Rovio, the developers of the wildly popular Angry Birds series of games, announced today that over one billion Angry Birds games have been downloaded. The software developer announced the impressive milestone with a tweet:

The link in the tweet leads to a thank-you video for fans, which you can view below. In the description for the video, Rovio promises even more to come:

Angry Birds games have now been downloaded more than a billion times — THANK YOU to all of our incredible fans! This is only the beginning of our story, keep your eyes peeled for what’s coming up next from Rovio!

The one billion number counts downloads from all of the Angry Birds games, including the original Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, and the new Angry Birds Space. Pointing out this fact doesn’t take anything away from Rovio’s accomplishment, though. The developer has proven that video games do not have to cater to a hardcore crowd to be successful, that selling games for low prices can still be profitable, and that solid gameplay and level design can easily compete with high-end graphics and game engines.

According to comScore numbers released this month, Rovio ranks 12th in the list of top smartphone properties. Over 25 million players, around one-quarter of all smartphone users, pulled back on their slingshots and let Angry Birds fly this past March. Though Rovio falls just under app gaming’s number one property, Zynga, Rovio has shown that it can create games with staying power. Launched over two years ago, the Angry Birds games are still going strong, while Zynga has seen some of its games’ popularity rise and fall very quickly.

Take a look at the video below and leave a comment to let us know if you still love Angry Birds.