Flappy Bird was removed from app stores by creator Dong Nguyen on February 8th 2014, due to being overwhelmed by its success and feeling guilt over the addictive, frustrating nature of the game, which he had originally intended to be relaxing. Although many speculated that the game was taken down by Nintendo due to the game's pipes and their similarity to the pipes from the Mario series, both Nguyen and Nintendo denied this.

Nguyen claimed that his worries about the game had lost him sleep, and removing the game from sale managed to restore piece of mind. Despite this, Nguyen did promise a Flappy Bird comeback, albeit in a less addictive form, which would eventually come with the release of Flappy Birds Family for Amazon Fire TV.

Some eBay users attempted to sell the iPhones with the original game installed for up to $99,900, but the listings were removed due to eBay's rules against selling technology that has not been factory reset.