Flappy Bird reboot increasingly looks like a crypto mess as trailer goes dark

Flappy Bird is coming back, but the game increasingly seems like a cash grab as the original creator has confirmed he has nothing to do with it, and crypto ties in the game are becoming abundantly clear.

The viral hit Flappy Bird shut down a decade ago, with the game’s overwhelming success leading to its creator opting to shut the game down entirely. The game was such a hit that it became an Easter egg within Android not long after its shutdown.

A reboot of the game produced by “The Flappy Bird Foundation” was announced last week, claiming to have acquired the rights to the game and set to launch a revamped version of it with new levels and characters in early 2025.

However, the new Flappy Bird has no ties to the original creator of the game, with Dong Nguyen confirming on Twitter/X over the weekend that he “did not sell anything” and has nothing to do with the new title.

It was previously noticed that Gametech Holdings LLC had not purchased the game’s rights from Nguyen, but rather grabbed the trademark when it was considered “abandoned,” leading to the change in “ownership” and this new reboot.

Beyond the sketchy means of acquisition, it also increasingly looks like the new Flappy Bird is wrought with ties to cryptocurrency.

We called out the potential crypto ties in our original reporting, where we noticed that the Telegram announcement of the game had been shared by an account with ties to sketchy cryptocurrency accounts. In the time since, it’s become abundantly clear that the game is hiding some deeper ties to crypto.

A page on the reboot’s website was spotted with “$Flap,” a crypto token which appears to be tied to Solana. The game is described as a “Community owned Web2 and Web3 game.” A playable version of the game hosted on the website is also full of references to crypto and Web3. This was all spotted by Varun.ch in a blog post.

References to these crypto ties have largely been hidden behind deeper digging following the release. As of September 16 the game’s trailer on YouTube has been set to private, preventing anyone from viewing it. The website, as of now, is still live.

What do you think of the new Flappy Bird now?