Wordle is a hype… and there is money to be made with it
You must have noticed: since a week everyone has been talking about Wordle, an English word game that can now also be played in a Dutch version. Wordle is really nothing more than Lingo in the browser. You have to guess a 5-letter word and get hints if you choose the correct letters. Josh Wardle, creator of the original online Wordle game, has put his creation out on the internet for free for anyone to play. The success has not gone unnoticed: the App Store is now bursting at the seams with clones and some developers think they can get rich quickly. The biggest problem is that there is no official app yet, so people accidentally install other apps.
The idea is of course not really original: Lingo has been around for years. But sometimes a game with simple rules is just what people need. Wordle is a hype, where you better guess the secret word faster than your friends.
What is Wordle?
With Wordle you have to guess a word in a maximum of six attempts. Every day there is a different word, which is the same for everyone. With each attempt you will receive clues as to whether you have used the correct letters, to bring you closer to the correct solution.
You will see these colors:
- Grey: the letter is not in the word to be guessed.
- Yellow: the letter is in the word, but is not in the right place yet.
- Green: the letter is on the right place.
You can play Wordle online here. You can find a free Dutch clone here. If you guessed the word, you can share your achievement online. Friends only see the colored blocks and not the words you have tried. That way it remains exciting for people who still have to guess. It is this sharing-without-hints that has made Wordle very popular. That way you can brag to your friends without revealing everything. Every day there is a different 5 letter word.
Apple intervenes
Soon the first Wordle clones appeared in the App Store. It was unclear whether Apple would intervene, because there is no official app and because Wordle itself is not very original. Lingo has been on TV since 1989 and was created by American Ralph Andrews, who saw the game flop in the US and Canada. Producer Harry de Winter bought the rights and brought the game to the Netherlands, where it became a success. Lingo is a combination of Mastermind and Bingo, two games that are much older.
Still, Apple stepped in a few hours after websites like MacRumors took notice. Many of these games were called Wordle and used the same game rules and user interface. There are still some clones in the App Store, but they have a different name. One developer killed himself by boasting how many downloads he'd already gotten with his Wordle version. He was so harassed that he had to lock his account. Diligent internet users then set out to find even more apps that took advantage of the hype.
This guy shamelessly cloned Wordle (name and all) as an F2P iOS game with in-app purchases and is bragging about how well it's doing and how he'll get away with it because Josh Wardle didn't trademark it. So gross. pic.twitter.com/kIs8BypuRA
— Andy Baio (@waxpancake) January 11, 2022
The situation is reminiscent of Flappy Bird and Threes, two games that became very popular in a short time and then teased were cloned. All kinds of clones of the Threes clone 2048 in turn appeared. At that time, Apple did not intervene so hard. Apple's guidelines around copycats do not prohibit the creation of clones, but recommend that you start with your own idea and not “simply combine the latest popular app from the App Store and with a few minor changes to name and interface to give the impression as if you came up with it yourself.”