If you’ve spent some time on Twitter over the past week, you’ve probably seen the grids of emoji boxes take over your feed. That is thanks Wortle, a new puzzle game that has become an obsession for many since the New York Times written about it a little over a week ago.
Like other viral games, Wordle is deceptively simple: you have six chances to guess a new five letter word. And that’s … pretty much everything. There is only one puzzle a day and it is free to play with no ads. Its creator, a software developer named Josh Wardle, is apparently “overwhelmed” by the popularity of his game. But the fact that the game doesn’t have an app has allowed developers to create their own knockoff version of the game.
A particularly egregious example comes from the developer Zach Shakked, who developed an app called “Wordle – The App”. At first glance, it is easy to confuse the app with the subtitle “Word game Everyone is playing!” With the original. The word grid looks almost the same and even uses the same color scheme. However, in the Shakked version, players are also prompted to sign up for a “Pro” subscription, which costs $ 29.99 after a three-day “free trial”.
Between naming the app “Wordle” and placing search ads against the term in the App Store, however, Shakked seems to have been able to benefit from the popularity of the game originally developed by Wardle. “That’s absurd. 450 attempts last night at 1 am, now at 950 and new ones every minute,” he wrote in a tweet that has since been made privately. “12K downloads, 28th place in the word game and 4th place for” Wordle ” in the App Store. We’re going to the damn moon. “
Screenshot via Twitter
Shakked and Wardle did not respond to questions from Engadget. Shakked isn’t the only developer trying to capitalize on Wordle’s popularity, however. His app is one of at least six Wordle clones released on the App Store in the eight days since the original New York Times article about Wordle. Another, called “What Word – Wordle,” which charges an in-app purchase of $ 0.99 to remove ads, claims the “No. 1 word game” in its App Store screenshots (It actually ranks 7th on word games according to the App Store listing.)
Deceptive knockoff apps that take advantage of the popularity of a viral game are, of course, nothing new. Game developers were to complain about something the practice for years. Apple didn’t immediately respond to questions about Wordle clones on its store. But thanks to the emails released during the Epic vs. Apple trial, we know that copycat apps have long been a source of frustration for Apple executives as well. “Doesn’t anyone check these apps? Doesn’t anyone care about the store? “Wrote Phil Schiller in an email from 2012. Three years later, he complained that “I can’t believe we still don’t have any” automated tools to find rogue apps.
Update 1/11 7:52 p.m. ET: The App Store listings for the Wordle clones are no longer accessible and the apps appear to have been removed from the store. We contacted Apple for more information.
Update 1/11 10:05 PM ET: Apple confirmed to Engadget that it had removed the games from its app store.
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