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A stunning report in The Guardian has revealed that of the 300 new iOS games that were released on the App Store yesterday, 95 were Flappy Bird clones.
These include the likes of Tappy Bieber, Flappy Penguin – Revenge, Flappy Monsters, Tappy Duck, Annoying Flappy Fly, Scrappy Bird, FlyFlyBirdySaga, Flying Bird, Flappy Kitty, Flappy Duck, Flippy Kitty, Flappy’s Pipe Dream and Flappy Mipsters.
Some of these games are enjoying success, too – four of the top five free iPhone games in the US charts are Flappy rip-offs.
Apple claimed to be clamping down on Flappy Bird clone submissions earlier this month – either it’s struggling or those claims were disingenuous.
The bigger story here of course is what the numbers say about the mobile games scene. Of course it would be wrong to write off the sector in its entirety – there are hundreds of inventive and wonderful smartphone games available.
But it will over time only become harder for consumers to distinguish between the wheat and chaff.
The original Flappy Bird was pulled from the App Store by creator Dong Nguyen earlier this month after the Vietnamese dev claimed that he "could not take it anymore".
