Asmongold TV - The Slow, Painful, Greedy Death Of Angry Birds | Asmongold Reacts to SunnyV2 | Asmongold

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

The Slow, Painful, Greedy Death Of Angry Birds | Asmongold Reacts to SunnyV2 Subscribe to Asmongold TV on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AsmonTV Disclaimer: This podcast is an independent project created by a viewer using content from the YouTube channel Asmongold TV. The purpose is to make his content more accessible to those who prefer audio formats, helping more people engage with the ideas presented in his videos. This podcast is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially associated with Asmongold. All rights to the original content remain with Asmongold TV. If there are any concerns or requests regarding this podcast, please reach out. ------- Keywords: game reviews, video game analysis, reaction videos, gaming community, streamer content, esports commentary, game criticism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in 2011, Angry Birds was everywhere. Yeah. They had multiple different games, toys and movies, generating hundreds of millions of dollars. But by 2019, they were firing masses of staff. And since then things have only gotten worse, perhaps it's just karma for stealing the initial idea. Angry Birds wasn't an original concept. In April 2009, a game was released named Crush the Castle, which required players to fire a trebushay into wooden structure hiding medieval. evil people. Well, eight months later in December 2009, game developer Rovio made an app named

Angry Birds, which while clearly being a rip-off, was better in every way. I think this is the way every game is. Like, there's a lot of games that copy other games. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Like, in general, I just want better games. It's not illegal. And different stages each with different levels. Especially, especially when you're talking about something that is effectively the application of physics interactions of objects, right? It's not like this is some kind of like crazy, esoteric, arcane video game idea. This is the application of physics in real world objects.

You got points for every enemy killed and points for every bird you didn't use, giving players the chance to compete for high scores. That's right. Throw in five different birds with five different abilities, as well as a cool, catchy soundtrack, And it's easy to see that Angry Birds was better. They developed 51 games prior to Angry Birds, none of which saw even the smallest bit of success.

50 fucking games. Therefore, when Angry Birds took only two months to become the number one paid app in 60 countries, they understandably took the chance to milk it. Well, also, like, the marketing for the game, like, the game is very marketable. Like, the little birds here are perfect. They're amazing.

It's a best mobile game? Yeah, it's a great mobile game. global game. Loads of different varieties like Angry Bird Seasons, Angry Bird Space and Angry Bird Star Wars, helping it become the number one paid app in Apple's App Store with 6 to 7 million paid downloads. Hell yeah. By the end of Angry Birds first year, they'd made $10 million US dollars, but players still demanded

more. We have so many fans who have asked for the plush toys. So these are going to be available in a couple of weeks. And we're really trying to build Angry Birds into the game. this entertainment franchise. It took only four months before that announced 60,000 Angry Bird Soft Toys have been sold. Because they're great. They're little soft plushies. They're cute. People like having them. Like, how many fucking Kirby's does Emeru have? You're really telling me that nobody is going to buy one of the red bird ones?

Come on. Of course this is going to happen. As the game itself became the best selling paid app of all time. Within Angry Birds itself, that implement micro-transactions like Mighty Eagle, which allowed players to pay to clear entire levels. With celebs like Justin Bieber... Hold up. What? The Mighty Eagle? Which allowed players to pay to clear entire.

What the hell? I don't even say... Oh, maybe the oil's underneath here. Levels. With celebs like Justin Bieber even advocating for it, Angry Birds made 100. million in 2011 and went from 28 employees in the beginning of the year to 224 employees by the end of 2011.

Five months later, they set a new world record. Wow. First mobile game series to reach a billion downloads. And it was paid. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's crazy. At which point they started to face a serious problem.

The game was getting stale. They'd made multiple different Angry Birds versions, but hadn't changed the concept in over three years. As a result in the following year, their profits more than halved, with Angry Birds falling to 59th in the app store, forcing the franchise to try a new format. They'd release Angry Birds Go at the end of 2013, and while this was somewhat of a Mario Car rip-off, people absolutely loved it. So I mean, it's fun. It is good fun. It looks good. It plays well. Professional reviewers gave it 7.7. That's really good. While people on Reddit called it their favorite Angry Birds game and perfection at its finest.

Rovio therefore continued to experiment, releasing an RPG game named Angry Birds Epic, which again received incredible reviews reading, the latest Angry Birds title is a welcome addition to a franchise. They're making good calls. Yeah, this is good. Since its inception back in 2009, similarly, users said it might be the best RPG title I've ever played.

And honestly, a pretty solo time. I think the approach they went with here really worked and paid off. only problem was these games didn't sell merch like the original slingshot format. Therefore, merchandise sales plummeted, while total 2014 revenue dropped, and profits fell 73% to 10 million euros. As a result... I, dude, this is like, that's just what happens. Like, I don't even think that's bad. I mean, you can't expect a game like that, like, especially meme games like this to do so well, like long term. Yeah, phone games are, yeah, This is just how it is.

Media outlets reported, Rovio lays off 110 people as Angry Birds hype phase, representing 14% of the company's workforce. They try to fix their decline with yet another experiment. Angry Birds Pop, which was pretty unsuccessful. In a Reddit thread asking out of all the Angry Birds games, which one do you think is the worst, pop was mentioned many times over.

Therefore, they'd go back to basics, and put out Angry Birds 2 the official sequel, although many called it a downgrade from the original. The sequel was filled to the brim with... Best value. Bro. Every single game is like this. How the fuck is this true?

This is insane. Micro transactions, clearly annoying the fan base who wrote, This is a very greedy game that keeps sucking money out of you. If you play well, the game becomes harder and harder until it's impossible, and then you either have to replay each level 10 times or buy gems. The game is just trying to throw you off balance

and get under your skin so that you pay more. Bro, welcome to every gotcha game, whether it's the mall of chaos holograms or, uh, what's the fucking Genshin one? The spiral abyss. This is their fucking marketing. This is the entire thing. This is the way the game works.

Man. The actual IGN review said the game took significant steps backward for the massively popular series. Angry Birds 2 is missing key parts of what made previous games so universally compelling to gamers both hardcore and casual young and older. What a surprise. Still due to its intense monetization, Angry Birds 2 became their highest earning game. Surprisingly, however, that very same year, that announced losses of almost 15 million and would fire a further third of their workforce,

this time being over 200 people. This seemed to imply that... Let's be real. There's a good chance that they were just simply hiring too many people. Do you really need 1,000 people to work on a fucking phone game? What are we talking about? It's ridiculous. It's insane.

Like, did Elon buy it? No. If he did, it would have been 400. Angry Birds was dead 195% marketing, yeah unexpected comeback. Turns out they'd spent the previous three years privately developing the Angry Birds movie.

Oh God. At a cost of 73 million, then made a risky bet. But with a star-studded cast and a fun little story, the Angry Birds movie did surprisingly well. It made over 350 million from its 70 million budget and put Angry Birds back into the public spotlight. People began replaying their previously released games,

while Angry Birds theme parks popped up in different countries. Media outlets reported... It's a good idea. You can put your kid in a catapult and just shoot them towards a bunch of stuff. A bunch of wood. It's a great idea. Rovold Games had its best year ever in 2016. However, the gaming releases that Angry Birds was known for was still declining in quality.

In his video, I played it. and ranked every Angry Birds game so you don't have to. Jake Miller talks about Angry Birds Action. Angry Birds Action was the start of using the new anthropomorphic designs from the movies in their games, which I think most fans agree with the real beginning of the end. Yeah, this is ridiculous. This is not Angry Birds. This is like, fucking like, this is Bird Fall Guys. It's just nasty.

It's Angry Birds! Yes, it's not Angry Birds, it's Angry Furries. It's creepy. Which happened to be the first game after the movie. Similarly, in the Reddit thread asking about the worst Angry Birds game. Yeah, they lost their identity. When using, it was most of them, after the movie's release. Said games included Angry Birds Fight, aka a Candy Crush Ripple, as well as Angry Birds match, which was described as extremely bland.

Yeah. However, thankfully for Rovio, their older titles were still extremely extreme. popular. Nice. It was a good one. With Angry Birds 2's revenue, growing 47% in 2018, despite it being over three years old. That's impressive. This gave them the budget to make a second movie. However, their $65 million bets didn't pay off so well this time. They're putting girls on the game now.

I mean, what do you expect? What do you expect? See, they're trying to put girls in a movie. Yeah, of course people are going to, bro, nobody wants to see that. Time. Forbes wrote Angry Birds 2. is worse than the original in nearly every way. Lost Rotten Tomatoes critics added, a distressingly ineffective sequel

that grows less and less interesting and more and more tiresome as it unfolds. Still, the movie made a profit of 82 million, right as the company was making some weird changes. Despite their older games being low maintenance, Rovio decided to completely stop updating them. Then, without explanation, some of the older beloved titles,

including the original... original Angry Birds were deleted from the app store. When people began to talk about what they're done, people made compilations stating Angry Birds was dead. There were comments like, remember when Rovio actually cared, whilst hashtag Bring Back 2012 began to trend on Twitter. Things got so bad that Rovio apologized, stating they only did it as,

maintaining the highest quality of updates and live operations, isn't possible without older games. Why not? So as many of these games are built Solongo on older technology using outdated game engines, Dene's mobile technology. We can't just leave them there and not update them as games need to comply with all sort of platform requirements. It sounds like bullshit. In response to the backlash, that announced they planned on redeveloping Angry Birds Classic,

which was re-released on the app store in 2022, but at a price of $199 with no in-game purchases, they'd change classics name to Red's first flight, making it harder to find in the app store. Why would you do that? Thus prompting players to buy the newer, more profitable games. No. That is some rat shit, bro. Like, oh my God.

How do you do that? So the only... So they took the original game off and then they renamed it to something else. So when people search for the original game, they'll end up. playing the games that are more pay to win. Successfully fooled some people who struggled to find it on the app store. However, others knew exactly what Angry Birds was doing. They got rid of the old ones so that you would have no other choice than to play the modern

Candy Crush-esque games. That's ridiculous. They decide as the games that made the company and so lost its spirits. Oh my God. Rovio basically confirmed this, openly stating they changed the name due to the game's impact on our wider games portfolio. Oh my god Dude these people make Ubisoft look like from software

This is crazy You just went out and said it They further requested that fans continue to bring that passion to our live angry birds slingshot games such as Angry Birds too However players weren't too happy. We hope those fans can continue to bring that passion to our other games which have been designed to be more psychologically manipulative and stuffed with more micro-transactions. Fixed it for you. Yeah. The drama was so severe.

It seemingly halted any future games. So they just canceled the game because it wasn't... It wasn't monetized well enough. We can't make enough money on this, so we're not going to do it anymore. You know what's so stupid about that is that a lot of games, like, they were unable to view the game as a loss leader effectively, right? which is what it is. It's a loss leader in the Angry Birds economy. So even if this game might not make you money,

this game gets people into the ecosystem of Angry Birds, and then they might play other games if they get attached to the characters. So it's just so stupid. Like, how do you not do that? The most recent title released way back in 2022. In 2023, Rovio was sold to Segar, although this has done little to fix their race. reputation. One recent tweet expressed,

I very much still love Angry Birds. That said, the current state of it is dog shit. My hope for the franchise is at an all-time low right now. I'll just continue to enjoy what I love about it, but it's sad to see what it's become. Despite everything, Angry Birds isn't finished. I didn't know people were so attached. I thought it was just a fucking bird game. Like, I was like, what was this shit? Those are kind of cool. Okay. Oh, they hit the thing? All right. Cool. Well, Anyway, I mean, it's about it for me, right? Like, I didn't even know this was a situation. As they just announced they're making a third movie,

although with the rest of the franchise in decline, its performance might be interesting. Oh, God. I just... Back in 2011. These games are made for people who don't know what real games are. Am I crazy for thinking that the premise of Angry Birds is actually a W idea? It's actually such a cool idea

Angry Birds is awesome Like it's such a cool idea And I don't see why people like everybody trying to This is just out This is disgusting though Hyatically The fucking the eagle just shows up And just blows everything up

This is such bullshit It's not even fair Yeah what is this? Just one shots the whole thing Yeah they're calling in a fucking nuke. Well, anyway, yeah, I'm not surprised when a nostalgia hit. See, like, this is what's weird for me is because, like, in 2012, I was 22. So I don't have any nostalgia for this, right? Like, nostalgia for Angry Birds. Oh, yeah, they're cute. They're funny. Yeah, yeah, that's cool,

right? Yeah, a little plushy things. But, like, I guess there's people that are, like, maybe 10 years younger than me. And maybe they grew up with Angry Birds. And it was, like, their little like, oh, it's so cute, little birds and everything, right? And, like, it's their nostalgia. Yeah, it's their nostalgia. Because, like, for me, I'm like, I was 12. Yeah, I was 22. And so, like, I don't have any fucking nostalgia for this. So I'm just like, oh, my God. I didn't know that there was like a fan base for this or was any of this.

It's their neopets. You're actually so, that's such a good comparison. Yeah, it's like neopets. Because, like, a lot of people that are my age loved neopets. Pets and now like nobody knows what the fucking Neo Pets is there's not really like I mean I didn't have a lot of nostalgia for like what is

something that I had nostalgia for as a kid Oh fuck Like Wow yeah Um I'm trying to think about it Tomagocchi

Yeah but like I just I did that one time I was done with it right Like I don't know. I mean, I guess maybe some, like, Secret of Manna, like maybe something with like that kind of a vibe, Power Rangers, but I never really gave a shit about it. So like the real, so the shows that I like the most, I liked Ed Ed Nettie. That was my favorite show. And that was the only show that I really, really liked. All of the other ones like, Johnny,

Bravo was funny. Dexter's Laboratory was just funny. It was a spectacle, right? It was good. But I really, really, really liked fucking Ed Nettie. And then also Thundercats. I thought Thundercats was super fucking cool. And I'm trying to think like what the other ones were besides that.

Well, I mean, like, yeah, I watched Cowan Chicken, Courage the Cowardly Dog. But like, it was Ed Nettie for me. That was my favorite one. Because like, I could relate to it really well because like we had, we had, we. We didn't, I don't live in a cul-de-sac, right? But, like, we have, like, that neighborhood group of kids that would get together. And so, like, I was like, oh, this is a show. Like, it's kind of, like, how we are, right?

And so it's recess. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Kids Next Door. Well, the kids next door, like, that came out when I was, like, I think 10 or 11. So, like, I was already kind of past the point, like, because so I watched, like, I would say, like, 11 or 12. I went from watching, like, normal cartoons to watching stuff. like, I would say like a little bit of Dragon Ball Z and then also The Simpsons.

And then I went from that to watching Full Metal Alchemist and like Ghost in the Shell and like that kind of like anime. And then from that I was just watching like normal movies, right? I'm trying to think besides that. So I kind of stopped watching cartoons like Cartoon Network cartoons. I mean, if you want to, I mean, DBZ was on Cartoon Networks on Tsunami. But like, and also I mean, to be fair, adult swim. was also on it, the Cartoon Network at night. But normal, like,

the Justice League? Well, no, I watched that, but I was like a kid when I watched that. Like, Justice League, the animated Justice League show was actually so good, and I had no idea that it was that good until I went back and I watched clips of it semi-recently. And I was like, wow, this show was insanely good.

Like, we didn't deserve this. This was nuts. Yeah, it was great. X-Men? Yeah, I was a little kid, though, right? I didn't remember a lot of it.