If you have been following the saga of Flappy bird, you know that Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen pulled the game out of app stores around the world. The game was bringing Nguyen $50,000 a day from ad revenue, which would have made him a multi-millionaire quickly. Yet, he seems to suggest that the success of the game overwhelmed him. Now Nguyen wants everyone to pretend that Flappy Bird never happened.
There may be more to the story. According to a report published on Monday, the developer received a letter from Nintendo. The Japanese game developer wrote Nguyen to warn him that the pipes used in Flappy Bird, along with some other background art, appeared to be taken directly from Nintendo’s Super Mario games. The Flappy Bird developer had previously denied copying others in the creation of the game.
Nintendo won’t confirm or deny that it sent a letter, but Nguyen apparently avoided legal problems with Nintendo by taking the game down. To make matters worse for this guy, a report out of Vietnam reveals that the country’s Ministry of Finance is looking into Nguyen’s earnings to see if he owes Vietnam some income tax. It is too bad he couldn’t have kept making money on the game.
Source Phone Arena