Dong Nguyen, creator of Flappy Bird who pulled the game from app stores on Sunday, has been getting a number of death threats from online users, following which he was reportedly found dead with a gunshot wound on his head. However, it is now being said that Nguyen is very much alive and that the news of his suicide was just a rumour that was started online.
The news of Dong's death has been spreading like wildfire on social networking platforms, twitter is abuzz with questions over his death.
"So did the Flappy Bird creator really kill himself or did the internet lie to me again," a tweet read, while others noted that popularity of the game was what caused Dong's death.
"Rest in Peace to the creator of Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyen. Committed suicide this morning because of the death threats and to much publicity."
"The creator of flappy bird committed suicide bc of death threats for the game If you don't like it then don't play it and shut your mouth," another message read.
But the news of Dong's death, reported by Huzlers, a website that develops "a combination of real shocking news and satire news to keep its visitors in a state of disbelief," was debunked the same day, but not before it attracted much media attention.
While some of the death threats were aimed at Dong himself, some players said they would kill themselves if Flappy Bird was removed from app stores.
Meanwhile, devices with Flappy Bird installed are selling on eBay at a whopping $100,000.
Pindrus, an eBay user, had listed his used 16GB iPhone 5s with the game installed for $99,900.00 on Sunday, according to Idownloadblog.com. A scan of eBay shows that many users are trying to capitalize on the game's unavailability by putting their iPhones with Flappy Bird installed up for sale.
