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Let’s just round up this morning’s crop of Angry Bird news as we’re sure you guys don’t want your feeds filled with it. Firstly: a new update is out! It adds 30 levels plus a special western-themed affair being called Ham ’em High, and takes another minimum of 8 hours away from your productive life. It’s free, as usual, so go ahead and check it out.
Rovio also promised a bonus level made to celebrate the launch of the movie “Rio”. The clue to unlock it aired during last night’s Super Bowl. How do you do it? Go to level 13-12, slinghsot the white bird backward, and have him drop an egg bomb. You’ll be pleased once you uncover a golden egg in the main menu. (This one takes on the shape of a football, appropriately.)
Angry Birds Rio – the game that takes cues from the Fox movie “Rio” – will be launched March 22nd to coincide with the film’s world premier in Rio De Janeiro.
Finally, many were surprised to learn that Angry Birds required permissions to carry out SMS functions. Most were concerned, as you’d expect, and Rovio responded: it’s to facilitate their Bad Piggy Bank service introduced a while back. The service was made specifically for platforms that didn’t natively allow in-app billing, such as Android.
The system uses SMS messages so that the carrier can tack the cost of downloadable content to a cell phone bill instead of requiring players to use a credit card. We haven’t seen it in action yet as the service is only available in Finland.
Google introduced native in-app billing libraries earlier last week, but it’s not likely that Bad Piggy Bank will go away unless carriers tap into the newly-added API. I think we can all trust Rovio to not do anything malicious or irresponsible with our SMS service, anyway. [via Android Police]
[Update]: Just got word from Droid Life that the update for Seasons is out, too: just in time for Valentine’s Day. Sweet! 15 levels, 3 unlockables, and even more golden eggs. Go and grab it.
No fuck that shit. They don’t need to read my texts so I can play a game. Fuck them.
Cool.
This is pretty cool…it has got me excited for rio as well when it is released to theatres
oh and since windows phone 7 doesn’t have Angry birds yet(which is one of the few reasons why I still use my Mytouch 4g) I am happy with it’s Angry birds knockoff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRlb2JJI1-g&feature=player_embedded
This is old news now. The app was again updated this morning (not the same update) and removed said SMS permission.
What’s up with all the Blackberry ads here? Who visiting this site is going to buy a Blackberry? Stupid.
As long as it wont be sending sms, I use Gvoice for texting and don’t want to get charged out the ass.
did they fix the braindead ad placement in the last version that forced me to stop playing?
The update is great, but Angry Birds has disappeared for devices that do not have sms capability (i.e. nook color). Slightly annoying.
Unable to install on my EVO. Doesn’t even show up in the market or using the bar code. I’m having the same problem with DL’ing the FireFox browser.
nope, ads still block the gameplay. WTF rovio. I loved this game, but just won’t play it as long as you keep doing that stupid stuff.
Looks like the SMS permission is gone today. i took it off yesterday and looked at the permissions today, they are gone.
Tried updating but always says unsuccessful. Other apps download fine.
@Josh
Unmount your SD card and try again. My phone does that with certain apps too, and it should fix the problem.
Running the app in Airplane Mode will disable the ads. Sucks to need to do that, but it works.
And no, SMS read/write permissions in a game are not OK.
Did a more recent update of Angry Birds do away with the Rio level? I didn’t care about the contest, I just wanted to play it but I just got to that level and I did what you said to both white birds & got no new golden egg level. :-(