Flappy Bird is coming back

A self-described “team of passionate fans committed to sharing the game with the world” says it’s acquired the rights to Flappy Bird, the iconic mobile game whose creator took it offline less than a year after it was released. Now, “The Flappy Bird Foundation Group” will relaunch the game on Android and iOS in 2025.

But it’s unclear whether the original creator of Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyen, is a part of the game’s relaunch. The Verge reached out to Nguyen with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back. His account on X and the website for his game development company don’t show any recent updates. The Flappy Bird Foundation said it acquired the rights to the game from Gametech, LLC, which isn’t associated with Nguyen.

Following Flappy Bird’s sudden shutdown in 2014, clones started flooding app stores while companies attempted to snap up its trademark. Even though Ngyuen expressed interest in relaunching the game at the time, Apple’s App Store rules may have prevented him from doing so. Under the rules, developers lose ownership of an app’s name when they remove it, and they can’t relaunch it under the same name if another developer is using it.

Still, as someone who was a big Flappy Bird player back in 2013, I’d love to see the game brought back to life.

While the new game will feature the original Flappy Bird character, future updates will introduce new game modes, characters, and “massive multiplayer challenges.” The new Flappy Bird website shows what we might expect, with a new “rivals” mode where you can challenge 99 other players and another that has you shooting birds through basketball hoops. There are some new characters as well, like “Peng” the penguin, and the rainbow mohawk-sporting “Quirky.”