If you’re into mobile gaming or tech at all, you’ve probably heard of Flappy Bird – the mobile game that has recently taken the world by storm. However, just as quickly as the app rose to fame, it came crashing down last night as it’s developer pulled it from the App Store and Google Play.

Flappy Bird first made waves around the app industry in January of this year. Although Flappy Bird has been available on the App Store since May 2013, the game only rose to prominence early in 2014. It was also only released for Android in January.

The game itself is actually so simple, its hard to believe it is so popular. Drawing inspiration from 90’s 8-bit gaming, Flappy Bird seems to be easy, except it’s not; it’s really hard.

The object of the game is to navigate the Flappy Bird through poles that look like the green pipes in the original Super Mario game. However, controlling the bird is almost impossible.

Because of the combination of perceived simplicity and level of difficulty, the game is extremely addictive. This, of course, contributed to the rise of Flappy Bird, making it the number one free app on both the App Store and Google Play.

In fact, Flappy Bird was so popular, that it is estimated that it’s developer, Dong Nguyen, was making upwards of $50 000 a day in ad revenue.

However, to Flappy Bird fans’ horror, Nguyen made a shocking statement on his Twitter account on Saturday; Flappy Bird will be no more.

Nguyen tweeted that the app (or rather it’s enormous success) was ‘ruining his simple life’. He then followed up with another tweet that read:

“I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.”

Needless to say, this tweet made jaws drop. Would Nguyen follow through with his plan? Well, yes, indeed. On Sunday, Flappy Bird was taken down from the App Store and Google Play, and is no longer available for download.

This bizarre move begs the question; why would anyone take down a number one app, generating $50 000 a day?

To find out more about Nguyen’s freak out, head over to Bandwidth Blog.

[Source: Bandwidth Blog]