Flappy Bird’s death has phones going for nearly $100,000 on eBay
Flappy Bird is dead, in case you haven’t heard. No, no, not the bird itself. At least, we hope that little guy is OK — all this commotion lately can’t be too good for his little heart. We’re talking about the hit game from Vietnamese developer Nguyen Ha Dong that had people going crazy for the past few weeks. Its popularity prompted hundreds of millions of downloads across all available platforms and had Dong raking in over $50,000 a day in ad revenue.
So now that the game is gone (whether it was due to legal pressure or a genuine desire for peace and quiet), how can you get it? Well, some desperate folks seem to be willing to pay thousands. And tens of thousands. And maybe even hundreds of thousands.
Head to eBay right now and do a search for “Flappy Bird,” and you’ll be treated to tons of listings for devices — mainly iPhones — with the game pre-installed. Some are going for as little as $600, though one auction is sitting at a ridiculous $99,900 bid as of the time of this writing. The auction started at $650, but a few aggressive bidders have been battling it out since early Sunday morning. The craziest part is that — 74 bids and $99,900 later — there are still more than 6 days to go before the auction closes.
While we immediately wondered if the high-valued bids were submitted by one-off shill accounts, the latest bid was made by an eBay user with a reputation score of over 700. It was the bidder’s only activity in the past 30 days, though, so we’re still not quite sure what to make of it just yet. For what it’s worth, the next active bidder has a score of 48, and has participated in more than a few different auctions in the past 30 days.
And it’s not just a one auction anomaly, either. The next closest auction with active bids is currently sitting at $99,200 after 65 bids. These two auctions have prompted many other sellers to list Flappy Bird-equipped devices with buy-it-now prices ranging from $25,000 to $75,000. One ridiculous listing even has a Samsung Galaxy S4 with the game going for a buy-it-now price of $1,000,000.
It’s worth noting that none of these auctions or buy-it-now listings have been completed or sold, so it’s tough to know if demand for devices with the game pre-installed is really this insane.
We imagine if people really are crazy enough to buy these phones at these prices, then those who were outbid on the $90,000 auctions would jump at some of the newly-listed buy-it-now offerings as soon as humanly possible. That there haven’t been any sales thus far has us pretty skeptical, but eBay has our attention regardless.
So what do we take from all that? There could be some real serious demand for this insanely popular game that is now no longer available, and some insanely rich folks with more money than sense could be looking to get their hands on it any way they possibly can. That, or some people must really love trolling auctions with fake bids more than anything in the world.
All of this is even sillier when considering you could likely buy a cheap Android device (Moto G for $100, anyone?) and find a ripped APK to sideload just as easily as you could buy one of these overpriced listings. Now, excuse me while I go put my DROID MAXX and iPad up for sale.