Used iPhone 5s with Flappy Bird installed going for $100,000 on eBay

Flappy Bird may be gone, but the craze seems far from over. A used 16GB iPhone 5s with the now defunct game pre-installed is going for nearly $100,000 on eBay. That's right, over 60 lakh rupees for a used phone with a free app installed. With the eBay auction not yet over, the price looks set to rise further.

The young Vietnamese creator of hit mobile game Flappy Bird removed the game from the App Store and Google Play on Sunday saying it ruined his life. The game which was created in 2013 but only surged to the top in downloads earlier this year was removed early Monday.

The success of the game that based its appeal on being simple and also maddeningly difficult made its creator Nguyen Ha Dong, 29, a minor celebrity. The game was downloaded more than 50 million times on App Store alone. In an interview with The Verge, Dong said Flappy Bird was making $50,000 a day in advertising revenue.

The eBay auction itself seems genuine, since the user selling the phone has been around on eBay for a while and has received 121 ratings, 96.3 percent of them positive, the typical measure of an eBay user's authenticity. As of filing this report, the phone had received 74 bids from 22 bidders, with the highest bid just under the $100,000 mark at

Dong, from Hanoi, wrote on Twitter on Saturday that the Internet sensation caused by the game "ruins my simple life" and he now hated it.

"I will take Flappy Bird down. I cannot take this anymore," he wrote.

On Twitter he didn't address the inflated downloads allegation but denied suggestions he was withdrawing the game because it breached another game maker's copyright.

"It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore," he wrote.

Read More

Flappy Bird's journey from obscurity to fame and ultimate demise

Flappy Bird, the mobile gaming sensation, has been snatched out of the air. After its controversial and incredible success, and surprising withdrawal from app stores, we take a look at the hit game's rise and fall.

1) RIP Flappy Bird

On February 9, Flappy Bird was removed from both the Google Play store and Apple iTunes App Store. A day before, developer Don Nguyen said he would be taking down the smash hit game from both the stores. Nguyen tweeted: "I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore... It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it any more... I also don't sell 'Flappy Bird', please don't ask... And I still make games."

2) Why was it taken down?

Though there's no word from Nguyen explaining his decision, some believe the developer took the decision after he received a lot of hate mail following the game's success. Others suspect that Nintendo may have taken legal action due to use of copied art work, though Nguyen's tweets ruled out legal action.

3) What was Flappy Bird?

Flappy Birds was a retro-style side-scroller mobile game that debuted on iOS in May 2013. The barebones game was created by Nguyen, the budding Vietnamese developer. The game's premise is simple - the player has to navigate the bird through a series of gaps between vertical pipe-shaped obstacles, rising up and down by tapping the screen to flap the bird's wings.

4) Rise to fame

The game seemingly led an obscure life for months before leading the iTunes App Store free app charts for much of January 2014, and success followed on Google Play store soon after. Developer Nguyen said he was earning up to $50,000 per day via in-app ads. The game was announced for the Windows Phone platform on February 4, with the Nguyen saying he estimated it would be approved by Microsoft in ten days.

5) Reasons behind popularity

Players say the free app is highly addictive, being challenged to set a high-score on a global leaderboard. There are no lives, or in-app purchases in Flappy Bird, and players get a single point for each pair of pipes they fly through, and medals after every ten points all the way up to platinum.

6) Controversial success

Flappy Bird enjoyed controversial success, with critics decrying its crude graphics and physics, poorly placed banner ads, and obvious artwork theft from Nintendo's Super Mario Bros, a classic platformer game

Read More

Flappy Bird for iOS, Android taken down by developer

The developer of Flappy Bird, the former most popular free mobile game on the Apple Inc App Store and Google Inc's Android Play store, took the game down at midnight on Sunday as he announced he would do 22 hours earlier.

The game is no longer available to download for either Apple or Google users, but its fans still can have fun with the bird if they already downloaded the game to their devices.

Nguyen Ha Dong, a Hanoi-based game developer, announced the grounding of the addictive game in a Tweet at 1900 GMT on Saturday in which he also apologised to Flappy Bird players.

"Twenty-two hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down," Dong said, adding "it is not anything related to legal issues.

"I cannot take this anymore," he wrote.

(Also see: Flappy Bird creator says will take down the game on Sunday)

His Tweet attracted more than 136,000 Retweets as of 0430 GMT on Monday.

Flappy Bird caused a sensation after rising from obscurity to become one of the most downloaded mobile games on both Apple and Google's online stores.

Users have to steer a bird between green pipes. The Android version has been downloaded up to 50 million times and attracted more than half a million reviews.

Many people have been questioning Dong on Twitter about his decision to take down the game as only a day earlier he had been talking about developing the game for Microsoft's Windows phones.

(Also see: Flappy Bird mobile game sensation coming to Windows Phone this month)

Dong could not be reached for comment. He turned his telephone off after cancelling an interview with Reuters on Thursday and not finalising arrangements for one on Friday.

Unlike other successful game makers like Rovio Entertainment, which produced the hugely popular Angry Birds game and has hundreds of programmers, Dong made Flappy Bird by himself in a few nights, he said on Twitter earlier.

The game, which he said was inspired by Nintendo's Mario Bros, has been earning on average $50,000 a day from advertising, Dong said in a media interview.

Two friends of Dong said Nintendo had sent him a warning letter, but the Japanese game maker said it was not considering a lawsuit.

"It sounds very much like a rumour and if it is, we certainly can't comment on that," Nintendo's media representative told Reuters on Friday.

One gaming company manager said Dong's decision to take down the game was wise.

"Dong is taking one step back to avoid legal risk because it's too difficult to deal with legal issues himself if it happens," said Duy Doan, a senior manager at VTC Online, one of Vietnam's leading game companies.

Dong said earlier that he was not looking for any investors and would not sell the game. One expert said investors would not be interested.

"Flappy Bird is not to the taste of many game investors because it's just hit-based which will bring very uncertain cash flow and no recurring," said Nguyen Hieu Linh, investment manager at the Japanese CyberAgent Ventures Inc.

"I doubt he needs to fund raise as he's already earned a certain amount of money and he doesn't need more help to make this kind of mini game," Linh added

Read More