It felt like it happened overnight. One day, everyone was playing Candy Crush or Angry Birds, and the next, people were literally screaming at their iPhones while a pixelated yellow bird face-planted into a green pipe. It was maddening. If you were around for the madness, you probably remember the frustration, the addiction, and the eventual heartbreak when the game vanished from the face of the earth. But if you're trying to pin down the exact timeline, things get a little fuzzy because the game didn't actually become a hit the moment it dropped.
So, when was Flappy Bird released exactly?
The official birth date was May 24, 2013. Dong Nguyen, a developer from Hanoi, Vietnam, uploaded his creation to the iOS App Store under his "dotGEARS" studio name. At first? Total silence. Nothing happened. It sat there for months, drifting in the digital void of millions of other apps. It’s hard to imagine now, but for about half a year, Flappy Bird was a ghost.
Then, everything changed.
The Viral Explosion of Early 2014
By late 2013, the game started seeing some traction. It wasn't because of a massive marketing budget or a fancy trailer. It was purely organic. Word of mouth on Twitter and Reddit began to bubble. By January 2014, the game was topping the charts in dozens of countries. Honestly, the timing was perfect. Mobile gaming was in a weird transition period where big studios were making games more complex, and players were secretly craving something stupidly simple.
You tapped the screen. The bird went up. You stopped tapping. The bird fell. That was it.
There was no tutorial. There were no power-ups. You didn't even have a menu to navigate, really. You just played, died, and tapped "Start" again. It was the digital equivalent of a Pringle—you couldn't have just one go. By the time February 2014 rolled around, Flappy Bird was reportedly making $50,000 a day in ad revenue. That is a staggering amount of money for a solo developer who just wanted to make a game for people to play while waiting for the bus.
🔗 Read more: Why the Pokemon Gen 1 Weakness Chart Is Still So Confusing
Why Did Flappy Bird Disappear?
The peak of the fame was also the beginning of the end. Dong Nguyen didn't want the spotlight. He was getting hounded by the press, receiving death threats from frustrated players, and being accused of "stealing" assets from Nintendo because the pipes looked a lot like the ones in Super Mario Bros.
On February 8, 2014, Nguyen posted a tweet that would go down in internet history. He said, "I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore."
People thought he was joking. He wasn't.
On February 9, he pulled the plug. The game was gone from the App Store and Google Play. It was a bizarre moment in tech history. Usually, when a product is making $1.5 million a month, the creator does everything possible to keep it alive. Nguyen did the opposite. He valued his peace of mind over the cash. He later told Forbes that the game had become an "addictive product" and that it was becoming a problem for people’s lives. He felt guilty.
The Aftermath and the eBay iPhones
When the game vanished, a weird secondary market exploded. People started listing iPhones with Flappy Bird pre-installed on eBay for thousands of dollars. It was peak 2014 absurdity. Some listings reached $50,000 or more, though many of those were likely troll bids.
Still, the cultural impact was undeniable.
💡 You might also like: Why the Connections Hint December 1 Puzzle is Driving Everyone Crazy
Because the original when was Flappy Bird released date was so far removed from its peak popularity, it created this weird mythos around the game. It felt like a comet that hit Earth, caused a brief period of total chaos, and then flew back into deep space. Thousands of clones immediately flooded the app stores. Flappy Doge, Flappy Whale, Flappy Everything. None of them felt the same. The physics were always slightly off. The "hitboxes" (the invisible lines that determine if you hit a pipe) were never as punishingly precise as Nguyen’s original.
Is Flappy Bird Back? (The 2024/2025 Revival)
If you've heard rumors recently that the game is returning, you aren't wrong, but there’s a catch. In late 2024, a group called "The Flappy Bird Foundation" announced they had acquired the rights to the trademark. They planned a massive relaunch for 2025.
However, there is a massive asterisk here.
Dong Nguyen himself is not involved. In fact, he took to X (formerly Twitter) for the first time in years to clarify that he didn't sell the rights and he still doesn't support the game's return—especially not with any ties to crypto or Web3, which the new version seems to have. The "Foundation" apparently acquired the trademark because Nguyen had let it lapse, allowing them to legally swoop in.
For the purists, the original game died in February 2014. Everything else is just a ghost.
Key Dates to Remember
To keep your history straight, here is the timeline of the "Flappy Era."
📖 Related: Why the Burger King Pokémon Poké Ball Recall Changed Everything
- May 24, 2013: Initial release on iOS.
- January 30, 2014: Released on Android.
- Early February 2014: Reaches #1 in over 50 countries.
- February 9, 2014: The game is officially deleted from stores.
- August 2014: Flappy Bird Family is released for Amazon Fire TV (the only "official" update Nguyen ever did).
- September 2024: The "Flappy Bird Foundation" announces a comeback.
Why the Release Date Matters for Developers
Looking back at when was Flappy Bird released, there’s a huge lesson for anyone building things today. Success isn't always instant. If Nguyen had looked at his download numbers in June 2013 and decided the game was a failure, the world would have never known the frustration of the "one more try" loop.
It also highlights how much the mobile landscape has changed. In 2013, a solo dev could accidentally break the world. Today, the App Store is so saturated and dominated by massive corporations with "User Acquisition" teams that the "Flappy Bird miracle" is almost impossible to replicate.
The game was a masterpiece of "Juice." That's a game design term for the little bits of feedback that make a game feel good. The sound of the bird passing through the pipe, the "thud" when it hit the ground, and the immediate restart. It stripped away the fluff and left only the core loop. It was brutal. It was honest.
Getting Your Fix Today
If you’re feeling nostalgic and want to play the original version, you have a few options that don't involve buying a $5,000 iPhone 5s from a stranger.
- Browser Emulators: Several websites have reverse-engineered the original code. You can play it in a Chrome tab. Just search for "Flappy Bird original HTML5."
- The New Relaunch: You can check out the 2025 version, but be aware it's a very different beast with more "gamified" features that might ruin the simplicity for you.
- The Fan Archives: There are APK files for Android users floating around, though you should always be careful with third-party downloads.
The legacy of that May 2013 release lives on in every hyper-casual game you see on the charts today. It proved that you don't need 4K graphics or a complex narrative to capture the human brain. You just need a bird, some pipes, and a difficulty curve that makes people want to throw their phone out a window.
Actionable Insight for the Future
If you are looking to revisit the Flappy Bird experience, prioritize the fan-made web clones over the newer "official" re-releases. The web versions typically preserve the original physics and the lack of microtransactions that made the 2013 release so pure. For developers, take the "Flappy" lesson to heart: launch early, leave it up, and don't assume a quiet first month means a project is dead. Focus on the core mechanic—the "hook"—and let the internet do the rest.