Download Angry Birds To Your Android Device Before It Disappears From Google Play

Last year, Rovio re-released the original Angry Birds as a homage to the early days of smartphone gaming. Now, it's un-releasing the game, and the reason may surprise you. Rovio has essentially admitted that the classic Angry Birds is so good that it hurts the company's newer and more profitable titles.

Rovio Classics: Angry Birds currently costs $0.99 in the App Store and Google Play. It comes with all the content from the original game, which launched on iPhone way back in 2009. You can play through the entire game uninterrupted by upsells, premium quests, or progress gating—this is content from before the era of in-app purchases.

And that's the problem. According to Rovio, it has reevaluated the "business case" for the classic Angry Birds and concluded that it's having a negative impact on revenue in other Rovio games. Yes, the 14-year-old Angry Birds is so popular that Rovio doesn't want you to play it. It's going to be pulled entirely from the Play Store tomorrow (February 23), and it will be renamed on iPhone to "Red’s First Flight," which will presumably make it harder to find and less likely to siphon revenue from newer Angry Birds titles. Rovio says it may end up killing the iOS version as well after it finishes reviewing the situation. 

Please read below for an important announcement regarding the availability of Rovio Classics: Angry Birds. pic.twitter.com/a4n4bU5gQJ

— Rovio (@Rovio) February 21, 2023

You can't blame a company for wanting to make money, but it doesn't speak well of Rovio's current game lineup that needs to hide older games. The fact is, bird-flinging gameplay has not evolved much in the past 14 years, and people would prefer to do it in a game that isn't constantly hounding them to spend more money. Angry Birds 2 has in-app purchases up to $99, and it intentionally slows your progress to make the in-app purchases more alluring. Alas, that's the state of mobile gaming right now—the age of low upfront costs is over.

If you haven't purchased the game on Android, you still have a chance. You'll be able to keep playing it on devices after the deadline, provided it's already installed. However, don't expect to be able to download it in the future. Those with an iPhone can continue playing Red’s First Flight, at least for now. In the place of Rovio Classics: Angry Birds, Rovio suggests you play Angry Birds 2, Angry Birds Friends, and Angry Birds Journey. Those games are all free-to-play with all the frustrating paid features we've come to know and tolerate in modern mobile gaming.