The Flappy Bird Guy Is Having Second Thoughts

At its peak, Flappy Bird was making its creator Dong Nguyen around $50,000 a day. The game was a few sprites, a tap mechanic, and an aggression toward the player that felt almost personal. It was also, briefly, inescapable—everyone’s phone, everyone’s commute, everyone’s lunch break disappearing into the small tragedy of a bird that would not stop dying.

Nguyen pulled it in February 2014 and told people he felt guilty about how addictive it was, which is either a sincere ethical position or the most interesting PR move in mobile gaming history, possibly both. He spent the weeks after the removal insisting he was done with it. Then he told Rolling Stone he was considering bringing it back—this time with a warning message built in, reminding players to take breaks.

The warning won’t help. Nobody reads warnings. But the fact that a man who built a game in a few days, watched it consume millions of people’s attention, and then voluntarily pulled it from the market is now wrestling with whether to bring it back—that’s the most human part of this whole story. He clearly can’t leave it alone. Neither could we.