Angry Birds 2: Downloads Cross 50 Million, A Quick Glance, Infected With Xcode Ghost Virus? And More

Angry Birds has reportedly surpassed 50 million downloads. It was officially announced by its developer, Rovio, at a fancy infographic that the game has crossed the 50 million download mark. The game was released on July 30th and it had registered 20 million downloads within the first week of its release.

The bulk part of the downloads are coming from Android users with 29 million downloads which alone represent 58% of the total downloads, while IOS users stand second with 21 million downloads which represent the rest 42%.

It was stated in the report that the maximum downloads are coming from fans living in the United States, China, and Russia.

Additional info provided by Rovio states that till date, users have played through a total of 480 million levels, flinging 6.3 billion birds and popping 5.9 billion pigs in the process. A total of 325 million spells have also been used by players in the process.

Angry Birds 2 comes with some significant improvement over the previous installment of the franchise. A new feature of multi-stage levels has been incorporated into the game along with the option to choose which birds to fling.

The game has improved in nearly every aspect in the latest installment. The structuring of the levels has been changed. Players now need to play through multiple stages before reaching the final stage. They can manage the birds that they select on certain levels and can change the order of flinging them as per their choice.

Levels have been made more difficult by the addition of new variables like fans and wind jets which make hitting the target considerably harder than before. A new feature comes in the form of special abilities called spells which can be used by players to overcome some really difficult levels.

Other new additions include Portals that redirect birds and debris and giant flowers spread across the stage that can suck up birds, pigs or anything else that comes near them and throw them back on the stage resulting in continuation of the destruction combo of the player.

The game has also improved in the graphics department. The developers maintain the cartoony touch of the game which was seen in the previous installment while adding an extra polish of high-definition to it.

The game is free to play with optional in-game purchases available to fans.

Angry Birds 2 infected by XcodeGhost malware.

It was recently reported by a popular website that many IOS programs available on the App Store have been infected with a malware. Earlier this week it was discovered that the malicious malware, Xcode Ghost, entered iPhones and iPads through the itunes App Store as a result of using an incorrect, fake version of Apple’s Xcode development tool by the company’s developers.

The Xcode programming environment is used by developers to build binaries for the App Store. The XcodeGhost malware was downloaded in a phony copy of the Xcode program by the Chinese developers.

Apple has published a list of names of apps infected by the virus. The list identifies the Angry Birds 2 game as one of the infected apps.

Some other names featured on the list include—We Chat, 58 Classified, Baidu Music, China Unicorn Customer Service, Himalaya FM, Dark Dawn, Battle of Freedom, Call Me MT 2, Flush HD, Foreign Harbor, DiDi, CarrotFantasy 2 Taxi, DuoDuo Ringtone, Heroes of Order and Chaos, Let’s Cook, Gaode Map Miraculous Warmth, NetEase Music, One Piece, Railroad 12306.