First app to be withdrawn after topping the Apple App Store chart

In April 2013, while on a weekend break from his day job of building navigation software for taxis, Vietnamese games developer Dong Nguyen created a game that would go down in the annals of app history: Flappy Bird. The game wasn’t an instant hit, but eight months after its release it rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts in the USA, UK and China. Worried that he had created something dangerously addictive, Nguyen subsequently removed the game from the store on 10 February 2014 – it was the first app ever to be withdrawn after topping the Apple App Store. The object of the game was very simple – to fly an animated bird character through the gaps in a series of vertical pipes by tapping the screen. Each tap makes the bird flap its wings, giving it a small boost upward as it moves steadily to the right. If it doesn’t flap its wings, it quickly drops owing to the effect of gravity. Colliding with the pipes results in instant death for the bird. It was an easy concept to learn but one that was very difficult to master, which made it all the more addictive.