Say goodbye to bad clones. The mobile hit Flappy Bird has been missing from mobile devices since 2014, but thanks to some fans, it’s now officially coming back.
The Flappy Bird Foundation, a group made up of fans who acquired the trademark, along with Kek, the developer behind Flappy Bird’s inspiration Piou Piou vs. Cactus, announced Thursday that it’s releasing an expanded version of the challenging mobile platformer in 2025 on iOS and Android, along with versions on desktop and in a web browser.
The original Flappy Bird debuted in 2013, but by 2014 it had become one of the most popular apps across both iOS and Android thanks to its challenging gameplay, which involved tapping the screen to move a bird up and down between obstacles. The controls were finicky though, so you needed to be precise and careful when moving the bird up and down. At the height of its popularity, The Verge estimated the app was bringing in around $50,000 per day from in-app ads.
“It’s been a decade-long, convoluted journey to get here, but we’re so excited to finally begin sharing Flappy Bird once again with the world,” chief creative Michael Roberts said in a press release.
The group said the new title will feature new game modes, characters, worlds, and more online challenges. As somebody who was never able to make it past the first couple of levels of the original, I can expect a lot of it will be new for many players. Flappy Bird Foundation said its goal is to modernize and revamp the game without removing what made it so popular.
It’s a surprising moment considering the mobile game’s history. In February 2014, developer Dong Nguyen announced via Twitter that he would be removing the game from app stores. “I cannot take this anymore,” Nguyen wrote at the time.
Nguyen told Forbes that he took it down because it had “become an addictive product.” “I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever,” Nguyen said. Clones sprouted up in response — at one point making up a third of new iOS games — and it’s remained that way ever since.
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