Flappy Bird was a simple thing: a bird named Faby, some green pipes, gaps too narrow for comfort. Dong Nguyen built it in a few days at his company .Gears, using a bird left over from a cancelled 2012 game, and released it quietly in May 2013. Critics called it too hard, too familiar. Players called it irresistible. By early 2014 it was the most downloaded free game on the iOS App Store, and millions of us knew the particular sting of tapping once too late, one pipe short of our best score, ready to try again anyway.
Then, at the very peak of its success, Nguyen took it down. On February 8, 2014, Flappy Bird vanished from the app stores, withdrawn by its own creator out of guilt over what he felt it was doing to the people who played it. That is an ending with real dignity in it, and we honor it. But we lost something when the pipes went dark: the game itself, gone from every new phone, playable only on the devices of those who thought to keep it. A thing that brought that many people that much stubborn joy deserves better than to exist only in screenshots.
So we ask — respectfully, and without pressure — for Flappy Bird to return. Even a limited run. Even a respectful revival that keeps what made it special and addresses what weighed on its creator. The signatures below are not nostalgia theater; they are players who missed the bird and want one more honest chance at the next pipe. He was flying just fine. Let him fly again.
— filed by the fans of Flappy Bird, at products.rip
Read the full story and sources on the memorial page.