The Bird Lord Speaks: Why We Should Believe In 'Flappy Bird' Creator Dong Nguyen

Dong Nguyen has emerged from the shadows, and amazingly, he chose to speak with Forbes’ Lan Anh Nguyen exclusively. It’s his first interview since announcing he was taking down his #1 selling game Flappy Bird, and then promptly following through on the promise a day later.

I highly suggest you check out Nguyen’s interview here, where he managed to discuss a few of the more pressing issues we’ve all been wondering about. I had the honor of crafting a few of these questions myself and sending them over to Vietnam. Why exactly would he do this? What is going through the mind of a man who shuts down a game supposedly bringing in $50,000 in revenue daily?

Even with these new answers, Nguyen remains something of a mystery. His dual reasoning for taking Flappy Bird down was that players were getting too addicted to it, which he deems harmful, and that he was getting too much unwanted attention for the game. Despite the money, Nguyen says that his “life has not been as comfortable as I was before.”

Through these latest comments, Nguyen comes across as a simple man who means what he says. It really doesn’t feel like this was all a giant marketing stunt to increase sales of the game, and I do believe he thinks he was doing a good thing for the general public by deleting perhaps an overly addicting game. He says it’s not coming back, and it’s for the best. I would agree.

Despite attracting newfound mountains of attention with all the deletion drama this weekend, Nguyen says he feels liberated by the death of Flappy Bird, and he will continue to focus on developing other games. He already has a few other top selling ones in the app store, but promises he won’t delete them unless they also become too addicting.

Once again, all of this comes down to whether or not you believe Nguyen’s self-stated motivations. To me, he comes across as something of a gentle eccentric. He’s not fleeing from success completely as some seem to think, he’s just doing what he wants with a game he designed. It’s an incredibly unusual circumstance because even small companies that hit it big with games are still teams. Nguyen’s .GAME studio is literally one man, and if he decides enough is enough for one of his games, that’s it. He can wipe it off the map if he feels like it.

I also believe Nguyen’s claim that this wasn’t motivated by any legal threats. Nintendo just wouldn’t have a case against him based on the warp pipe art alone, and the creator of 2011′s Piou Piou said he wouldn’t pursue any legal action, just like Nguyen said in this interview he won’t go after his own clones. I do believe that Nguyen’s game is in fact some degree of a clone itself, and that should be pointed out, but with that said, the man never deserved to be directly harassed, insulted or threatened. I saw a litany of death threats leveled against the man by idiots on Twitter this weekend, and I can understand how that could affect someone deeply.

I think this interview cements what I suspected since this saga started. Dong Nguyen did indeed have a simple life before all this, and hasn’t quite figured out how to adjust to all this newfound fame. It’s certainly not expected behavior to erase the very thing that’s made you a household name in the video game world, and brought you millions of dollars, but I don’t think the events of this weekend had any sinister motivations behind them.

But also, Nguyen isn’t a martyr. He’s not picking up his toys and going home, nor has he “walked away from a fortune” per se. Flappy Bird already netted him a hefty amount of cash to be sure, and already installed copies are likely still bringing in loads of revenue daily. He’s still developing games and already has many that are popular at present. He is, and will continue to be, very successful in the app market, this unheard of deletion decision aside.

My hope for Nguyen is that he learns to adjust to his newfound celebrity, and shrugs off his vile critics while embracing constructive feedback. I hope his other new games are clearly original to avoid further accusations of cloning. I hope he continues to be an inspiration to his countrymen, and really, anyone who not only wants to make it big, but do so on their own terms.

Though I can’t prove it’s true, I want to believe someone can place the good of the public and peace of mind over money. Therefore, I believe in Dong Nguyen.

Exclusive: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App 'Gone Forever' Because It Was 'An Addictive Product'

The mysterious developer of the world’s most popular free app, who drew global attention this past weekend with his sudden decision to remove it, tells Forbes that Flappy Bird is dead. Permanently.

“Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed,” says Dong Nguyen, in an exclusive interview, his first since he pulled the plug on the app. “But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”

In killing Flappy Bird for what he maintains are altruistic reasons, Nguyen is walking away from a jackpot. An article in the Verge last week estimated his daily take from in-app advertising at $50,000. Nguyen declined to confirm that number. “I don’t know the exact figure, but I do know it’s a lot.”

The circumstances surrounding the interview, conducted in Vietnamese, were as much of a soap opera as his public ruminations about whether to take down the app. The interview with Forbes took place in a hotel in Hanoi, with a strict condition that Forbes not reveal Nguyen’s face. It was delayed several hours, in part because Nguyen had a sudden meeting with Vietnam’s deputy prime minister Vu Duc Dam – a remarkable turn of events for someone unknown a week ago. Nguyen says his parents didn’t even know that Flappy Bird existed, much less his role in it, until media coverage spun out of control in the past few days.

The 29-year-old, who sports a close-cropped haircut, appeared stressed. He smoked several cigarettes over the course of the 45-minute interview, and doodled monkey heads on a pad of paper.

Flappy Bird was released for free on May 24, 2013 first for iOS with little fanfare by a Vietnam-based developer called .GEARS. Nguyen says he coded the game over two or three days. The game mechanics were simple yet irritatingly difficult. Tapping on your smartphone screen, players navigated a pixilated bird through narrow corridors of green pipes that looked suspiciously like the pipes found in Nintendo ’s Super Mario Bros.—something that Nguyen says that was coincidental. (He also denied reports that Nintendo had sent him a legal threat, or that it had anything to do with him killing the app.) Striking any surface resulted in instant death. Your chance of death multiplied exponentially with each gate you passed.

Nguyen has several other top app store games, including Super Ball Juggling and Shuriken Block, which are currently #6 and #18 on the iOS store, respectively. Nguyen says that he has no plans to remove those games, which he termed “harmless.” If he thought users were getting addicted, however, he said he would not hesitate to also take them down.

In mulling whether to pull Flappy Bird, Nguyen said that it was guilt – atop the fact that “my life has not been as comfortable as I was before” – that motivated him. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. He added that his conscience is relieved; he spent the past few days, Internet-free, catching up on slumber.

“I don’t think it’s a mistake,” he says. “I have thought it through.”

We haven’t heard the last of Nguyen. He says he will continue to develop games. “After the success of Flappy Bird, I feel more confident, and I have freedom to do what I want to do.”

And Flappy Bird addicts should have nothing to worry about, as there are certainly no shortages of Flappy Bird replacements. Clones have stormed the App store with names like Flappy Plane, Flappy Whale, Flappy Penguin and Flappy Angry Bird. Nguyen said he probably won’t take legal action against any copycats. “I have tried playing Ironpants,” he added. “It’s a good game.”

When asked if there’s anything he wanted to tell disappointed users of the authentic Flappy Bird, Nguyen was concise: “Thank you very much for playing my game.”