[United857]

But what was the tipping point? The game was out for 6 months where it got next to no traction.

For indie games, usually any growth only comes after some celebrity or big media outlet mentions it (e.g. Angry Birds took off after some Olympic skier mentioned playing it). There didn't seem to be any such moment with Flappy Bird.

[OmarIsmail]

The biggest YouTuber in the world made a video about it - that was most likely the Tipping Point. Now the real question is what was the path it took to get to a PewDiePie video.

[michaelone]

PewDiePie posted the video to his YouTube channel on January 27th, but Flappy Bird was already #1 as of January 17th. By the time it went viral with all this word of mouth and news coverage it was already #1. So the most fascinating part (especially on the App Store where a sudden rise like this is so anomalous) is how it took off to the #1 spot in the first place when it had been on the store since May. It might have needed to have all the other ingredients (addictive gameplay, nostalgic art, etc.) to do what it did, but those aren't what triggered it shooting from zero to #1 in a couple weeks.