Flappy Bird is back, but only for Amazon Fire TV

Dong Nguyen, the developer of the insanely popular mobile game ‘Flappy Bird’, has made good on his promise to bring the game back. But there’s a couple of catches: it’s a multiplayer game, and so far, it’s only available for the Amazon Fire TV. There’s no word on when a regular Android or iOS version will be released. The new game is called ‘Flappy Bird Family’ and promises “incredible new features: Person vs Person mode, more obstacles, more fun and still very hard”. Nguyen shocked the world last winter when he pulled ‘Flappy Bird’ from the app stores.

The free game had gone viral, downloaded 50 million times and was reportedly making him thousands of dollars a day in advertising. It was easy to play (just keep the bird flying through the obstacles) but hard to play well. But crazy jokes about people committing violence over the game started circulating on the internet and one day Nguyen tweeted “I cannot take this anymore” and pulled the game f rom the app stores. Things got s o wei r d after that that people started tweeting death a n d s u i c i d e threats. Most of them were jokes but Nguyen still felt that he created a game that was “too addictive”.

Across all the apps stores and even the web, clones sprouted like mushrooms and in May, Nguyen promised a new multiplayer version of the game. Now it’s available for Amazon’s Fire TV. Using the remote or dedicated video game controller, players push a button instead of tapping a touchscreen. In the meantime, looks like iPhone gamers have moved on to ‘100 Balls’, another addictive game.