Flappy Bird app pulled, but the madness continues

Game app hit Flappy Bird has been pulled from app stores as success overwhelms its developer - but consumers are not over the madness yet.In the strangest turn of events, runway game app hit Flappy Bird has been pulled from app stores, as it seems its success is overwhelming its developer, Dong Nguyen, who describes himself as an “indie” games developer.On his Twitter feed, Nguyen denies that there were any legal reasons behind his move to pull the app from the App Store, but seems to feel that it has “ruined his simple life.”Nguyen was purportedly bringing in US$50,000 a day from in-app advertising revenue.See his tweets below:[gallery link="file" ids="36359,36360"]The success of the app has taken industry watchers by surprise, as the game is simple, though challenging to score in.The app is downloaded several million times a day, and sat on top of the iOS App Store and the GooglePlay Store.The app has apparently no marketing, story, established IP, usual viral hooks, levels, visual sophistication or cross promotion.As it turns out, in an even stranger turn of events, listings have turned up on eBay selling phones that have the game installed. Marketing spotted these listings – with the most expensive one asking for a price of SG$ 5,768.04.[gallery link="file" ids="36363,36364"] It’s clear with the success of this game, perhaps you can’t ever figure out what consumers really want. The craze over Flappy Bird brings to mind that over Hello Kitty, actually. Just pull up the image of crazed customers smashing the glass windows of McDonald’s several years back to buy the dolls – déjà vu, anyone?