valentine’s Day behind us, Flappy Bird creator, Dong Nguyen, broke all of our hearts when he decided to officially take his app out of the Apple and Google Play stores.
Since the app’s debut in May 2013, Flappy Bird was downloaded more than 50 million times. The rave, and crazy addiction, didn’t make its way to the U.S. until November 2013. According to Fox Business, by January 2013 the percent of people downloading Flappy Bird had skyrocketed 136 percent – causing advertisers to owe $50,000 in advertisements a day.
Just a week later, after the app’s “skyrocketing” success, Nguyen decided to pull his app from the market claiming it “made his simple life complicated.” This decision left us technology-addicted Americans with only one logical option: sell our phones?
On the same day Flappy Bird was taken down from Apple and Google Play stores, E-Bay was booming with people selling their smartphones, which already had the addictive app downloaded, for all the Flappy Bird deprived fans.
Phones with the app installed are selling for $1,000 and increases up to $5,000, which leads me to wonder why I never downloaded this bird app? I could essentially be making thousands for downloading a free app.
Through the course of all the Flappy Bird mania, Apple and Google play stores have been rejecting any other apps that even have the name “flappy” in it. According to Business Insider, several apps that were previously approved have now been asked to change the name because they are misleading. For example, the app Flappy Bee had to change to Jumpy Bee. Business Insider points out that once these apps simply changed their names, they fell from the top ten.
For those of you who did download Flappy Bird – get on E-Bay! We all know what that college budget looks like. Looks like Nguyen shut one door and opened another for us poor students riding the struggle bus.