Those who hope that Flappy Bird mania will die sometime soon are about to be severely disappointed. On the contrary, since creator Dong Nguyen removed the app from iTunes and Google Play stores, it’s actually gotten worse.
Now, entrepreneurial phone and tablet owners are listing their devices with the game still installed for millions of pounds on online auction site, Ebay. On Ebay.co.uk, prices range from a very humble £0.99 to a whopping £6mil. The highest price with an actual bid we could find is £22,000. Whereas another device with 16 bids has risen to £4,400, with another listing with 28 bids has risen to £7,300.
More realistically, most prices for what appear to be more genuine listing and bids, are around the £100-£300 range. Though this is much closer to the expected rate for used phone and tablet devices, it still seems rather pricey for the sake of a game.
This trend of devices with Flappy Bird installed being listed on Ebay at ridiculously inflated prices has already spread worldwide. On Ebay.com the highest listed price $100,000.
Flappy LULZ
It’s likely that many of these listings and bids are jokes: at least we hope so. Many of the more ridiculous listings are quickly removed, including one we found that listed a device for £10mil. But Ebay could be facing a lot of problems with sellers trying to get non-genuine bidders to cough up the staggering amounts that the devices have gone for. Likewise, buyers could get stung from what look like more realistic listings by paying up and never receiving the goods.
“We would strongly advise people thinking about bidding for one of these devices, or considering listing their own, to proceed with extreme caution.”
There is an opportunity here to get a second-hand iPhone, iPad, or Android phone/tablet at a discounted price, as well as being able to satisfy your Flappy Bird fix at the same time. But it would certainly be a case of “buyer beware” and we would strongly advise people thinking about bidding for one of these devices, or considering listing their own, to proceed with extreme caution.
Prices and listing mentioned were correct at the time of publishing. GameSkinny cannot be held responsible for any misadventure relating to this article.
Published: Feb 11, 2014 02:15 am