Flappy Bird shot down by creator

The notorious and punishing endless-runner mobile game Flappy Bird has been removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play by its creator.

Developer Dong Nguyen took the title down after taking exception to the sheer amount of press and general discussion the game has collected over its recent rise to notoriety.

Launched in May 2013, Flappy Bird has recently become the most popular download on iTunes rising to fame around December. At its peak, the free download was raking in approximately $50,000 a day from in-app advertising. Nguyen announced his decision to cull the title over Twitter.

'I cannot take this anymore,'[i] said Nguyen. [i]'It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore.'

He also clarified that his decision to take the game down was not related to criticisms of the game's art style, which appears to have been heavily inspired by the SNES era Super Mario titles.

Previously, the game's creator had railed against press coverage given to the game stating that he just wanted to make games in peace and that the industry was over-rating the success of his games and that this level of attention was never something that he wanted.

In reaction to Flappy Bird's demise, a Twitter account petitioning for the game to be saved, @SaveFlappyBird, appeared and posted a direct message exchange showing Nguyen agreeing to consider keeping the game on the app store if the account could prove that people enjoy the game by getting 100,000 retweets.