The plot around Flappy Bird’s triumphant return thickens as Dong Nguyen, the creator of the original mobile game, took to social media to distance himself from the upcoming project. He further insisted he did not sell the rights and trademark to the game.

The controversies began unwrapping after an organisation calling itself the 'Flappy Bird Foundation' announced plans to bring back Flappy Bird in 2025. Founded in 2023, they also released a trailer and plans for expansion, but did not mention Nguyen or his potential involvement.

As such, eyebrows were raised about how the self-proclaimed foundation came to own the Flappy Bird trademark. They claimed to have “acquired” the official trademark rights from a company called Gametech Holdings LLC, along with the rights for the original game and character Piou Piou vs. Cactus, the mobile title “that has long been credited as originally inspiring the iconic Flappy bird.”

It turns out that Gametech had filed an opposition to Nguyen’s Flappy Bird trademark last year, claiming he had abandoned it. After Nguyen failed to respond to various trademark notices, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) declared Nguyen’s original Flappy Bird trademark abandoned. Then, in January this year, the USPTO terminated Nguyen’s claim to it.

Now, Nguyen has broken his silence with a solitary tweet, which was also his first post on the platform since 2017. In it, he insisted he has no involvement with the new Flappy Bird, he “did not sell anything,” and: “I also don’t support crypto,” which is a reference to the involvement of chief creative Michael Roberts, who is the founder of 1208 Productions, a mobile game developer heavily involved with NFTs and cryptocurrency, including the NFT brand 'Deez.'

Flappy Bird was pulled offline in 2014 even though it had hundreds of millions of players because Nguyen decided it was hampering his life. The Flappy Bird Foundation, on September 12, released the first trailer for the new project and announced plans to launch by the end of October across multiple platforms including web browsers, and an iOS and Android version at some point in 2025.

Ayaan is the Chief News Editor of The Daily Esports.