Flappy Bird creator denounces remake, claims it’s tied to crypto

The original creator of Flappy Bird has disavowed the just-announced mobile remake, connecting it to crypto and distancing himself from the project.

The new game, announced last week, was the “official” return of the mobile games classic, and would be including the core gameplay, along with new single- and multiplayer game modes and characters. Developer Dong Nguyen posted a short statement on X (formerly Twitter) clarifying that he was not involved with the new game, and “I also don’t support crypto.”

While the original press release doesn’t note any explicit connection to Nguyen, the Flappy Bird marketing materials seem to specify a connection. “Just a decade ago, I was the talk of the town … Sadly, I had to leave the fame and spotlight behind to go home and find out who I really am,” the website homepage says. It goes on to say that it “worked with my predecessor to uncage me.” This could refer to Nguyen, but also Kek, the developer behind Piou Piou vs. Cactus, credited as the spiritual predecessor to Flappy Bird.

The crypto comment refers to research done by cybersecurity researcher Varun Biniwale, who published a post to his website Thursday laying out some “fishy” aspects, as Biniwale called it, with the project. He wrote that Michael Roberts, the chief creative behind the new Flappy Bird, was connected with a company called 1208 Productions, which owned the NFT brand Deez and worked in web3 since 2021. While Roberts’ X profile lists 1208 Productions’ website in Biniwale’s post, it now just lists the new Flappy Bird website. 1208’s website, at the time of this writing, doesn’t list any of its web3 or NFT projects, but you can see them in through the Wayback Machine.

Biniwale also dug into the website’s metadata, pulling out some prototypes that mention connecting the game to various crypto wallets, and leaderboards that appear to include crypto influencers.

Nguyen published Flappy Bird on mobile games stores starting in 2013, but removed it in 2014 because it