Did Dev Pull Flappy Bird Because He Cheated?

By

flappychart

The Flappy Bird saga will not die thanks to one question still on the minds of Flappy Bird fans – how did Flappy Bird’s wild success ruin creator Dong Nguyen’s life?

Nguyen removed the game from the App Store and Google Play on Sunday despite making $50,000 a day off it, saying the game is a success, but it also ruins his simple life.

I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.

— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

Theories are boiling as to how the game ruined Dong’s life. Did Nintendo complain? No. Did he sell it? Nope.

Perhap his pockets are simply running out of room for those fat stacks, but a new theory emerged this morning, maybe Dong Nguyen cheated the App Store with bots.

Taking a look at the rise of Flappy Bird in the App Store rankings, Carter Thomas at BlueCloud solutions says evidence suggests that Nguyen may have used bots to artificially create downloads and reviews, despite Nguyen’s claims that he did zero promotion for the app.

Flappy Birds was released in June, the game didn’t take off until December. Coincidentally, his other game Shuriken Block rose in popularity at the exact same time without any cross promotion from Flappy Birds.

Impressive, right? It looks like in December/January the app gods shined their lights down on Dong Nguyen and said “YES YOU ARE WORTHY” and completely changed Apple’s algorithm to catapult him to the top of the charts. Typically, if I ever saw any rank insanity like this I would assume that there was traffic buying going on. This happens all the time and makes sense. This happens to indie developers as well when they release a game that hits.

Thomas also says the reviews of Flappy Birds points to bot behavior:

Read through the reviews. Check the word count. Do an analysis on how many times the word “glitch” “pipe” “addicting” are used relative to the review length. Also check how many negative reviews give 5 stars. I don’t think there is any app on the app store that has this many consistently morbid reviews that use the same words over and over and are posted in such regularity. If I am wrong, please let me know and we’ll start a petition for Apple to stop approving such life destroying apps.

Lacking solid evidence to prove Nguyen’s folly, Thomas concedes its possible that Flappy Bird is just a wildly viral game like Gangnam Style, but it looks really similar to bot activity. Meanwhile, Business Insider points to this Reddit post from January asking redditors to please help Flappy Bird take off, as well as a YouTube video from PewDiePie that has over 9 million views raving about Flappy Bird.

 

 

Source: BlueCloud Solutions

 

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.