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Wordle Copycats Have Vanished From Apple's App Store (polygon.com) 37

Posted by msmash from the done-deal dept.
The many Wordle copycats that were flooding Apple's App Store seem to have disappeared. The apps appear to have been removed by Apple shortly after their existence caused a stir on social media. From a report: Wordle itself doesn't have an official iOS app so other developers looked to hop on the coattails of the game's success. But when one in particular started bragging on Twitter about the attention his version of the app was getting, he quickly caught heat, drawing attention to both his app and the many other Wordle clones on the App Store. While there are still a few five-letter word games on the store, they don't have the name Wordle attached like the most egregious ripoffs from the last few days have. Instead these games have named like PuzzWord. There are still a few games left on the App Store that are actually called Wordle, but one was released three years ago and the other was released five years ago with very different concepts from the surprise hit developed by Josh Wardle. While the apps are now gone from the store, the question of why they're gone remains open. There's been no official word from Apple on whether or not the apps were removed because they violated a store rule, or simply because Apple no longer wanted them on the App Store. Either way, for now the only way to play real Worlde on your phone is still to navigate to the website on a browser.
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Wordle Copycats Have Vanished From Apple's App Store More

Wordle Copycats Have Vanished From Apple's App Store

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  • ... exactly why?

    • Grey Grey Green Orange Grey

    • You don't care how tech companies behave and control their own markets? It should be interesting from a social and futurist aspect as well as the more grounded economic, policy making, and investment aspects.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by thomst ( 1640045 )

        OrangeTide explained:

        You don't care how tech companies behave and control their own markets?

        I do. But this is just "Apple belatedly realizes scammers are pretending their apps are something they're not, after social media shaming brings it to their attention." Which is news in exactly what universe?"

        It should be interesting from a social and futurist aspect as well as the more grounded economic, policy making, and investment aspects.

        Perhaps it should be. But it's not ...

        • Which is news in exactly what universe?"

          Cynically, but I agree. On the other hand, we probably should call out the inconsistent policies and general capriciousness of the tech industry's treatment of customers and partners.

    • No shit. WTF is Wordle?

  • It wasn't designed for the traffic and attention it is getting.

    All the target words (past and future) and in a js file that gets downloaded when you go the the webpage.

    • So, if you like the game, it would be a simple matter to modify the source and run a local copy which lets you binge-play as much as you want. Or, for that matter, you could tie it into your own dictionary - and/or modify the code to allow for variable word lengths (or even allow for more or fewer guesses at the correct word).

      That might actually be interesting...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      It was literally made as a fun little thing for his partner.

      So yeah, of course it wasn't designed for that.

    • All the target words (past and future) and in a js file that gets downloaded when you go the the webpage.

      All that you are cheating is yourself if you go look.

      That's the great thing about something so small and simple is that it really benefits just you, it doesn't need to be anything else even if it could be.

  • Good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 ) <vincent@jan@goh.gmail@com> on Wednesday January 12, 2022 @02:41PM (#62168051) Homepage

    The conceit of the App Store is that it's a safe place for consumers, and a profitable storefront for devs.

    The App Store is honestly worse than it should be at weeding out a) scams; and b) rip-offs.

    None of these were scams per se, though the guy that was bragging about copying Wordle made it a $30/year subscription, which is pretty pricy. He also tried to make the closest possible copy to the web version he could, and named his app "The Wordle App", clearly trying to make it look like it was the official app of the web version. He may not have done anything technically illegal, but he was certainly trying to mislead.

    It erodes trust in the App Store to have bad apps go up. Customers start to wonder why Apple can't keep scammers out, devs wonder why they should make apps if somebody's just going to come along and copy their whole app wholesale and then use better SEO (sometimes the name of the original app!) and have the clone do better.

    And this is one of the few times where throwing more people (and more money) at the problem could make it go away. If Apple doubled the size of their app review team and trained them all better in what makes a good or a bad app and then paid them what they were worth, it would still be the most trifling drop in the bucket for them.

    • He was committing fraud by claiming to have an official app and selling it...

    • It's reasonable to remove apps using Wordle's trademarks (if the author has obtained them - otherwise probably fair game, legally, if crummy behavior. IANAL)

      But while you can trademark a game's name, and copyright the graphics and text, you can't copyright a game's actual rules, and I don't think they can be patented.

      Hence you can play undecorated clones of Codenames and Risk online, as well as a bunch more stuff.

      • Wordle is just Mastermind with letters instead of colors

        • Q. E. D.

          Since I wrote the last post, I looked into patenting games, and it appears you can, but it's difficult, expensive, and seldom financially worthwhile.

          If you can recognize Mastermind in Wordle, it seems like that would trip you up under the USPTO's rule that a game must not be "familiar" to be patented.

  • A better article (Score:3)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Wednesday January 12, 2022 @02:45PM (#62168071)
    Here is an article that actually goes into the situation - which is a mess. Wardle did not trademark Wordle, so some opportunist trademarked it last week (after Wardle's Wordle had already become very popular).

    https://techscurry.com/general... [techscurry.com]

    So, it sounds like Apple is just applying its own discretion to get rid of confusingly similar ripoffs of what they think people really want.

    • Perhaps an even better article, Tech Dude Rips Off Wordle, Angers Internet [kotaku.com] notes that one of the copycats once complained about people ripping off his apps:

      While the original Wordle was created as a love letter of sorts for Wardle’s partner, “Wordle - The App” appears to be born of [Zach] Shakked’s stated 2022 resolutions to “be more vulgar” and “make tons of fucking money.” Not even a Disney villain would be so on the nose.

      As if asking for the internet to virtually punch him in the face, Shakked’s victory lap began to quickly make waves outside of his narrow pool of 1,500 followers. The comments, quote-tweets, and dunks started pouring in as well, especially from other game developers.

      Cabel Sasser of indie studio Panic, the publisher behind Untitled Goose Game currently working on the Playdate handheld, responded to Shakked that he couldn’t wait to show Wordle’s true creator how to navigate the App Store takedown process. Others were more explicit. “Absolutely fuck you,” wrote Vlambeer cofounder Rami Ismail.

      In a past life, Shakked would probably have agreed. It didn’t take long for people to surface an old tweet of his [archive.org] complaining about other internet strangers ripping off his own apps.

      This app Hashtag Planner completely copied my paywall before. We reached out to Apple, had them change it completely, and resolved the issue.

      I check their app again and now they are copying my NEW paywall! Are you freaking kidding me?

      I guess karma *is* a bitch ... :-)

      • If the copycat's stated goals are to be more vulgar and make more money, he is evidently a person who would respond to being victimized by trying to recoup his losses in kind. "Oh, that's how the world works, is it...?"

    • Wardle did not trademark Wordle....So, it sounds like Apple is just applying its own discretion to get rid of confusingly similar ripoffs

      Clearly, neither did all the games called Wordle that preceded his by years. The name is completely unoriginal - there are multiple games all called Wordle. I had one on my old iPod touch [phonesreview.co.uk] dating from around 2012. This, and others like "Wordle!" predate this guys Wordle by years (almost a decade in the first case). If anything they are not the rip-offs, Wardle's game - or rather the name of it - is, although I expect it's entirely coincidental.

      • The summary says Apple did not remove the earlier (different) games named Wordle. Makes sense to me. (And they must be loving all the additional downloads they are getting).
  • Add the website to your home screen on your phone and it becomes a progressive web app (PWA), this is perfect use case for a PWA and there is absolutely no reason why this (and many other simple games and apps) need to be native apps.

  • Still a few of there out there.

  • Wordle isn't even a novel game. People have done it before. Wasn't there a gameshow called Lingo that is essentially the same thing?

  • As a Brit, how could I ever have guessed it was the wrongly spelled: FAVOR

    Instead of the correctly spelled: FAVOUR ?

    They should at least make it region specific.
    lang=en_GB, etc

    Lost much precious energy this time round.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mikaere ( 748605 )

      I'm a Kiwi (NZ English uses British spelling), and I got it because I know that lots of dictionaries consider American spelling to also be correct. And also because FAVOUR has too many letters, and FAVOR totally fit.

      I do agree that region-specificity would be useful.

  • Wordle apparently requires Java to work at all ... and the Wordle web page doesn't say so, anywhere.

    Because of course in 2022 everybody will just have Java installed and enabled? WTH?

    Sounds like copycats are doing people a favor.

  • I mean that is a truly blatant ripoff of Scrabble. Why wasn't that ever removed?

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