https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/15/24245216/flappy-bird-creator-dong-nguyen-not-involved-new-game
This is not my beautiful Flappy Bird.
This is not my beautiful Flappy Bird.
The game mechanic is incredibly simple, and has been cloned a million times. The graphics weren't anything special, so really the only thing special about Flappy Bird is the name Flappy Bird.
Flappy Bird wasn't the first to even implement a game like this.
I remember playing a very similar game with a helicopter and another one with a worm long before that app released for phones.
Flappy Bird is just the game of this type that ended up going viral in its time.
I played the helicopter one as a flash web game when I was back in school some 20-25 years ago! Was one of the earliest simple time waster games (in a good sense) that I can remember being really addictive, the whole class would end up playing it in computer lessons until it got banned.
I mean on one hand I do think it’s fair that with him abandoning the game with taking it off stores and not using it all for him to lose the trademark. On the other, I think it’s bullshit someone else can then claim it. It should just be public domain
Open source would’ve been cool but I had a teacher in high school teach us how to re-create the game and it took us a week.
Yes, it's basically the first game any new game dev makes. The idea is way too simple for any kind of copyright. Not to mention it already existed before Flappy bird.