In an open letter to King, Albert Ransom, independent developer and owner of Runsome Apps Inc., breaks his silence concerning the trademark for his game CandySwipe, which King recently tried to invalidate, despite the fact that the Android game's trademark was filed prior to King's filing for Candy Crush Saga.

Flappy Bird is a simple game.  Some might even call it boring.

But that certainly didn't stop it from becoming one of the most popular and talked about games on mobile stores for the past week or so.

But, it's gone now.  Yep, creator Dong Nguyen decided to take his money-making ball and go home.

But why?

Dong Nguyen, the 29-year-old Veitnamese indie creator of the popular mobile game Flappy Bird, said that he removed the game from both Google Play for Android and iTunes for iOS devices because he was deeply concerned that the game was too addictive. There has been plenty of speculation that Nguyen pulled the game because of legal threats from Nintendo (for using art similar to art found in the Super Mario Bros. series of games) or because he couldn't handle the pressure, but it turns out that - he claims at least - he had a lot of concerns about people playing his game too much.

The first Xbox One indie titles coming out of Microsoft's ID@Xbox program include a new "Worms game" from Team17 and NinjaBee's Nutjitsu, according to a tweet from Phil Spencer, Microsoft Studios corporate vice president.

"Played 2 of the first shipping games, a Worms game n Nutjitsu, right before DICE," Spencer wrote.

Earlier today we learned that indie developer Dong Nguyen pulled his popular and highly criticized Android and iOS game Flappy Bird off of both marketplaces. The result has had an interesting, albeit minor, ripple effect as people try to find ways to cash in on the popularity of the game.

Crowdfunding platform Indiegogo has raised $40 million in a brand new round of funding, the company announced this week. The money, which it earned the old fashioned way (not through crowdfunding, but soliciting investments from high profile lenders), will be spent to expand its business globally, and allow it to better support mobile platforms. Indiegogo CEO Slava Rubin also wants to use the money to raise the funding engine's profile worldwide. Indiegogo raised the $40 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

It should come as no shock to anyone that Minecraft on the PS3 has sold one million copies. Mojang's Daniel Kaplan described the new sales milestone as "crazy" but no one should be surprised that PS3 owners love Minecraft as much as everyone else does.

Organizers of the 2014 Game Developers Conference (taking place in San Francisco this March) have confirmed the return of the GDC Play, the emerging/independent developer showcase. The 'Best in Play' awards will also be returning to this year's event.

GDC Play is a separate area of the San Francisco show that showcases emerging and independent developers with a series of tables and meeting rooms. It will take place at a new time this year - Wednesday, March 19 - Friday, March 21 at Moscone Center during the 2014 Game Developers Conference.

The Independent Games Festival has chosen the 2014 Student Showcase winners for 2014, with each winning team winning a cool $1,000, passes to Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this March, and the chance to win an additional $2,000 prize for Best Student Game.

The eight winners, picked from 346 entries, are listed below along with a number of honorable mentions.

Museum of Simulation Technology (Albert Shih - Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center)
Engare (Mahdi Bahrami & Moslem Rasouli - NHTV University of Applied Science)

Earlier today we wrote about King.com, maker of the so-popular-even-I've-heard-of-it social and mobile game Candy Crush, and how it had successfully trademarked the word 'candy.'  The mark covers use of the word in games, game accessories, and merchandise.

Military-focused gaming charity Operation Supply Drop is kicking off 2014 with a nifty new initiative called Indies for Courage, which hopes to get independently developed video games into the hands of Armed Forces. The initiative created by respected Indie gamer and critic "Indie Gamer Chick" has rallied a team of indie developers to donate $15,000 in Steam and Desura codes.

Kotaku has an interesting (and exclusive) interview with one of the creators of "School Shooting," a crappy top-down shooter game that was highlighted prominently by news media outlets as one of the games that Sandy Hook school shooter Adam Lanza had on his computer.

Finalists for this year's Independent Games Festival have been announced. The list of nominees for the biggest prize of the show - Seumas McNally Grand Prize - include such notable indie games as The Stanley Parable (Galactic Cafe); Papers, Please (Lucas Pope); Don't Starve (Klei); Device 6 (Simogo); Jazzpunk (Necrophone); and Dominique Pamplemousse in "It's All Over Once the Fat Lady Sings!" (Deirdra Kiai Productions).

Chucklefish's procedurally generated space-themed RPG Starbound has sold more than one million copies thanks to its inclusion in the Steam early access program and the company's own pre-order efforts. Starbound is currently an early access game on Steam, allowing consumers to play an early beta build of the game while developers make wild and drastic changes. Selling for right around $15 via Steam's early access program, players have been enjoying the game since December 4.

Here's a pretty cool story from Gamasutra - and a particularly awe inspiring thing if you happen to be someone developing a roguelike game. Glenn Wichman, one of the original co-creators of the super popular 1980s dungeon-crawler Rogue, served as a judge on the "Ultimate Roguelike Challenge" competition.

With the new year a few hours away, there's no better time to hold a game jam and that is just what organizer Richard Blechinger of the New Year Game Jam has planned. The second annual New Year Game Jam kicks off at 12 AM Dec 31. The only rule to the event is that games have to be made in 48 hours between 12 AM on December 31st and 12 AM on January 2nd (in your particular time zone).

Last year saw only 28 submissions, so hopefully this year's event will attract a little more attention and produce some interesting indie games that everyone can enjoy.

Joe Danger and No Man's Sky developer Hello Games recently suffered a calamity when its offices were flooded. According to a recent series of tweets by the Guildford, UK-based studio, the damage it suffered in its offices on Christmas Eve are not covered by its insurance policy.

Joe Danger and No Man's Sky developer Hello Games had a bit of bad luck this week when their offices were flooded. The developers detailed the calamity in a series of tweets:

"A river broke its bank nearby yesterday, and A LOT of water flooded in really quickly. A biblical amount. It was coming in the windows!" noted the developers official Twitter account.

Vlambeer developer Rami Ismail has shared his concerns over the parity clause in Microsoft's new ID@Xbox scheme for indie developers in an interview with VG247. Speaking to the publication, Ismail described the parity clause, which requires participants to launch any title releasing on other platforms to launch on Xbox One simultaneously, as "problematic for the indie scene at large."

The IndieGoGo campaign for Operation Ninja S.T.A.R. has managed to raise $2,547 of its $17,500 goal, with 26 more days to go. Launched last week, Operation Ninja S.T.A.R. seeks to raise funds to closely examine a patent owned by Treehouse Avatar Technologies to see if there is any evidence that the invention existed prior to the patent application. Their ultimate goal is to render the patent invalid.

Inspired by the software patent trolling efforts of patent house Treehouse Avatar Technologies, a new IndieGoGo campaign launched today seeks to raise funds for a project that will ultimately help the little guy. The project is called Operation Ninja S.T.A.R., and seeks to raise $17,500 to closely examine a patent owned by Treehouse Avatar Technologies to see if there is any evidence that the invention existed prior to the patent application. Their ultimate goal is to render the patent invalid.

With only three more days to go, MidBoss Games' Read Only Memories is $10,000 from reaching its funding goal. As of this writing, the cyberpunk-themed point-and-click adventure game has managed to raise $52,074 of its $62,064 goal from 1,139 backers with just three more days to go before its funding goal deadline on Kickstarter comes to a close.

Valve has approved 100 more titles to be a part of its Steam Greenlight program, Valve Software announced this week. There's very few familiar titles in this latest batch (the most recognizable being Company of Heroes: Eastern Front, Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore, Pixel Piracy, and Saturday Morning RPG). Nevertheless, there's certainly a few gems in this latest batch worth checking out depending on the kinds of games you find fascinating. As always each of the games in this list will release on their own schedules.

You can check out the full list below:

Microsoft announced today that 32 indie developers have signed up with Microsoft's ID@Xbox development program to develop games for the Xbox One. Eurogamer has confirmed some of the titles that these developers will bring to Microsoft's system and speculated on a few others.

The DRM-free pay-what-you-want Indie Royale Debut 7 has launched this week, offering six indie games. By paying the set minimum price of $2.99 or more, you can get six games including the fighting game Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae, multiplayer mech fighter Metal Planet, first-person puzzler Pulse Shift, adventure game Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine, RPG Millennium 2: Take Me Higher, and space-themed strategy game Fleet Buster.

Digital game store ShinyLoot will be hosting a massive Black Friday sale where over one hundred games in its catalog will be discounted to $1 each. The sale will include indie games from developer partners, DRM-free including such titles as The Oil Blue, Children of the Nile, Aztaka, The Cat Lady, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land, Creeper World, Bridge Construction Set and Hinterland. The sale will begin on Friday, Nov. 29 at midnight CST, and will run until Monday Dec. 2 until Midnight CST.

Dyscourse, the new psychological survival adventure game from Owlchemy Labs (Snuggle Truck, Jack Lumber) currently attempting to raise funds through Kickstarter, will ship with an additional bonus scenario called "Indie Plane Crash," containing cameos by ten famous independent game developers.

A crowd-funding campaign has been launched for an interesting puzzle game called So Many Me. So Many Me is described by developer Extend Studios as a 2D puzzle-platformer inspired by the best games in the genre and its own games like A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda (Steam and XBLA) and Jigsaw Mansion (iPad).

Neocolonialism, an independently developed game that IndieGames.com describes as a "nasty imperialism simulator," has been released for Mac, Windows, and Linux. The game's tagline, "ruin everything," describes perfectly what this game is all about.

In the game players are charged with using wealth to buy votes, exploit workers in countries to extract wealth, negotiate, manipulate parliaments and governments, mess with the International Monetary Fund, and generally do bad things throughout the world. A video of the game can be found to your left.

Introversion's alpha for its prison simulation game, Prison Architect has managed to generate almost $8 million in early funding, according to the UK-based developer. Introversions says that more than 250,000 users have downloaded the alpha version of the game.

The money was generated as part of an early funding program that Introversion put in place. It allowed consumers to play the game while it is being developed with the promise of a final build of the game when development is complete and the game is widely released to the public.