The world’s most downloaded game can be downloaded no more. This past weekend, 29-year-old Vietnamese game designer Dong Nguyen removed Flappy Bird from app stores, tweeting, “I cannot take this anymore.” The 50 million people who had already downloaded the improbable smash hit can still play it on their phones. The rest of the world’s billions will never know the exquisite frustration of fatally bonking the titular avian’s pixelated yellow head on a pixelated green pipe.
The game’s spectacular ascent and abrupt demise have left questions floating like feathers in their wake. Who is Dong Nguyen? What, exactly, was it that he could no longer take? And, most puzzlingly of all, what made his distinctly amateurish game so wildly popular in the first place?
Obscure when it launched last May, the game soared to ubiquity over the winter for reasons that remain opaque. By the first week of February, it had achieved heights previously touched only by major franchises like Candy Crush and Angry Birds. Not only was Flappy Bird by far the No. 1 free app on both the iPhone and Android app stores, but blatant rip-offs like Flappy Plane, Fly Birdie, and Ironpants bestrewed the top 50. Nguyen, the game’s creator, says he coded it over the course of a few nights after coming home from work. By last week, he told The Verge he was raking in $50,000 a day.
Flappy Bird may have disappeared from the App Store and Google Play, but you can still get the game for some devices.
iPhone / iPad
If you downloaded Flappy Bird before it was removed from the App Store and then deleted it from your device, it's easy to get it back. Simply go to the App Store, and tap on Purchases (if on an iPad) or Updates > Purchased on an iPhone.
Look for Flappy Bird in the list, and tap the download icon, which looks like a cloud with a downward arrow.
If you didn't install Flappy Bird, there's still a possibility you can get it. If you know someone who got Flappy Bird before it disappeared, you can ask them to sign in with their Apple ID on your device and install Flappy Bird from their purchase history. (To comply with Apple's rules, this person should be a member of your household.)
There are several other ways to get Flappy Bird on an iPhone or iPad, at Macworld:
Flappy Bird is the hottest game on the App Store — at least for the moment — and topmost on every gamer's mind is how to get a higher score than their friends... and without smashing their phone to pieces in the process. A fantastically terrible game, its design is derivative, its mechanics maddening, and its popularity no doubt the result of incredible rage-of-mouth marketing. Yet despite all of that (or maybe because of it)... Can't. Stop. Playing. So how can you get better at Flappy Bird faster? Flappy Bird supposedly spread like an ant farm because it is so simple, yet impossible to beat. People were telling their friends to try and “beat” the game because it looked easy, but in reality it isn’t.