[1] The game is a side-scroller where the player controls a bird, Faby, attempting to fly between columns of green pipes without hitting them.

Flappy Bird was removed from both the App Store and Google Play on February 10, 2014, with Nguyen claiming that he felt guilty over what he considered to be the game's addictive nature and overusage.

At 19, while studying programming at a local university, he won an internship at Punch Entertainment, one of the few video game companies in Vietnam.

Although originally unsuccessful, the game received a massive influx of players after being reviewed by the Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie.

[24][25] Tuoi Tre News, the English-language edition of the Vietnamese newspaper Tuổi Trẻ, reported from a local technology expert that Flappy Bird's removal could have been due to a legal challenge from Nintendo over perceived visual similarities to the Mario games.

[27] Lawyers in Vietnam also denied allegations that Nguyen had to remove the game due to violation of laws on Internet use in the country.

[29] In an interview with Forbes, Nguyen cited the game's addictive nature for its cancellation, stating: "Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed.

[30] In a March 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Nguyen refused to rule out re-releasing Flappy Bird, on condition that it would come with a warning to "Take a break".

[33] On January 12, 2024, the trademark for Flappy Bird was terminated and subsequently handed over to Gametech Holdings after Dong Nguyen had failed to reclaim it.

[34] Gametech announced an unofficial reboot to the game on September 12, more than ten years after its discontinuation, under the name "The Flappy Bird Foundation", with additional features and characters.

[39] The app was criticized by the Huffington Post, which described it as an "insanely irritating, difficult and frustrating game which combines a super-steep difficulty curve with bad, boring graphics and jerky movement".

[47] When questioned on this by The Daily Telegraph, Nguyen said that he respected other people's opinions and did not wish to comment, adding, "I'd like to make my games in peace.

[57] Technology editor Patrick O'Rourke of Canada.com also charged that Flappy Bird is "almost a complete ripoff" of Piou Piou vs Cactus, as well as that its primary gameplay mechanic is a "rip off" from a game called Helicopter Game, and that it heavily borrowed sound effects from Super Mario Bros.

[62] At the peak of its popularity, over 60 clones per day[63] were appearing on the App Store, prompting both Google and Apple to begin rejecting games with the word Flappy in the name.

[65][66][67] Shortly after the game's removal, security researchers warned that some versions of Flappy Bird and its imitators available on alternative Android app stores have been found to contain malware that can lead to unauthorised charges to a user's phone bills.

The number matching game Threes has been compared to Flappy Bird because of the similarities between how people react to them and by the chain of clones that they are both respectively part of.

[68] In February 2014, the non-profit computer science education organization Code.org unveiled a set of lessons that would allow the student to make their own Flappy Bird clone.

[69][70] Nguyen's other games Super Ball Juggling and Shuriken Block ranked at 6th and 18th respectively on the App Store during early February 2014 on the back of Flappy Bird's success.

In 2016, video game player and livestreamer SethBling replicated Flappy Bird within Super Mario World through code injection.