Millionaire Flappy Bird creator explains how the game ruined his life
Flappy Bird is one of the most iconic mobile games of all time, but it turns out that the game which brought so much joy to many ruined its creator's life.
Nguyen Ha Dong, a programmer, made the shock revelation about the 2013 game that made him a millionaire to students at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology.
The game itself proved a worldwide hit after a slow start, and at one point was making its creator more than $50,000 a day in advertising revenue, as reported by Rolling Stone.
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While he loved the success at first, buying a new Mac and taking his friends out to celebrate, he soon ended up miserable.
The game was subject to criticism with accusations that it ripped off Super Mario, and Dong himself was also accused of writing fake reviews to help boost its initial popularity.
Dong was a quiet man, but he ended up an unlikely celebrity because of the game and was stalked by the paparazzi, who showed up at his house and refused to leave.
All of this upset the programmer, but arguably the worst thing to happen to him were the incessant tweets from users of the game, who found themselves addicted to it.
Some of the messages he recieved included a tweet that read: "FLAPPY BIRD HAS RUINED MY LIFE! I'VE BEEN PLAYING IT FOR 8 HOURS STRAIGHT AND I SWEAR MY EYES ARE BLEEDING!"
This clearly upset the creator, who replied: "It's just a game. Take care of yourself first. I don't make game to ruin people's lives [sic]."
Teachers and parents also complained about Flappy Bird, arguing that it was detrimentally affecting their children's lives.
This eventually culminated in Dong concluding that he had personally hurt people with the game, with some people even claiming that they lost their jobs because they became so addicted. How that's quite Dong's fault is anyone's guess.
Others complained that it had caused them to break their mobile phones, with its simple premise: hit the bird to avoid being squashed by the moving pillars and falling to the ground.
The programmer eventually tweeted in 2014: "I can call 'Flappy Bird' is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it."
Dong eventually ended up hating Flappy Bird so much that he pulled the game down.
As reported by Vietnamnet, the programmer now choses to largely stay out of the spotlight, although he does have a Twitter profile, and he said he is working on a new game with never-before-seen technology.
However, he admits that nothing he will create in the future will ever have the success of Flappy Bird and put the odds of a repeat at 0.1%.
Emma Guinness