With Flappy Bird now pulled from the App Store due to creator Dong Nyugen’s apparent nervous breakdown regarding the negative reaction to the game, many mobile developers have seized the opportunity to create clones of the hugely lucrative title it in order to capitalise on its success.
While we knew there were a lot of Flappy Bird clones making their way onto iOS, statistics released by The Guardian illustrate the sheer lack of originality invading the platform, with a third of all games released on the App Store per day being Flappy Bird clones.
The report notes that four of the top five free games on the App Store are Flappy Bird clones (Flappy Wings, Hoppy Frog, Flying Cyrus: Wrecking Ball and Splashy Fish), and that these four games are also present in the UK top ten.
It’s a shame that mobile gaming, a platform which houses the excellent Ridiculous Fishing and Jetpack Joyride, routinely suffers from such an inundation of tripe, but it seems that the influence of Flappy Bird has stretched further than any of us, not least its creator, could have possibly imagined.
