Flappy Bird: AppStore sees new clone of Dong Nguyen's game every 24 minutes

Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Nyan Cat have replaced the bird in the different spoofs of the game

Flappy Bird was removed from the AppStore last month

Since Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen announced that he would remove his addictive game from the App Store and Google Play, game makers have been scrambling to replicate the buzz surrounding the original.

A month later, every 24 minutes a game inspired by Flappy Bird is uploaded on to Apple’s App Store.

As applications on the AppStore are only added between 3pm and 8am UTC, a batch of 14 Flappy Bird-esque games are sometimes added in a single hour.

The investigation by Pocket Gamer defined Flappy Bird clones as games where users must guide a character through an obstacle course of objects similar to the pipes in the original game, that hang from the ceiling or protrude from the ground.

Examples of copy-cats involve characters including a bird, a fish, a super goat, Nyan Cat, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Bear Grylls on a jet pack, Kanye West’s head, or the chief minister of the state of Gujarat, Narendra Modi.

Nguyen decided to take down his game off the internet 12 days after it reached number one on the AppStore, because he said it “ruin[ed] my simple life. So now I hate it”.

“Press people are overrating the success of my games. It is something I never want. Please give me peace,” he added.

Such was the void left by the short-lived game, phones on which it was installed were listed on eBay - with one bid reaching £50,000.