After Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen announced he was pulling his addictive game from the Apple App Store and Google Play, which prompted reactions that varied from outraged to threatening, quite a few games have popped up that are very similar to Flappy Bird. Considering that Flappy Bird was bringing in $50,000 per day for Nguyen, it’s no surprise that others are trying to capitalize on the game’s success, but Apple is now rejecting games with the word “Flappy” in the title.
If you searched for the word “flappy” in the Apple App Store a couple of weeks ago, you would have found quite a few games with the word “Flappy” in the title. Flappy Bee, Flappy Puppy, Flappy Rabbits and Flappy Plane are just a few of the games that would have popped up.
The same search now doesn’t yield many results with “Flappy” in the name at all, and this is because Apple is now rejecting new apps that have the word “Flappy” in them. According to Tech Crunch, some developers have gotten a rejection notice from Apple for violating the App Store Review Guidelines with their submissions. Developer Ken Carpenter says that Apple rejected his game Flappy Dragon for the following reasons:
22.2: Apps that contain false, fraudulent or misleading representations will be rejected
22.2 We found that your app, and/or its metadata, contains content that could be misleading to users, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.
We found your app name attempts to leverage a popular app.
This move is infuriating many developers. Check out tweets on the matter from Carpenter and mobile game developer Kuyi Mobile below.
This is just not my fucking week: Rejected. "We found your app name attempts to leverage a popular app." Which app? FB doesn't exist!?!?!
— Ken Carpenter (@MindJuiceMedia) February 15, 2014
@wtrebella @MindJuiceMedia Even Google Play is also rejecting app submissions that use Flappy in the title. Must be pretty saturated now.
— Kuyi Mobile (@kuyimobile) February 15, 2014
Carpenter certainly raises a point about Apple rejecting his game–how is it possible for these games to violate the rules since Flappy Bird doesn’t exist in the App Store anymore? Perhaps Apple should leave it up to Dong Nguyen to decide whether he wants to pursue litigation against the developers.
Even if Apple is successful in getting rid of the games with “Flappy” in the title, don’t expect similar games to go away anytime soon. Many developers are now removing “Flappy” from their game names to get around the “Flappy” word ban (Flappy Bee was changed to Jumpy Bee). Splashy Fish is the number one free app in the Apple App Store, followed behind Flying Cyrus (no, it doesn’t have “Flappy” or an animal in the name, but the setup is similar and hilarious), and City Bird is in the number four spot.
Image via Twitter