Your Addiction To Playing ‘Flappy Bird’ Is The Reason It’s Gone Forever

Adios, little buddy.

Adios, little buddy.

Eyes glazed, staring at the screen, a tiny pearl of drool juuust forming at the crease of a slack-jawed mouth… The Flappy Bird addicts out there (and you know who you are) only have themselves to blame for the game vanishing from app stores, says its developer.

The Vietnamese developer announced to the world over the weekend that he’d be pulling the popular mobile game on Sunday, and at first it didn’t seem like he was going to explain exactly why, just that it had become too much for him.

But Forbes snagged an interview with the man who once again confirms that Flappy Bird is gone. Forever. No more. And it’s your fault, Flappy Bird player. Of course, you can still play it if it’s already downloaded to your device.

Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed,” he tells Forbes. “But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”

And the money? Apparently even pulling in around $50,000 a day from in-app advertising isn’t enough to keep Flappy Bird flying.

“I don’t know the exact figure, but I do know it’s a lot,” he admitted of what he makes per day on the app.

There’s more mystery to the whole affair, as Forbes’ Lan Anh Nguyen describes the interview with the developer:

“The circumstances surrounding the interview, conducted in Vietnamese, were as much of a soap opera as his public ruminations about whether to take down the app,” she explains, adding that it was delayed several hours due to the developer having a sudden meeting with the country’s deputy prime minister.

“The 29-year-old, who sports a close-cropped haircut, appeared stressed,” she writes. “He smoked several cigarettes over the course of the 45-minute interview, and doodled monkey heads on a pad of paper.”

Monkey heads, maybe that’s the next game? Stranger things have happened. But for now, he’s not dwelling on the death of Flappy Bird and he doesn’t regret killing it.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, but now he feels much better. “I don’t think it’s a mistake,” he says. “I have thought it through.”

Exclusive: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App ‘Gone Forever’ Because It Was ‘An Addictive Product’ [Forbes]

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