On February 23, Rovio removed the original Angry Birds from Google Play, and renamed it Red’s First Flight in the App Store. In a comment to Axios, a Rovio representative said that the company does not mind re—placing the game in the Google store in the future – or removing it from the App Store.
According to Ben Mattes, Vice President of Strategy, Rovio is currently conducting a radical experiment. He explained that the developers removed the game from one store and changed its name in another not because it was too popular and negatively affected other projects. The reason was a poorly working search. When store users entered the query “Angry Birds” in the search bar, the first thing they saw in the output was the original Angry Birds worth $1. Many did not buy it and did not notice that other, free titles could be downloaded.
Rovio tried unsuccessfully to solve the problem for almost a year. But, as Mattes states, if renaming the game in the App Store helps to cope with it, Angry Birds may return to Google Play.