Addictive and irritating in equal measure, Flappy Bird proved to be a surprise hit in the competitive phone game market, attracting more than 50 million downloads and drawing people into a time-consuming challenge renowned for its extreme difficulty.

In an unexpected turn of events, Dong Nguyen, the Vietnamese creator of the former #1 game in Apple and Android stores, took Flappy Bird off the app store.

On February 8th, Nguyen sounded like one of the exasperated players playing his game, when he tweeted, “I am sorry Flappy Bird users, 22 hours from now, I will take Flappy Bird down. I cannot take this anymore.” He then elaborated, “It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore.”

This move is perplexing as Nguyen is reported to be bringing in $50,000 a day from in-app advertising revenue, according to Forbes. He also says he’s not interested in selling Flappy Bird, and he still makes other games for his studio, dotGears, many of which are also quite popular.

Flappy Bird was originally released for the iPhone in May but didn’t become the top free iPhone app until mid-January, following a surge in popularity that seems to have kicked off in early December. Observers questioned the game’s sudden success, suggesting the use of bots to get it on Top 10 lists.

Although players can still play the game, it is no longer available in stores. Consequently, phones with Flappy Bird installed on them have appeared for sale on eBay at hugely inflated prices north of a thousand dollars.

Other complaints have stemmed from the game itself, and reviews of the app before it was taken off the market included tongue-in-cheek tales of time lost, marriages ended, and people going crazy after playing the tedious game. Nguyen suggested that the threats he received from frustrated players helped ruin his simple lifestyle.

As Nguyen has seemingly experienced, there is a windfall that comes with sudden and unexpected success. TIME Magazine reports that $50,000 is more than 200 times the average monthly salary in Vietnam. Flappy Bird was making that much every day, so Nguyen essentially won the lottery with his simplistic game. That kind of unexpected wealth can drive all kinds of people not only into prosperity, but ruin. Think of all the actual lottery winners who can’t handle the sudden swell in their bank account. But as long as Nguyen continues to refuse interviews, the public remains uneducated as to what his true motives were.

Is this really just a guy who can’t cope with sudden fame and success, or is something else going on here? Is there actually a level of internet backlash so extreme that it could make someone simply throw away $50,000 a day? Perhaps this really is just an ordinary guy who will do anything to shed the spotlight that was inadvertently cast on him by the general public. And why delete Flappy Bird and not his other popular, games? Will Nguyen take those down too?