Only people living in a hovel down by the river—or anyone without Facebook—haven’t heard of the mobile game Flappy Bird, the discovery of which has been making the rounds on social media mostly via shocked reactions of people who can’t believe how hard such a simple-looking game is.
But despite the initial success of the game—which apparently made its creator, Dong Nguyen, $50,000 USD in just one day thanks to in-game advertising—Nguyen has removed the game from Google Play and the Apple App Store, citing issues garnered from the game’s publicity and his newfound, immediate fame.
It’s not hard to understand that those upset by Flappy Bird’s removal may immediately blame Nintendo for what seems like a knee-jerk reaction, mostly because of how similar the green pipes in the game are to those found in Super Mario Bros. titles. They’re… identical, really.
But a spokesperson from Nintendo, Yasuhiro Minagawa, has denied these allegations, explaining directly to the Wall Street Journal that “while we usually do not comment on the rumors and speculations, we have already denied the speculation.”
So, Nintendo is not to blame, despite what you might think. Certainly Nguyen has his own reasons for taking the game down, which we may—or may not—learn in the future.