Gaming company Nintendo responded to reports today regarding the withdrawl of the blockbuster app "Flappy Bird." The Guardian said Nintendo is claiming that it had nothing to do with the decision to pull out the game, developed by its Vietnamese creator Dong Nguyen, from its app market.
On Monday, Nguyen had pulled out the game after announcing its death on Twitter 24 hours beforehand. According to his Twitter feed, Nguyen is unable to cope with the mega success of his game and clarified that the decision was not influenced by any legal issues.
"Press people are overrating the success of my games. It is something I never want. Please give me peace," one of his tweets read.
Nguyen was notably silent after saying his piece about the game on Feburary 8, the UK newspaper said.
Speculation arose when the images used in "Flappy Bird" resembled the first Mario games of Nintendo, the Guardian said. The Japanese gaming company had since refused to produce games for mobile devices despite the profitability in the market segment.
Nintendo's spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa told the Wall Street Journal, "While we usually do not comment on the rumors and speculations, we have already denied the speculation."
The Guardian noted that Nintendo's public response was an unlikely tactic of the Japanese gaming company, considering that it was not very vocal with its legal and other challenges.
The meteoric rise of "Flappy Bird" in the app marketplaces was unknown, but pundits believed that the adoption of YouTube stars like PewDiePie certainly boosted the game's popularity. A play-through video of "Flappy Bird" was published by PewDiePie on January 27, which as of now has over 10 million views.
Nguyen reportedly earned $50,000 a day in ad revenue from the game alone and saw "Flappy Bird" downloaded over 50 million times.
