The Flappy Bird reboot might be hiding a dark, unpleasant secret

You have probably heard of Flappy Bird – the simple but oh so frustrating game that required you to time perfected taps to ensure a bird avoided randomly placed green pipes.

There wasn't a huge amount to it but it was unbelievably addictive at the time of its existence, so much so that its creator, Dong Nguyen, pulled it. 

Nguyen deleted the game in 2014 and while there have been a number of attempts to revive it and replicate the viral hit the game was 10 years ago, none have quite succeeded. Reports earlier in September from Polygon suggested Flappy Bird was making a comeback however, with the game claimed to be under new ownership – The Flappy Bird Foundation.

It was said The Flappy Bird Foundation had acquired the official game's trademark rights, along with the rights to the game and the characters. There were claims that it was coming to several platforms this year, then iOS and Android in 2025. But, all is not as it seems. 

The new Flappy Bird has no ties to the original creator of the game, as reported by 9to5Google. Nguyen confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that he "did not sell anything" and is not "related with their game".

Instead, it looks like Gametech Holdings LLC has grabbed the Flappy Bird trademark when it was "abandoned", and there also appear to be ties to cryptocurrency.

9to5Google called out the potential crypto ties in its initial reporting about the revamp, and those have been further highlighted by a blog post on Varun.ch, which the site also picked up and reported on.

The Flappy Bird reboot's website has a page with “$Flap”, said to be a crypto token which appears to be tied to Solana. A playable version of the game on the website also had references to crypto and Web3.

The trailer for the new Flappy Bird game has since been pulled, too, even though the website is still live for now. That's another red flag.

It's a shame as we were quite looking forward to being frustrated trying to flap that bird over the green pipes and get a higher score this time around – more than 3 will do us.