Last week, a group calling itself the "Flappy Bird Foundation" announced to the press that it had acquired the trademark rights to the mobile hit Flappy Bird from Gametech Holdings and that it intended to rerelease the game later this year on web browsers, iOS, and Android.
Initially, as you might expect, the news was greeted with a bunch of enthusiasm online, with fans happy to see the game return after a decade away, but soon questions started to be raised about whether its creator Dong Nguyen had willingly sold the rights and why there were a bunch of hidden references to Web3 and NFTs on its new website that weren't disclosed in its announcement.
Now, Nguyen has broken his social media silence of over seven years to confirm his lack of involvement in the project and claims that he never sold anything. Writing on Twitter, he states: "No, I have no related with their game. I did not sell anything. I also don't support crypto."
What's interesting about Nguyen's statement is that it would appear to suggest that the Flappy Bird Foundation has only acquired the trademark of Flappy Bird and not the rights to any of its copyrighted material.
If this is the case, this would mean that the Flappy Bird Foundation would be able to release a game under the title "Flappy Bird", but that it couldn't just be a copy of the original or risk infringing on the rights of the current copyright holder (which Nguyen is suggesting is still him).
We've reached out to Michael Roberts on LinkedIn, who is an individual who is said to be involved with this latest venture, to see whether they have any comment on this latest development and will update you if we hear anything back.