History of Flappy Bird
Flappy Bird was created by a small indie game developer also based in Vietnam. The game was available in Apple's App Store and Google Play until February 10 of 2014, when it was removed by the developer "due to its addictive nature".
The game itself is very simplistic. It is a 2D sidescroller where the player attempts to keep a small yellow bird in the air by tapping the touchscreen of the handheld device. Large green pipes are constantly appearing on the screen and must be avoided. The player has only one life and no saves or checkpoints exist. There is no story nor greater goal in the game, apart from getting a better score by avoiding more pipes.
Flappy Bird became incredibly popular in the early 2014 and caused a large amount of community responses. It was soon the most downloaded free game in the iOS App Store and was earning, according to the developer, $50,000 daily from in-app advertisments.
It received many controversial reviews. Apart from being blamed for copying the green pipe design from Super Mario Bros games, as well as borrowing sound effects from them, Flappy Bird was also called "almost a complete ripoff" of a very similar game Piou Piou vs Cactus. Yet, despite being considered extremely addicting, irritating and difficult, Flappy Bird remains one of the most popular mobile game sensations of 2014.