'Flappy Bee' rips us off - NZ game developer

The runaway success of a game called 'Flappy Bird' dominated social media over the weekend - and more so after its developer, Dong Nguyen (@dongatory), said the mobile game "Ruins my simple life ... I cannot take this anymore." 

The Vietnamese app developer said he would pull Flappy Bird from the Apple and Android app stores within 24 hours, and he duly carried out his threat.

But that was not before Flappy Bird had become one of the most talked-about games in the world, and a number one hit on Apple's App Store chart - success that saw it quickly cloned and variants put up on the App Store. 

New Zealand games developer Flightless says it became aware of one of these game clones called 'Flappy Bee' a few days ago. The game is not only trying to leverage the success of 'Flappy Bird', but is also trying to leverage the success of Flightless‘ game 'Bee Leader', the company says

It is using copyrighted assets that have been directly stolen from 'Bee Leader', including the main app icon, Flightless alleges.

Since 'Flappy Bird' was removed App Store Sunday, the number search result for 'Flappy Bird' on the US App Store is "this cloned and ripped game 'Flappy Bee', which features Flightless’ stolen artwork and content", Flightless says (Bee Leader is free, but Flightless charges between $1.29 and $4.29 for other apps in its portfolio. Flappy Bee is free).

Flightless Technical Director Greg Harding says, “We have submitted a content dispute with Apple but currently the offending ‘Flappy Bee’ App is number 4 on the App Store charts and gathering significant ad network revenue for its rogue developer, all while using our work. It’s been a rough day.”

Flightless Creative Director John O’Reilly tells NBR,  "It’s not costing us revenue, but they are using our copyrighted artwork and IP ripped directly from our game and that’s unacceptable to us and I imagine most content generators."

Mr O’Reilly adds, “We’d like to acknowledge the many emails and tweets of support from people who have seen the offending game. We’re gutted and feel powerless as a small indie games company to see our hard work taken advantage of in this way. We’re considering our legal position at the moment.”

‘Bee Leader’ for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac OS X, Windows and Windows Phone by Flightless was featured as the App Store‘s App of the Week in May 2013 and was nominated one of the App Store’s Best Games of 2012. The game has received critical success with three million downloads worldwide, the company says.