Update: Flappy Bird Creator Is Removing The Game From Stores

[ryukage_sama]

I think Nintendo should go after the guy for their cut, maybe $49997/day. It would be their biggest moneymaker.

Using assets to make free games for the internet is one thing (like re-making the original Super Mario Bros. using other playable characters from NES games), but copying art assets to use on screen for 99% of play time and charging for it is another. His money is ill-gotten, and I suspect he is cashing out before Nintendo makes the first legal salvo.

I haven't played the game, but I've never liked the "survive by jumping/running/dodging/etc. as terrain and scenery pass you by" genre of games.

 

[Britpoint]

but copying art assets to use on screen for 99% of play time and charging for it is another. His money is ill-gotten, and I suspect he is cashing out before Nintendo makes the first legal salvo.

It's a free game, and the assets are similar to but not copies of. Nintendo doesn't 'own' "green pipes and weird bird sprites".

 

[loa]

Let's be honest here, not only has he taken the Mario graphics

No he has not, get your facts straight before making such claims.
Or can you show any sprite that is pixel per pixel the same way in a mario game?
Well I actually looked and I couldn't find any.

the gameplay really is hardly original.

Which is not a crime, end of story.

I certainly wouldn't say he deserves all that cash for something which is essentially a reskin of some of these flash games

And I don't think call of duty or madden deserve all that cash they keep making and those are not free games, mind you.
It doesn't matter how much effort you think he should have put into the game to get that kind of money.
The only thing that matters is that he somehow got that kind of audience (and didn't do it employing sleazy tactics like games such as dungeon keeper mobile) and that's all there is to it.

Whenever money gets involved, people become weird arbiters over how much that money is "deserved".
If you're an artist doing commissions, you get that shit all the time because people have this weird sense that art really isn't worth much since you're only spending X amount of time on a piece, ignoring the years of practice you had to go through to get where you are.

It's like saying X is not a "real job".
You're just being a huge prick doing it so don't.

 

[Pm0n3y]

I would not give up 50k a day just because of what people are saying on the Internet.

This. To be honest, I'd probably spend my time personally reading the "criticism" by pointing and laughing in their faces while telling them to "stay mad skrub lel git gud #rekt XD I'll be over here rolling in my fat stacks of dosh" (but, only to the insults. I actually like constructive criticism, as it keeps me modest, humble, and actually leads to improvement).

...Now, I know it wouldn't help in the slightest (and would most likely make the situation worse while making me look like an unprofessional), but I'd rather have a outlet to vent at, rather than have some hurtful words stop me from doing what I'm doing, especially from someone that isn't even in spitting distance.

 

[anthony87]

Huh...apparently Mario isn't the only game that Flappy Bird looks similar to.

 

[Simalacrum]

Ummm I am sorry I thought that read $50k a day.... *reads again* Yep it did..... I would put up with ALOT MORE shit for $50k a day, sorry dude I think someone is threatening to sue you.

Money doesn't make people immune to threats and abuse, really. Dude sounds like he might even be suffering from depression. Sure, the money is nice, but it seems like this developer put his mental health above his physical wealth, which is something I can't really blame him for doing.

 

[Wackymon]

Huh...apparently Mario isn't the only game that Flappy Bird looks similar to.

I'll just say this: Poui Poui doesn't share the similar simple aesthetic of Flappy Bird, and surprisingly enough, doesn't involve going between things. The between part is where the difficulty comes from. Also, flappy bird doesn't insult me early on for failing. It just stands there, walking. And you'd be surprised what a simple change from holding the button to having to tap could do to completely alter the course of gameplay, along with how the game actually plays. However, I'll admit, I do think Flappy Bird is simply a extreme simplification of platformers down to their bare bones. Heck, look at angry birds: Not different at all, but simply changed the Aesthetics of a castle-destroying game. And then printed money.

The simplest thing I can really say is that the App Market is highly, highly, highly, highly, HIGHLY iterative.

However, there could be a very, very different reason as to why he's taking it down. Perhaps he simply intended to make it as a joke, and it went far, far overboard.

 

[misg]

There is only so many ways to through pixels together. I mean really what is the point it has similar elements to super Mario. Big deal, if this didn't sell well it would just be a "fan game" and people would like it. But because it's made him money people hate the guy and his game. Grow up get a life, is all I can think when I see this sort of story.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

I'm glad it's going, i very nearly threw my phone at the wall because of how frustratingly addictive the game is. Also so it rips off mario art assets...who cares. it's not like it's trying to be a mario clone, it's a completely different sort of game.

 

[O maestre]

the thing I don't get is the popularity this game has gotten, it is over a year old now. Guess people just love bird games.

 

[Random Argument Man]

Oh for *** sake? I'd like to go one month?ONE MONTH without someone screaming death threats for a small pathetic reason. If the NSA is spying on us with the Internet, might as well do something useful with it other than being dicks about it.

 

[Brian Tams]

All you had to do, man, was to use something other than the pipes. That was all you had to do!!!

I mean, the game was atrocious, but 50K a day? If I made 50K a game for owning the rights to a terrible app game, I will take it all day long for that much.

Watch him reskin the game and rerelease it as something else.

 

[critanime]

The art style is the only thing similar, so it's kind of hard to see it as trying to "emulate" Mario.

You mean besides the fact that those are clearly Mario-style pipes with a slight art style tweak, the bird being a hybrid of earlier Mario enemies in the same style as those games, and the backgrounds being very VERY similar to those of classic Mario 2D sid-escrollers, right?

Because it's pretty darn obvious where he got those assets from. I mean, get on Google, do a search, people have done the comparisons, and there's pretty much no question whatsoever as to where the choice of style came from. He adjusted them slightly, sure (which is probably the only reason Nintendo didn't immediately try to bust him, because it's harder to attack "similar" in court than it is to attack a direct asset ripoff), but you'd have to be blind not to see the resemblance. It's pretty obvious the guy was capitalizing on the look of those assets to help sell the game.

Again, not that this is rationalizing the shit biscuits on the internet who always take it too far with threats and the like. But criticizing him for his choice of art assets is fair game, AFAIC, given that the guy COULD have been creative with his game and been fine, and instead he chose to copy/paste Mario assets and then tweak them slightly so as to avoid an easy lawsuit from Nintendo. I won't rationalize the people attacking him, but I won't sympathize with him for being lazy, either.

And this is why it's all so laughable.

 

[Jmp_man]

-snip-

I'm pretty sure that he didn't expect the game to be a success and conversely didn't expect to have a chance of being "gunned down" by lawyers. Besides... if you're just making a quick game for fun and put it on the app store for free do you really think that anyone would really TRY to make a game with original graphics? Heck, there are 100's of games out there that use assets from tons of different games. A quick 2 second search on ANY flash game website can prove that.

 

[Britpoint]

I find it funny how easily one can gain sympathy is by claiming to receive death threats.Does this guy have any proof of these so called threats?If not then all this white knighting is kind of pointless.

You can find the proof yourself. Just go onto twitter and search from terms like "@dongatory kill". Of the first ten results I found three explicitly said "I will find you and kill you" and two more told him to kill himself.

 

[Britpoint]

I find it funny how easily one can gain sympathy is by claiming to receive death threats.Does this guy have any proof of these so called threats?If not then all this white knighting is kind of pointless.

You can find the proof yourself. Just go onto twitter and search from terms like "@dongatory kill". Of the first ten results I found three explicitly said "I will find you and kill you" and two more told him to kill himself.

Those aren't threats,a threat is something that puts you in immediate danger.If those people knew where the guy lived and were stalking/sending violent calls to his friends and family then that would be a threat.People really need to learn the differences between people talking shit on the internet and actual threatening behaviour because this is getting old.

What's getting old is people who don't take harassment seriously because 'it's just talking shit on the internet'. To YOU that's all it is, but then you're not receiving hundreds of them, are you?