As you might have heard, the immensely popular Flappy Bird game for mobile devices has since been pulled from its respective app stores. Many were wondering why that is, especially when it was reported that its creator was raking in a cool $50,000 a day in terms of mobile ads. Some have speculated that it could be due to legal issues, especially from Nintendo who may or may not have sent legal notices to Dong Nguyen over copyright infringement, presumably due to the similarities in art shared by Mario and Flappy Bird. The previous statement released by Nintendo was a bit vague but in a bid to clear things up, Nintendo spokesperson Yasuhiro Minagawa emailed The Wall Street Journal claiming that Nintendo has not complained about Flappy Bird’s similarities to Nintendo’s original Super Marios Bros.
According to Minagawa, “While we usually do not comment on the rumors and speculations, we have already denied the speculation last week.” Nguyen had surprised everyone when he announced on Twitter that he would be pulling the game from the app stores, claiming that he “cannot take this anymore”. He also wrote, “I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.” So there we have it, it looks like Nintendo really had nothing to do about this after all, and could simply be due to the developer not being able to deal with the level of success and attention he has been getting.
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