Flappy Bird

Dong Nguyen, a developer in Hanoi working under the name .GEARS, released Flappy Bird on iOS on May 24, 2013. For months almost nobody noticed it. Then, in January 2014, it climbed to the top of the free charts in the US and China, and the Android version arrived on Google Play on January 30, 2014, just as the craze peaked.

How A Flappy Bird Run Works

There is only one control. Tapping the screen makes the bird, named Faby, flap upward a little, and when you stop tapping it drops. Pairs of green pipes scroll in from the right with a gap at a random height, and you score one point for each pair you pass through. Touching a pipe or the ground ends the run at once, and you start again from zero.

Medals mark your progress, with bronze at 10 points, silver at 20, gold at 30 and platinum at 40. That sounds modest, yet most new players crash within the first few pipes, because the bird falls faster than they expect and each tap lifts it a fixed amount. The trick most people settle on is a steady rhythm of light taps that keeps the bird near the middle of each gap, instead of reacting late to a high or low pipe.

Why Flappy Bird Took Over In Early 2014

The game cost nothing, a run lasted a few seconds, and the difficulty made scores feel worth sharing. Players posted screenshots, filmed reactions and argued about high scores, and in January 2014 it was the most downloaded app on the App Store. Nguyen told The Verge it was earning about $50,000 a day from banner ads. The pixel art drew comparisons with older Nintendo games, while the tiny scope made it a target for criticism from people who could not believe something so simple had become such a hit.

Dong Nguyen Pulled Flappy Bird On February 10, 2014

On February 8, 2014, Nguyen announced that he would take the game down, and on February 10 it disappeared from the App Store and Google Play. He said he felt guilty about how addictive it had become and how much people were overusing it, and he told Forbes that removing it was the best choice. He also denied that any legal problem was behind the decision. Phones that already had it installed kept it, but nobody could download it from the official stores again.

Nguyen did not leave games behind. In August 2014 a version called Flappy Birds Family, with new obstacles and multiplayer, came out only for Amazon Fire TV, and the same year he released Swing Copters, which used a similar one-tap idea.

What Happened To Flappy Bird After 2024

The trademark lapsed in January 2024 and passed to Gametech Holdings. On September 12, 2024, a group called the Flappy Bird Foundation announced a revival, and its first version ran on Telegram with a crypto mining campaign for a planned token. Nguyen posted that he had no connection to the project, had sold nothing to it and did not support crypto.

On April 29, 2025, the Foundation’s publishing arm released an Android version through the Epic Games Store rather than Google Play. It offers the classic mode plus a new Quest mode, says it will never include Web3 features, and relies on ads and in-app purchases. Reports at its launch made no mention of a Google Play release. It is an unofficial revival in the sense that the original creator had no part in it.

Can You Still Get The Original Flappy Bird On Android?

The original .GEARS app, with the package com.dotgears.flappybird, has not been on Google Play since February 2014, and there is no official way to download it. Copies that circulated afterward came from unofficial sources and should be avoided. Players who want the same challenge today can look at the Foundation’s revival, keeping in mind that it is a different team, or at the many legitimate one-tap games that followed in Flappy Bird’s path.