Flappy Bird Sequel To Be Released In August With Multiplayer Option: Dong Nguyen

Flappy Bird, an immensely popular game that took the gaming world by storm when its creator, Dong Nguyen, removed the title from both Android and iOS app stores in February when it was one of the most downloaded apps, is set to make a comeback soon.

The sequel to the original Flappy Bird game is said to be launched on Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) App Store in August with a new multiplayer mode and “less addictive” qualities, Nguyen told CNBC in an interview Wednesday. Nguyen also said Flappy Bird was excessively addictive and that he preferred people spend their time on productive activities rather than being obsessed about guiding a cartoon bird through pipes.

In February, Vietnam-based Nguyen unexpectedly pulled Flappy Bird from app stores while the game was generating more than 50 million downloads and earning him an average of $50,000 in daily ad revenues.

In an interview with Rolling Stone in March, Nguyen said that he decided to pull Flappy Bird partly due to the overwhelming amount of attention he received from the media. He also said that he was troubled by the messages from Flappy Bird players about the game's addictiveness.

“Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed,” Nguyen told Forbes at the time. “But it happened to 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.”

After Flappy Bird was removed from app stores, many copycat games surfaced on the Internet to cash in on Flappy Bird’s sudden popularity. However, both Apple and Google came down hard on such replica apps by rejecting games that carried the word “Flappy” in their title.

Although Flappy Bird clones could not recreate the craze that Nguyen’s game generated in its time, users are expected to welcome the return of the next version of the popular game, according to MacRumors.

During Wednesday’s interview, Nguyen also said that he was working on other apps, including one which features “a guy jumping from building to building.”