10 Video Game Developers Who HATE Their Own Creation
1. Dong Nguyen - Flappy Bird
Mobile game Flappy Bird was released in May 2013 and became an unexpected sensation the next year, with creator Dong Nguyen seeking to offer a simpler alternative to the massively successful Angry Birds.
Despite mixed reviews, it was a colossal hit and downloaded more than 50 million times on the App Store alone, earning Nguyen $50,000 per day through sales and ad revenue.
But by February 2014, Nguyen decided to pull the game from storefronts, and though many initially suspected a legal challenge from Angry Birds creators Rovio Entertainment was coming, he revealed that he simply felt intense guilt over the game's addictive nature, enough that it caused him to lose sleep.
In a statement at the time, Nguyen said that Flappy Bird had "ruined" his simple life and that he hated the game. A revised version, Flappy Birds Family, was however released later that year, though largely fell upon deaf ears as the Flappy Bird craze had come and gone.
Nguyen's disdain for Flappy Bird was enough that a widely-circulated hoax even claimed he had killed himself as a result of the game's shock success - and a lot of people believed it.