Nguyen Ha Dong, the Vietnamese creator of mobile game Flappy Bird which recently topped the App Store and Google Play Store charts, announced on Twitter he will remove the game from the two stores on Monday.
On a tweet at 2 am local time on Sunday, Dong said: “I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore.” The tweet then received about 89,300 retweets as of Sunday afternoon.
He then tweeted:” It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore”, “I also don't sell 'Flappy Bird', please don't ask”, and “And I still make games”.
Earlier, Dong told local newswire VnExpress that he had received a lot of emails from foreign developers which accused him of copying many features from their own apps. Dong said he knew nothing about the apps of those developers before they contacted him.
“This game was written entirely by me and I do not copy it from anyone," he told the newswire.
When asked about his feelings about the success of the game, Dong said he only found it brought him "a little fun".
"The fact that Flappy Bird is leading the rankings is really unexpected to me. Of course, I feel happy and proud about this game," Dong said.
“However, reputation will upset anyone's life," he said, adding that he does not want to be bothered. "I just want peace to continue to pursue the passion of an app developer."
As of Thursday, the mobile game topped the App Store and Google Play Store charts after making its way to the top 10 lists of the two electronic stores for about a month with 50 million downloads and over 10 million downloads from Apple store and Google Play Store, respectively.
Dong, who is living in the capital city of Hanoi, said the app was raking some $50,000 daily from in-app ads for him. It took him 3 days to develop it.
Regarding the information that gaming giants, like Zynga, can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire GEARS studio which was founded by Dong, he insisted he never sold Flappy Bird and his studio as what the game has brought in financially is enough for him to pursue new goals.
In 2014, GEARS will continue to offer new mini games for many platforms, especially iOS platform, he added.