A model of the Flappy Bird, made of 14-karat gold and weighing 85.23 grams, or nearly 3 ounces, has been put up for auction at webstore.com since March 10. Flappy Bird, a game developed by Vietnamese young developer Nguyen Ha Dong, was on top downloaded of popular apps store early this year. — Photos ictnews.vn

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — A model of the Flappy Bird, made of 14-karat gold and weighing 85.23 grams, or nearly 3 ounces, has been put up for auction at webstore.com since March 10.

It has been made by a young Vietnamese IT group, the N3D, with the permission of the game's creator Nguyen Ha Dong. The auction, which runs till March 31, hopes to sell the bird for US$7,000.

N3D's representative Phan Ngoc Linh told Biz Hub that the gold model of the Flappy Bird seeks to honour the game's creator and demonstrate the craftsmanship of the Vietnamese people. She added that the profit made from selling the model will be used to support Agent Orange victims in Viet Nam.

The model had a starting price of $1,000 and after two days, the current highest bid is $1,500.

After the Flappy Bird game was removed from the web stores by its own creator in early February, phones with the game installed have been listed for thousands of dollars on eBay.

While most of the local media have not been successful in interviewing the 28-year-old creator of the game, Dong spoke to the US-based Rolling Stone magazine about his game.

Game developer Nguyen Ha Dong (right) received an award at a mobile game and application programming contest in 2008.

According to the story posted online by the Rolling Stone magazine on March 11, Flappy Bird was created in April 2013 and went live on the iOS App Store on May 24 the same year. It didn't make an impact for eight months after which the game went viral. By February this year, it was topping the charts in more than 100 countries and had been downloaded more than 50 million times. Dong was earning an estimated $50,000 a day, on which the Rolling Stone commented, "Not even Mark Zuckerberg became rich so fast."

Dong removed the game from the web on February 9 after tweeting that though Flappy Bird was a success, it had also ruined his simple life. After his tweet that he was taking it down, 10 million people downloaded the game in 22 hours.

Dong told the magazine that he had quit his job and was thinking of buying a Mini Cooper and an apartment in the future. But for now, he's busy doing what he loves most, which is developing games. —VNS