Yes. This. The real problem with Flappy Bird is that it made money and got attention without being blessed by curator types who think it shouldn't be popular.

Yes. This. The real problem with Flappy Bird is that it made money and got attention without being blessed by curator types who think it shouldn't be popular. If one of the usual indie darlings had made Flappy Bird, it would be hailed as a "brilliant, hardcore, minimalist free-to-play flying game with ingenously-simple touchscreen control, procedurally generated obstacle courses, and 8-bit-styled graphics that recall the glory days of NES." I also found it really surprising that the author didn't mention Minecraft, which somehow graduated from being an Infiniminer clone to being an original IP you can sue over. Not coincidentally, today there are only "Minecraft clones".