About a week ago I downloaded a mobile application called Flappy Bird. Now, I normally don't touch cellphone games, but this one was different. Why? Because it had no in-app purchases. This alone struck me as odd; but the lack of microtransactions alone was enough to sucker me in. The result was a quite difficult tapping game with a name that sounds like a certain Rovio game and pipes that look like a certain Nintendo game. But it was very challenging and engaging, so I kept it on my phone. Also it runs amazing, doesn't chew up battery life, and doesn't jank up your phone to display it's one ad banner on the game over screen. In short, everything a mobile game should be.
So I was slightly disheartened to see that the developer, some Vietnamese guy named Dong Nguyen, decided to pull the application. And then I saw the massive amounts of stupid uninformed people angrily blathering about because someone not from 'MURIKA or GRORIOUS NIPPON decided to write a videogame. Seriously, Internet? This is what we get angry and defensive about nowadays? EA gets to defile the corpse of Dungeon Keeper on the App Store and someone with an actually functional mobile game (as opposed to money depository masquerading as a game) gets yelled at for the unfortunate crime of coding while Vietnamese?
I'm more than a little pissed about the whole ordeal for a whole variety of reasons, but mainly because the Internet is again proving it's a hive of insincerity and snap judgments. Please, do some research before going on a crusade, especially when the thing you are crusading against is an independent game developer that you say you love oh so very much. I can't imagine how many idiots go about saying "I love indie games" when by "indie game" they mean patronizing, generically retro garbage like Fez. The field of independently developed videogames is much wider than your tiny, retro-addled minds can comprehend.
For the record the game is down now, but I would recommend finding an APK/IPA if you know how to work such things. (Watch out for malware.) The Apple and Google app stores are filling up with shitty clones of the game that apply all the shitty shitty monetization garbage that Flappy Bird lacked, so I would avoid anything on there.