[hitekker]

The developer of FlappyBird shared his thoughts on this problem: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/rs-gaming/the-flight-of...

> By early February, the weight of everything – the scrutiny, the relentless criticism and accusations – felt crushing. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus, didn’t want to go outdoors. His parents, he says, “worried about my well-being.” His tweets became darker and more cryptic. “I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine,” read one. “But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.” He realized there was one thing to do: Pull the game. After tweeting that he was taking it down, 10 million people downloaded it in 22 hours. Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. “I’m master of my own fate,” he says. “Independent thinker.”

[swaptr]

Interesting. It reminds me of Leif's reflections on his journey, but with an even darker tone.: https://www.omegle.com

[sky2224]

This one genuinely didn't make much sense to me. My (conspiracy) guess is that Nintendo hit him with a really fat lawsuit (given the blatantly stolen art) and they came to some agreement that he'd pull the game if he could go out with a bang.

The dude was raking in $50,000/day. You don't just pull the plug on something doing that because of really mean and aggressive online comments, do you...?

[armchairhacker]

He made enough to live the rest of his life in luxury. And it wasn’t just online, the attention bled into his personal life.

> As news hit of how much money Nguyen was making, his face appeared in the Vietnamese papers and on TV, which was how his mom and dad first learned their son had made the game. The local paparazzi soon besieged his parents’ house, and he couldn’t go out unnoticed. While this might seem a small price to pay for such fame and fortune, for Nguyen the attention felt suffocating. “It is something I never want,” he tweeted. “Please give me peace.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/rs-gaming/the-flight-of...

Moreover, you can’t understate the psychological impact. For comparison, the success of Kony 2012 caused Jason Russel (its creator) to have a mental breakdown and run in the streets naked. And all Dong Nguyen did was post a few cryptic tweets, then decide that after he made far beyond enough money for anything he could have realistically dreamed of just a few weeks ago, he was ok with making less money from then on (he still made ad revenue from existing downloads) in exchange for less attention. It's actually impressive how well he kept his sanity during the ordeal.

[tomohelix]

He was from Vietnam. Suing someone there for copyright infringement is like suing a chinese company for stealing an IP. It is not easy and it is not likely to go anywhere.

Also, he probably got enough money to retire. If it did get $50k a day, he probably got more than a million before he pulled it. In 2014 Vietnam, that amount is probably more than most can make their whole life.

Heck, even in the US now, most people probably still can't make more than a milllion...

[j0hnyl]

I remember reading something about how there was a lot of heat on him, because he was essentially accused of stealing the game and that's the real reason why he took it down, not because he regretted creating something addictive... not sure if there's any truth to it, but then again why else would someone turn off a money printing machine at its peak?