Stressed Developer Yanks Best-Selling App

It's game over for Flappy Bird. At midnight, the Vietnamese creator of the hugely popular mobile game made good on his threat to pull the game from app stores, saying the attention from its instant success had become too much and he couldn't take it anymore, reports Mashable. Dong Nguyen, who had been making an estimated $50,000 per day from the game, says he plans to keep making games and the decision had nothing to do with legal issues, though friends say he received a warning letter from Nintendo over the game's similarity to Mario Bros, Reuters finds.

"I can call 'Flappy Bird' is (sic) a success of mine," tweeted Dong. "But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it." His creation—described as an "almost sadistically difficult game with crude graphics and laughable sound effects" by Nick Wingfield at the New York Times—can still be played by people who have already downloaded it, which should keep Dong's income from ads on the free game rolling in. The developer says that despite all the hard-to-handle attention, he plans to keep making games and might even create a Flappy Bird sequel. (More Flappy Bird stories.)