The Flappy Bird files: is the truth out there?

Death threats, inflated eBay auctions, clever marketing, lawsuits, app cloning, IP cloaking and bots — the departure of Flappy Bird from app stores at the weekend has sparked an array of rumours, accusations and conspiracies.

A notoriously tricky and addictive game, Flappy Bird had been downloaded more than 50 million times since May 2013, and was the number one free game in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store charts.