Dong Nguyen: Five Things to Know About the Enigmatic Flappy Bird Developer
He was on top of his career when the popularity of the his famous game "Flappy Bird" went viral and claimed the top spot in both iOS and Android app stores in China, U.K. and US. But Dong Nguyen couldn't take it anymore that he decided to pull the game out from app stores.
Like any birds that are flying too close to the sun, Flappy Bird met its ending when it was removed from both Apple's App Store and Google Play on Feb. 10. Released on May 24, 2013, Flappy Bird is Dong Nguyen's pride and joy but on Feb. 8 he announced on Twitter that he is pulling out his addictive game.
The Twitter post reads: "I am sorry Flappy Bird users, 22 hours from now; I will take Flappy Bird down. I cannot take this anymore."
According to Nguyen, his decision of pulling out the game is nothing to do with legal issues, and exactly 22 hours he was true to word and pulled out the game. Now that the game is officially out, eBay users were offering iPhones with Flappy Bird installed on it and so far the highest big is a whopping amount of US$99, 900.
The new pop phenomenon received mix reviews from critics; Huffington Post even berated the game and addressed it as "insanely irritating, difficult and frustrating game which combines a super-steep difficulty curve with bad, boring graphics and jerky movement."
Here are the five things you should know about the enigmatic Flappy Bird developer.
1. Real name is Nguyễn Hà Đông, Dong Nguyen was born in 1985 in Hanoi, Vietnam. A Hanoi-based developer, Nguyen developed Flappy Bird in May 2013 and was published by .GEARS studios, a independent game developer that is based in Vietnam.
2. Dong developed the game app in the span of two to three days, the character of the game was originally designed in 2012.
3. Flappy Bird was dubbed as "the new Angry Birds" when it topped the UK App Store. The app's android version as released to the Google Play store on Jan. 30, 2014 and was currently earning $50, 000 per day in revenue.
4. Nguyen was reported to commit suicide by huzlers.com but the news turned out to be a hoax following a viral report about a Chicago teen who killed his brother because of the game.
5. Due to his announcement of pulling out the game, Nguyen gathered 50k followers on his Twitter account and received a lot of death threats from unhappy Flappy Bird users.