A letter to our fans - Rovio (original) (raw)

We’re committed to our fans, and will start work on bringing some old games back.

Article Angry Birds default 22.06.2021

Dear fans,
The old Angry Birds games are some of the most loved, downloaded and known games in the world. We know. We are so proud to have made them, and we are overwhelmingly happy that they’ve meant so much to you.

But then, we took them out of circulation, and didn’t say anything and that let you down. Not cool. We promise, our heart was in the right place: we wanted to focus on building new, and even better games to serve our players in the best possible way going forward.

The thing is, maintaining the highest quality of updates and live operations isn’t possible with our older games, as so many of these games were built so long ago on older technology, using outdated game engines and design. Today’s mobile technology and games landscape has evolved to a place where supporting them was untenable. And we can’t just leave them there and not update them, as games need to comply with all sorts of platform requirements. 10 years in game years is like 100 in human years – that’s how quickly the industry advances.

What we want to say, though, is: We hear you. There’s a big outcry for getting back some of the older fan favourites (Angry Birds Classic, Angry Birds Seasons etc). We also want to say: We are working on it! We will find a way to bring these classic experiences back to you. It might take a while (stay tuned, we will post updates!), but we have something in the works.

We are thankful for all our amazing fans and players who have been playing our games for the past 17 years, and we never take our players’ time spent with us lightly.

We want to make you happy. We like our birds to be angry, not our fans!

Love,
Rovio

Q&A

• Why were the games taken down in the first place?
  We know that these games have a special place in many fans’ hearts and the decision to take them down was not easy. Many of these games were built using an older technology which didn’t allow us to keep them up to our standards.
• What are you, in fact, “bringing back”?
  We have to do some discovery on what is possible and for which games, but rest assured we will get some of these nostalgic favorites back online in the near future.
• Will the games come back identical to what they were?
  We will strive to bring back the experiences and content as they were many years ago, we’re nostalgic about some our original games too!
• Is Angry Birds Reloaded what you mean by “bringing back that experience”?
  No, that’s not what we mean. Angry Birds Reloaded is a cool game that you can play exclusively on Apple Arcade. However, it is somewhat based on and inspired by Angry Birds Classic. We hope you do try it out, because you might really like it, but we’re also working on other things.
• Why make new games instead of fixing the old?
  We always strive to deliver a joyful experience to our players and in order to do this, we have set some rules and standards to follow. Part of this includes keeping our games updated with the latest technology and this was no longer sustainable for most of our older games. The older games were designed in a completely different era of the mobile games industry, one that wasn’t prepared for the live-services and constant content and technological updates that many players expect and demand from today’s mobile game experiences.
  We are constantly trying new things to bring you new and fun games!
• Why don’t you just put them live on the appstore again?
  Honestly, we’re gonna have to rebuild a lot of those games almost from scratch in order to keep them compliant with evolving platform requirements. When we know how, where and what we can bring back, we’ll let you know. But those old games as they are will still remain removed from appstores.
• Do you already know that a certain game will be impossible to resurrect?
  It would be ridiculous to not bring back the original game that started it all, wouldn’t it? But with that in mind, we do have some discovery to do on how and where we are able to do this. We are continuously going to look at ways to maintain fan favourite games even if they are no longer available on the appstores. We will update when we have more information on which titles are coming, where and when.
• When will you share something?
  We aren’t prepared to share a release date or first title at this time, but will try to keep some regular updates coming on our Twitter accounts as we find out more and have something to share.