A team of self-proclaimed Flappy Bird fans are apparently re-releasing the Flappy Bird game as a crypto project, drawing heavy criticism from X (formerly Twitter) users.
A reboot of Flappy Bird was announced yesterday, ten years after the original was removed from the app store. However, this new version of Flappy Bird plans to make it a web3 game on Solana, describing it as “The world’s first open source game owned by the Web 2 and Web 3 community.“
Elsewhere, in the web version of the Flappy Bird game, it is mentioned $FLAP Token to Be on Telegram Blockchainoffer betting options and give away free airdrops.
It is unclear whether the final crypto token will be launched on Solana or Telegram, and why those pages do not have prominent links on the site; perhaps the crypto-related plans have been abandoned.
Elsewhere, the project states: “Artists, developers, and creators can create, play, and earn from the iconic Flappy Bird IP.” The main creative force behind the Flappy Bird revival is said to be Michael Roberts, who is also the cryptocurrency entrepreneur behind the NFT project “Deez.”
These cryptocurrency pages were found on the Flappy Bird sitemap. Many of them these pages were removed todayafter this controversy. The current Flappy Bird home page does not appear to have these crypto elements.
Flappy Bird’s Crypto Rebranding Has Not Been Well-Received
Users have called the team behind the game “scammers,” described it as a “crypto Ponzi scheme,” and dubbed it a “crypto scam.”
Users are also unhappy with how the team acquired the rights to Flappy Bird. Indeed, on September 29, 2023, developer Gametech Holdings LLC filed a trademark lawsuit against the original creator of Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyen Ha.
Read more: Creator of AI Rabbit Assistant Hides NFT Past
Nguyen did not defend the dispute and lost the rights to Flappy Bird, while Gametech Holdings LLC claimed the intellectual property rights. Indeed, the Flappy Bird sitemap states, “We have paved the way for ourselves to acquire the legal rights to the legendary Flappy Bird!”
Flappy Bird rose to fame in 2013 for its frustratingly addictive gameplay of moving a bird between pipes. It went viral and eventually led to its creator shutting down the game in February 2014 when the game’s fame became too much for Nguyen.
