TL;DR
- Evidence appearing to reflect development work on the new Flappy Bird reveals a pronounced focus on Web3 and crypto.
- The app was preparing support for numerous crypto wallets, and a leaderboard database references many crypto influencers.
- It’s as of yet unclear to what extent this focus may take in the final, released game.
What looks like a bird, and flaps like a bird, but maybe isn’t the same innocent time-killer you fondly remember from a decade ago? Earlier this week, mobile gaming got some surprise news when we learned Flappy Bird was coming back to smartphones. And while the project announced we’d be getting “the official Flappy Bird,” it hasn’t taken long for some voices of concern to start questioning exactly who’s behind this effort and what their intentions are.
First off, you need to know that this new incarnation isn’t coming from the original developer, Dong Nguyen. Instead, these developers acquired the Flappy Bird trademark, and have been working on their own game based on his original. So, while this is “official” in a legal sense, it’s probably also far from what a lot of gamers were expecting.
So far, that’s a bit curious, but nothing really to be immediately concerned about. But then people like Varun Biniwale started looking a little closer, and the evidence he’s uncovered from pages hosted on the new Flappy Bird site paints the picture of a game with heavy Web3 crypto integration.
Game assets invite users to connect their crypto wallets, and encourage them to “mine points” so they can “TAP, FLAP AND WIN!” The game’s API even reveals a leaderboard populated with the names of crypto influencers. Biniwale goes on to find connections between the project’s devs and past Web3/crypto efforts.
Even now, this is all still very circumstantial, and just because development might have been going in one direction at some point in time doesn’t necessarily mean that the finished app we ultimately get is going to be trying to make crypto converts out of us at every step. But this is also an IP that’s long been dealing with a reputation for its negative, addictive qualities, which is just about the last thing we want to see mashed up with crypto.
It’s still premature to accuse this project of anything other than wanting to bring Flappy Bird back, but you had better believe we’ll be keeping a close eye on how this story plays out as we get closer to the app’s release.
