Dong Nguyen, the Vietnamese developer of the hit mobile game Flappy Bird, was raking in $50,000 USD on a daily basis while his game was on the market, but what is his popular video game raking in now that it has been pulled from app stores?
The answer to this lies in the way the game generates revenue and the number of people playing it. Being a free-to-play title, the indie game has to generate revenue somehow so it relies on in-game advertisements. As an ads-based game, it’s no surprise that people began to download it. However, what may come as a surprise is how many times it’s been downloaded: 50 million times.
Based on this, it’s easy to see how Nguyen is still generating revenue after the success of his “free” game, as advertising revenue will continue to be generated as long as those who downloaded it continue to play.
Nguyen has no intention on charging for the game or even so much as updating it. In regards to changing it, he told The Verge in an interview that:
Flappy bird has reached a state where anything added to the game will ruin it, so I’d like to leave it as is.
He also went onto say that he would think about creating a sequel but wasn’t “sure about the timeline.”
In the meantime, it seems as if everyone is building their own Flappy Bird clone to fill the void that Nguyen created when he pulled his hit game from application marketplaces where it was being sold. Even Tapity is in on the clone wars with its very own Buffalo Wings with in-game ads and they’ve even managed to receive approval from Apple so it is indeed available for download.
While Tapity claimed in a blog post on their website that they “hate clones” just as much as the next person, they admittedly are “okay with replacements” and that’s essentially why they filled the gap. Well, that and the money.
What do you think of Flappy Bird and all of the app developers who have released similar games to fill the void created by its absence?
