On February 10th, Dong Nguyen pulled the incredibly popular game, Flappy Bird, from app stores.
The enterprising Vietnamese indie developer was making a whopping $50,000 a day just before he took it down. While he initially claimed that the reasoning behind the decision was that it ‘ruined his simple life’, he has since claimed that “Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed. But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”
Following this, hundreds of iPhones with Flappy Bird installed were being auctioned on websites like eBay for astronomical figures, as high as £6,000,000. However, these prices were very quickly proven to be artificially inflated by fraudulent bids. Moreover, the iPhones on sale at more reasonable prices (with Flappy Bird installed) have been cancelled by eBay, saying that “smartphones and tablets must be restored to factory settings” before they can be listed.
Regardless, if you really need your Flappy Bird fix and feel like dishing out a few hundred pounds, there are still a few iPhones on sale that have escaped eBay’s crackdown.