Designer of 2002’s virally popular mobile game Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyne, has reportedly received a 12 million dollar bill from the developers of the Unity game engine, due to new retroactive installation fees they’ve implemented.
“This doesn’t make any sense at all,” said Nguyen, who famously delisted the word-of-mouth hit after its popularity soared to unexpected heights. “I never wanted the trouble that came with having the most popular game of a given moment, and that was before these idiots started talking about charging someone every time their game was downloaded. Please just leave me alone! Also, I didn’t even use the Unity engine.”
Executives from Unity defended the controversial decision to apply arbitrary fees to things like downloaded demos and reinstallations of previously played games.
“You have to understand,” said Unity executive Marc Whitten. ”We’re trying to make as much money as possible here. We’re glad the kids are enjoying their hobby for children, but it’s paramount to all of our success that you stand back and let the grown ups manipulate the thing they’re passionate about in a way that prioritizes shaking people down for every fucking cent we can. We’re sorry if our dedication to capitalism has upset any of our developers. We’re very sorry you feel that way. We feel really bad about it.”
As of press time, Unity had apologized for charging the Flappy Bird guy 12 million dollars, and also went ahead and released their next few public apologies pre-emptively, to stay ahead of things.
