Published: November 2019; Updated: December 2020
Between the first PC release of Angry Birds in January 2011 and the discontinuation of the desktop (PC/Mac) versions in November 2014, Rovio had released seven distinct games for the PC platform, and many updates. The games that have seen PC releases are Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Space, Angry Birds Star Wars, Angry Birds Star Wars II and the Bad Piggies spin-off.
Every game in the series was offered as a free demo, including only a small subset of the levels, ads and promotions to buy the full version. However, the full game content was actually included in the installer, and could be unlocked simply by purchasing an activation code from Rovio or one of their resellers. Once unlocked, you would get a nice, ad-free and nag-free gameplay experience, as well as eligibility for future updates, which could be installed periodically by the game’s auto-updater, or downloaded manually (game progress and activation status transferred automatically to any update installed over an existing version). This behavior applied to digital keys purchased online as well as physical copies (where the activation code would be included in the CD case). Updates would typically add additional levels (sometimes new worlds and new birds) and fix bugs.
When the games were discontinued, Rovio also announced end of sales and support, and the games were removed from the Rovio store on their website. However, years later (at least up until late 2019), the free versions of every game could be downloaded directly from Rovio’s servers, although the links were not advertised.
I originally created this page just for convenience, with the intent of providing the official links to the straight from download.angrybirds.com. However, it appears that the server has been shut down, and the links are dead. I’ve redirected them to the Wayback Machine, but if you want all games – you may as well just grab the complete package from this Internet Archive entry.
| Game | Latest Version |
| Classic | 4.0.0 |
| Seasons | 4.1.0 |
| Rio | 2.2.0 |
| Space | 2.0.0 |
| Star Wars | 1.5.0 |
| Star Wars II | 1.5.1 |
| Bad Piggies | 1.5.1 |
The games should work out-of-the-box on every version of Windows between Windows XP and Windows 10 (maybe older too, but I haven’t tested), and almost every PC from the last decade and a half should run them well. As explained above, these will install the free, limited version of each game, unless you have an activation code. Rovio no longer sells these games digitally, but both new and second-hand physical copies (on CDs) are plentiful and available online.
At some point during late 2012, Rovio updated the OpenGL renderer for all games, introducing a larger UI, and a somewhat “softer” look. On one of my systems (Thinkpad T60 with ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 GPU, running Windows XP), games with the new renderer looked really pixelated. This turned out to be an issue with later versions of the ATI driver (a workaround is available).
For a very detailed update history for the various games in the series, consult the update log at Angry Birds Nest.
Final word: in 2019, after a long hiatus, Rovio has announced Angry Birds come back to the PC, with Angry Birds Friends and Angry Birds 2 offered through the Windows 10 App Store. This is a welcome development for PC gamers, but out of scope for this article.
Cloaked Thargoid 