A online game programmer made waves in 2014 when his easy smartphone app made headlines – even turning into probably the most downloaded free recreation within the App Retailer later that month.
Dong Nguyen was not even 30 when he made the app Flappy Birds – which earned him round $50,000 a day at one level.
MailOnline charts Mr Nguyen’s story from his big success to the guilt he harboured that drained his psychological well being so badly he deleted the sport from the App Retailer, in addition to its Android equal, now referred to as Google Play.
To at the present time, its success is so iconic that Twitter customers nonetheless plead the mysterious tech millionaire, who is barely lively on Twitter, to convey the sport again to the App Retailer, with the hashtag #bringbackflappybird final seeing momentum as late as 2022.
Dong Nguyen was not even 30 when he made the app Flappy Birds
Flappy Birds earned Dong Nguyen round $50,000 a day at one level
Who’s the mysterious creator of the super-popular app?
Mr Nguyen was raised in slightly village not removed from the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi, the place his curiosity in video video games was sparked by time spent in his childhood enjoying Tremendous Mario Bros.
He began coding on the tender age of 16 and developed his curiosity additional while doing a level in programming.
Annoyed by the complexity of recent smartphone video games, Nguyen made the immensely well-liked app with a strikingly easy consumer interface – so easy that even customers as younger as major faculty youngsters grew to become addicted.
The app Flappy Fowl, which let customers direct a flying chicken round a sequence of inexperienced pipes, was first launched on Could 24, 2013, however proved to be a sleeper hit when it was downloaded greater than 50 million instances just below a 12 months later.
Though he’s a tech millionaire, Mr Nguyen has all the time been eager to remain out of the limelight – having fun with the charisma he exudes by minimising media appearances – even revealing to school college students in his native Vietnam that the sport ruined his life.
‘For the previous 17 years, I solely labored with laptop screens, so I don’t have something to speak about. I assumed I needed to alternate some issues for my success. What I’ve exchanged is maturity’, he warned them.
Why did Mr Nguyen pull Flappy Fowl from the App Retailer?
Regardless of the enjoyable chicken recreation making Mr Nguyen thousands and thousands, the millionaire, who’s now nearly 40, harbours remorse – feeling chargeable for lots of people’s distress after receiving numerous DMs that the addictive recreation stifled folks’s productiveness.
So when the low-key programmer determined to take away the easy recreation from everybody’s units, it was the transfer that shocked thousands and thousands – fixed criticism from each followers who struggled to keep up self-control whereas utilizing the addictive app, and their annoyed mother and father grew to become an excessive amount of for him.
The reserved programmer has even needed to fend off persistent paparazzi – and the celebrity was far an excessive amount of for a person who simply needed to keep up his peace.
Ultimately, Mr Nguyen began to really feel responsible – was his profitable recreation actually the explanation that some youngsters weren’t specializing in homework, or why some had been shedding their jobs? These fixed Twitter messages grew to become so pervasive that he determined to take away the app, with some even telling him the chicken recreation had ruined their life.
Shortly after, #bringbackflappybird was trending – even trending once more through the Coronavirus lockdown.
Mr Nguyen remains to be making video games to at the present time, now referring to himself as a ‘passionate indie recreation maker’, in an effort to distance himself from his previous fame.
