Another 'Wordle' App Mixup Occurs, Only This Time Recipient Of Undue Rewards Builds Good Will
from the word-up dept
This post was written before the news today that the NY Times was buying Wordle. It will be interesting to see if suddenly "IP issues" start becoming a bigger deal to the NY Times than they were to the original developer...
Just a week or so back, we discussed how one man ripped off Wordle, a browser-based Mastermind style game who's creator insists be free and unmonetized. In that instance, Zach Shakked copied the game with only a few minor additional features and released it as an app going by the same name, Wordle, only to find that the entire internet decided this was a dick move and helped get the app delisted from Apple and Google stores. That was a story about how one bad actor got dealt with without anyone having to go down intellectual property or legal routes.
Well, here we are again with yet another unaffiliated Wordle app syphoning off money from people who think they're getting the browser game in an app... only this time the recipient of that undue income is building up a ton of goodwill by not being a jerk about it.
As spotted by GR+, Josh Wardle’s Wordle has led to squillions of confused players (hello!) accidentally downloading a five-year-old app with the same name to their mobile devices. The result being, creator of the other Wordle ended up receiving close to 200,000 downloads in a couple of days. More than it had received in total in the previous five years. And in turn, generating him a whole bunch of advertising revenue.
Steven Cravotta created that app five years ago as a teenager almost strictly to practice his coding skills. When he woke up the other day to suddenly find advertising revenue pouring in from the since-forgotten app, he didn't simply sit back and start counting all the dollar signs floating before his eyes. Instead, he started tweeting about how weird this all was and how much he wishes that the media did a better job of differentiating between Wordle the browser game and any Wordle mobile app.
Here’s how a mobile game I built 5 years ago suddenly got blown up by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Jimmy Fallon.
đđźđđźđđź pic.twitter.com/aun7YM80p4
— Steven (@StevenCravotta) January 12, 2022
If you follow that tweet-thread all the way through, you'll notice a couple of things. Cravotta spends a lot of time pointing out how weird this all is. Then he mentions that he is reaching out to Wordle creator Josh Wardle to find out what his preferred charity is so he can donate all of this money to the cause of his choice. The two apparently did speak and landed on Boost! West Oakland, an organization that empowers youths in Oakland, California through school tutoring. And, while he was at it, he pointed out that his more recent and professional apps are available.
In other words, he acted reasonable and human, recognizing that this was all a bunch of confused people accidentally downloading his game. As a result, just as the internet went off on what a jerk the Wordle copycat guy seemed to be, so too is it and a bunch of mass media sites reporting on how human and awesome Cravotta is. This is leading more people to his current apps.
Sometimes a little public reaction is all you need, rather than worrying about IP.
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Filed Under: charity, confusion, human, intellectual property, josh wardle, steven cravotta, wordle
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What is in a wordle?
This just proves that humans are human, both good and bad but corporations are not and invariably inhumane.
So stop treating corporations as people but as what they truly are - inhuman monstrosities that should never ever be left off their leash to do as they will.
Why? Because just like leading a horse to water, you can't stop it from taking a dump in it.
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Hey look everyone, its a shining example of how people wish other people would act... while often not acting that way themselves.
The human dichotomy of 'this is how people should act' while in their own minds justifying shoving that kid over to get the toy for their own kid first.
He might be a great guy, he might also have seen what happened to the asshat who tried to make money off the game.
Contacting the Wordle guy cost him nothing.
Explaining how this happened & it wasn't a con cost him nothing.
Donating the income cost him nothing.
The possible benefit, even if only 1% of what he hoped they would be.... priceless.
We really need to make more kids do those delayed satisfaction exercises.
Far to often the first response is how do I cash in & cash in hard.
(See also: every corporation & congress person)
People will mutter about shareholder value & other things that somehow seem to matter more than other people when they might make an extra nickel but often leap up yelling when someone else is getting the nickel and they should do things for the common good instead.
Dude avoids internet backlash... by behaving in a way we ourselves would rarely act.
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Re: But, but, but
That app name could have been copytrade-patentright-marked allowing the app designer of 5 years previous to go all MAFIAA on Josh Wardle. Oh well, word'll get around I guess.
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Re: Re: But, but, but
As you've probably seen by now, the NY Times has bought the app. It's going to get copytrade-patentright-marked so hard now!
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Re: Re: Re: But, but, but
"As you've probably seen by now, the NY Times has bought the app"
Well now, maybe we'll get to see the NY Times' effect on "Man".
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The great idea?
So his great idea was to spam twitter and facebook every time some of their players are getting a high score?
The innovations these days are causing more damage than they're worth.
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Please return to your hole, you lunatic.
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Re:
Give him a moment, it's a perfect storm of things to break his brain - another developer to be jealous of because their useful work reaped rewards, another example of everybody benefitting by not implementing the insane restrictions he claims are necessary to succeed, software that's designed to be so easily useful and usable that it naturally led its users to recommend it to others...
I'm sure he'll be back to complaining about fictional copyright laws and how it's unfair that the software he claims to have broken on purpose doesn't sell any time soon.
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And letâs not forget that Wordle got sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Iâm sure that one stings, too. đ
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Re: Re:
Why would "causing damage" be acceptable business strategy? The restrictions are needed so that your app isn't in the area of the world which causes more damage.
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It wouldnât be, unless your name/brand has enough goodwill and positive associations with the general public that a little damage here and there wouldnât affect that brand. (To wit: Nintendo.) For everyone who doesnât have that luxury, âcausing damageâ is a horrible idea. The guy who made that ripoff Wordle can attest to that: No matter what else he does in the foreseeable future, heâll still be âthe Wordle ripoff guyâ to a significant number of people, and all because he wanted to make a shitload of money by fooling people into thinking his Wordle app was the âofficialâ app.
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Re:
For this wordle ripoff guy to succeed, the original wordle app must be significantly worse. I don't see the necessary large organisation available in the original wordle that would be able to handle the popularity. We should focus on why the original wordle is so popular.
The ripoff guy is going to the "riding on someone elses popularity". That's illegal practise too in copyright laws, but it isn't the worst violation available in the system. The original wordle guys are in significantly bigger trouble.
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Iâm sure youâd like to believe that, but youâre wrong in this case. He legit ripped off Wordleâ âname includedâ âand made it a pay-to-play app. Him bragging about it on social media was what led to him getting dragged on Twitter, his app getting removed, and him eventually making an expanded Wordle-like that might net him some money but wonât repair his reputation as a greedy exploitative asshole.
This is one of the reasons (if not the main reason) why the Wordle dev sold his game to the New York Times for at least a million dollars.
It takes a few minutes (if that) to play a single game to completion. It offers a neat brainteaser challenge. It doesnât try to sell you anything, since the site features no ads of any kind. It doesnât force you to give up anythingâ âmoney or informationâ âto play. I get that you donât understand any of those things, though, and Iâm sorry about that.
Eh, that depends on the situation and the context.
Not really. He sold the game to the New York Times, so theyâre gonna be the ones controlling the game now. And if anyone who held the rights to the âprior artâ that inspired Wordle wanted to go after the guy who made it, they would have already done so. Dude made a fun game inspired by other games and got paid a hefty sum for it after it went viral. Itâs about the best ending he couldâve asked for.
Have you made a million dollars with your software yet, you dangerous omnicidal lunatic?
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Re: Re:
"For this wordle ripoff guy to succeed, the original wordle app must be significantly worse"
You would know this if you were capable of taking in information that relates to the real world, but - there was no "original" Wordle app. It's a website, not an app. Which is why the ripoff artist got in trouble - he was making money defrauding people into thinking the app he was selling was related to the original.
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And he was bragging about his blatant exploitative greed on social media. That sure as hell didnât help him.
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Re:
Sure, his bragging definitely didn't help, and it likely brought a bunch of complaints to Apple's attention that compelled a more immediate response.
But, even if he'd have managed to fly under the radar for a bit, what he did was fundamentally based on misleading consumers into paying a subscription, so he would have got into some trouble eventually.
He could have made some minor changes, used a different name for the app and promoted it along the lines of "if you like Wordle but want more puzzles every day and different word lengths, you'll love this", and he could likely have been a success. But, the arrogance combined with the appearance of trying to defraud people did him in.
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Funny thing is, thatâs what he actually ended up doing after the Wordle ripoff debacle. If he had done that from the get-go, he probably wouldnât be known for being a greedy fuckboi like he is now.
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Re: Re: Re:
I'm sure you'll entertain us with what the parallel universe you live in's version of "damage" is, but if you're referring to people sharing what they like on social media and you being too lazy/stupid to hide the posts if you don't like them, that's not it.
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Re: Re:
So, when users click "Back" key to get rid of the app, it'll happily use user's credientals to advertise the game to new audiences?
Naturally people will click back when they want nothing to do with the app, and that's exactly the point where the game needs more users. It's just natural place to put a spamming operation, given that it cannot even be disabled whenever courts decide the app has done enough damage.
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what the fuck are you talking about, you lunatic
Or, you know, when theyâre done with the daily puzzle and ready to do other things. The whole deal with Wordle is that itâs a once-per-day thing: People do the puzzle, share the results, and get on with their lives. Hell, the fact that the game was designed that way wasâ âand still isâ âpart of its broad appeal.
Wordle doesnât spam shit; people manually share their results on their own. That social aspect of the gameâ âwhich is completely optional, mind youâ âis one of the reasons Wordle got popular enough to become a social media phenomenon.
I repeat: what the fuck are you talking about, you lunatic
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Re:
It's not acceptable that common operations inside the game are "expanding" their network size. Facebook famously got "popular" when they did that, but the spamming operations which made facebook popular were declared illegal long ago.
This wordie game has exactly the same aspect. Their social highscore comparision and sharing feature not only does share the high scores with other players that already chose to play the game, but it also expands the game's popularity on the social media. This network expansion trick is very popular nowadays because facebook got global network of users by applying huge spamming operations. But it has since been declared illegal way of gaining users. Basically it's not acceptable to force users to dismiss suggestions faster than humans can handle it.
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what the fuck are you talking about, you lunatic
No, seriously, what the fuck do you think âword of mouthâ is? Because thatâs how Wordle grew to the point where the guy who made it could sell it for at least a million dollars: the social media equivalent of âword of mouthâ advertising. And Wordle didnât accomplish that with automated spamming or whatever you think it used to get bigâ âit got big because other people voluntarily and manually shared their results on social media.
And if Wordle was/is intentionally and automatically spamming people in the same way Facebook did/does, you would have a point. But you donât, because that isnât happening.
This all reads like youâre upset that a fun little game went viral and sold for a million dollars to one of the most famous newspapers in the world because people willingly shared their results on social media when they didnât have to do that at all. It comes off as jealousy towards someone who made a hit game and sold it for a seven-figure sum without doing all the shit you think is necessary for that to happen.
Welcome to the real world.
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Re:
Facebook also claimed their operation is legal, simply because it requires active participation of some end users for it to start spamming other users. But the fact remains that their email server is sending more emails than what users are able to dismiss (in the same time). This always creates growing networks which will become significant problems.
The fact that wordie also keeps users engaged with once-per-day updates is another broken feature. The volume of spam this system generates is simply too large.
You need to learn to calculate the overall spam level of the systems you're using. The network operators are trying to hide their real impact to the world, but any time when their servers or activity is running faster than humans can handle, there's dangerous and illegal activity ongoing.
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And if Wordleâs wholly optional and voluntary results-sharing feature worked that way, you might have a point. But it doesnât. So you donât.
Are daily crosswords for newspapers (and their websites) âbrokenâ because said newspapers publish a new crossword puzzle on a daily basis?
NotâŚreally? I mean, itâs one message per day thatâs often far less than the character limit imposed by Twitter. Even multiplied by several thousands, itâs still completely manageable for a system that has many, many millions (if not billions) of messages posted on its system every day. Any Wordle âspamâ on Twitter is likely dwarfed by the amount of actual spam on Twitterâ âand unlike actual spam, Wordle âspamâ doesnât advertise anything. (Sharing the results doesnât even link back to the site Wordle is hosted on.)
Again: If Wordle âspamâ was actually doing that, you might have a point. But itâs not. So you donât.
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Re:
But the real problem is that you cannot calculate their overall spam level. So you simply don't know if they're actually doing that or not. The practices I've heard from the wordie game are clearly directly from facebook training manual, and thus illegal.
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So what? The game itself does no actual spamming. It doesnât connect to or automatically share results on any social media service. Sharing the results requires an individual to voluntarily choose to share their results, and such sharing is wholly optional. Someone can play Wordle every day and not share their results at all.
And again: If Wordle âspamâ could bring down social media services, those services would already be clamping down on that âspamâ. That no major social media service has done so is a testament to how small an effect the sharing of Wordle results has on those services.
No, theyâre not. Sharing results from Wordle doesnât start a spam chain that forces anyone else to share their resultsâ âor play the game, for that matter. (As Iâve said, the results copypasta doesnât even include a link to Wordle.) Sharing those results is a wholly voluntary and completely optional after-game action; no one needs to share their results (or promise to do so) so they can play the game. The game doesnât advertise anything (including itself) and it doesnât have any functions that would make anyone advertise anything (including the game) on social media.
I understand that youâre jealous of a guy building a word game that was based on a fair bit of âprior artâ and selling it for at least a million dollars within the space of a year while youâve been working on your software for years with nothing to show for it but a comment history on this site that makes the typical troll brigade seem absolutely sane in comparison. But your jealousyâ âand your omnicidal hatred of all sentient life on Earthâ âis no reason to lie about anything Wordle does being âillegalâ.
Go back to your hole, you dangerous lunatic, and stay there until the heat death of the universe.
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Re:
This isn't required. The illegal operation often do this exponential spreading of their system (which is worse than covid) by making sure users know some keyword like "wordle"... Once the expansion happens, they just need to get 2 people to join their network whenever one person disappears.
This is what made the keyword "facebook" as the most searched word in google search. Basically everyone was searching how to get rid of facebook.
Given that you actually used the word in your message, it proves that their system is working.
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People talking about a game on social media is not âillegalâ. People sharing their results of having played that game is not âillegalâ.
I canât talk about the game without mentioning its name. And the process by which Wordle got big isnât illegal; it used to be called âword of mouthâ advertising, whichâŚwell, if that were illegal, so too would be reviews of any kind of entertainment. And I get it, you think thatâd actually be a good thingâ âbut you also want to kill every other form of life on the planet, so youâre an extreme outlier (and thatâs the most charitable way I could put that).
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Re:
The game offering a button that automatically shares the high scores to 3 of your (randomly chosen) friends is illegal chain letter.
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Wordle doesnât do that. At all.
Not only is the âsharing resultsâ aspect of the game completely voluntary and wholly optional, it only copies the results to your clipboard. You can paste it anywhere you want and share it with as few or as many people as you want, but you have to do so manually. The game doesnât share results automatically, doesnât connect with any social media service, doesnât force other people to read your results (or share their own), and doesnât compel other people to play the game.
Nothing about Wordle allowing you to share your results if you choose to do so is illegal, immoral, or unethical within the reality that everyone else but you lives in.
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Re: My story makes more sense than your bullshit at least
'illegal chain letter."
I think what you ment to say was illegal chain litter. Which as everyone from a mountain town can tell is a REAL problem. What with all the truckers leaving broken and rusty chains all over the road like a bunch of maniacs. It's so infamous Alice In Chains named themselves after a particular gruesome incident.
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Re: Re:
So, you're saying that a product should be illegal if people talk about it.
You are a true lunatic, and it would be funny if you weren't such a complete failure.
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Re: Re: Re:
And if it spreads to new users automatically.
The keyword is "automatically". I.e. without active participation of the original developers.
Once you take original developers away from the equation, all systems spreading to new users are dangerous. This is why piracy is illegal. It spreads to new areas without original developers are able to control the spread of the material.
Normally its solved so that original developers of the material can remove the product from distribution whenever big problems are first appearing. And this will (slowly) prevent the spread.
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Translation: âWord-of-mouth advertising is evil and should be abolished forever because no one should get to talk about the things they like.â
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Re:
All the users will just need to:
1) find the original author or his representative, i.e. copyright owner
2) transfer some money to the author, i.e. compensation
3) receive product in the exchange i.e. product
These are all necessary elements of copyright maximalist principles.
Anything outside of this pattern is simply illegal.
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Yes, yes, we get itâ âyou think anything that doesnât exclusively put money in your pockets should be illegal.
One of the biggest newspapers in the world bought a wildly popular free-to-play word game for at least a million dollars. Die mad about it.
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Re:
new york times seems to be using copyright maximalist principles:
1) they found the original author
2) they transferred some money to him (at least million dollars)
3) and they received a product in exchange.
Clearly using copyright maximalist principles.
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NotâŚreally? I mean, if anything, they couldâve gone to the creators of any of the other games that inspired Wordle and bought them. They bought Wordle primarily because of its social media popularity.
And even if I were to agree with you that the NYT operated under your âcopyright maximalist principlesâ: They still bought a free-to-play word game for at least a million dollars. Wordle did what youâve always wanted to do (but canât ever accomplish) with Meshpageâ âmake serious moneyâ âand did so in less than a year. Die mad about it.
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Re:
I never wanted to create one game. The original plan for meshpage had 100 games in it, creating one game was never a situation I want to be stuck with. Basically the "create one game" -pattern was already exhausted in 1992-1994 timeframe, when I created a game called Mega Motion for amiga. This game was sold commercially in UK and germany by Black Legend UK ltd.
Instead meshpage went with 100 games. This pattern was necessary because mega motion had 100 levels, and the next project needs to be slightly more difficult. Thus 100 games was the next target. That's already done and results of that activity is at http://tpgames.org/games100.html ... While those are low-quality games, the next step is the meshpage.org web site, which has slightly better quality, and I have created over 70 unique 3d models/animations/games/demos/intros.... The meshpage.org's shop has over 500 locations in shop shelf where those products are available. So it's just laziness of customers if they don't purchase those products.
End result is that 2 people purchased builder, and over 1500 people viewed the material. success.
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By your own admission, you havenât made any significant amount of money from Meshpage after all the years and years youâve been working on it. The guy who made Wordle sold his wildly popular game for at least a million bucks in less than a year after he first published it to the web. He had more success with his software in a year than you have ever had with yours in any given span of time.
Die mad about it.
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Re:
This is true. mega motion in 1994 made $3000 dollars revenue. meshpage is at $48 now.
But money isn't everything.
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And yet, Wordle and its developer will always be more successful than you will ever be.
Die mad about it.
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Re:
I dont think so. I still have 100 million gadgets under my belt.
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And none of them have given you the same level of financial success and fame as Wordle gave its developer. None of them ever will.
Die mad about it.
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Re:
lets talk about what you managed to do with the time that was given to you...
you have managed to troll on techdirt for a while... anything else?
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Thatâs the difference between you and me, you lunatic: Iâm well aware of both the time Iâm wasting here and how utterly worthless I am.
Iâll likely never be as successful as the Wordle guy, and Iâm okay with that. Iâm not out here trying to claim that what he did was somehow illegal or implying that he needs to be executed for not being a copyright extremist. Iâm merely telling you that youâll never be as successful as him, too.
Iâm not gonna die mad about it. You are, though. Youâre already mad about people being more successful than you because of your admitted inability to work with anyone else on the planet. Youâre mad because people are out there making free-to-use software thatâs working as intended and you have to keep making excuses about why Meshpage canât even get the software review equivalent of a pity fuck. Youâre angry because nobody else thinks youâre the Rick Sanchez of this world, and in reality, youâre barely even a Jerry Smith. (I know Iâm a Jerry, and Iâve made peace with that.)
You will never be rich. You will never be famous. You will die alone, unloved and unremembered by anyone who isnât your direct family. Your name will fade into dust mere seconds after what will pass for your funeral, and not even the Internet will care enough to piss on your grave (in cyber- or meatspace). And for all your attempts to turn all this back on me, you wonât be able to affect me because I already know all of that shit will apply to me as well. You canât hurt me, you canât make me feel any worse about myself than I already do, and you will never be able to do anything more than make me waste a few minutes of my time here and there on an irregular basis.
Die mad about it.
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Re:
its so sad that you have already quit trying to improve the world around you. Once you create some copyrighted works, nothing will take away that work.
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I put all my shit in the public domain, bitch. Try and stop me.
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Re: Re:
Actually bro in the US it's life +70 or until that law changes. You however continue to be a worthless fuckwit, copyright or no.
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Re: Re:
What have you actually done to improve yours? An application that doesn't have any users is not an improvement on the world by any stretch of the imagination. Neither is demanding money for it.
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Re: Re:
If money isn't everything you wouldn't be here, constantly angry and complaining that the government of Finland isn't giving you money.
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Re: Re:
Hey not to interrupt your totally cool story and not at all made up story. But do you happen to have a statute to cite for this quote?
"Anything outside of this pattern is simply illegal."
Nah?
Didn't think so.
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Re:
Or, fitting in with tp's regular theme - "competition should be illegal, because I fail every time customers have a choice not to use my software".
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"And if it spreads to new users automatically."
Which it doesn't. Nothing happens without deliberate activity on the behalf of the user trying to share. Which would only make sense as complaint if...
"The keyword is "automatically". I.e. without active participation of the original developers."
Fuck, so you are saying that people talking about your product should be illegal.
I do love the progression here. You've gone from stating that it's unfair that people get paid for success, to claiming that it should be illegal to let your audience talk about you. What next - lock everyone up because they demand a product that actually runs?
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Come on, man, this is tp weâre talking about here.
Heâd have those people executed.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The next steps are obviously:
3) fix the mess you caused in the world with your previous products(no damage)
4) make perfect implementation, with no pixel broken in the implementation(perfect implementation)
5) keep some holiday (no burnouts)
6) build your own dependencies (build a cpu and rest of the hardware)
7) sell the hardware(transfer your work to customers)
8) travel around the world(you haven't seen enough of the world yet)
9) break laws of physics and earn phd while doing it
10) Build the stuff you see in scifi movies
11) Travel to other planets/galaxies
12) Meet the aliens
13) Destroy the universe and jump to next one
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You are not Rick Sanchez, you omnicidal lunatic. Go back to your hole.
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Re: Re: Re:
"So, when users click "Back" key to get rid of the app, it'll happily use user's credientals to advertise the game to new audiences?"
No, and stop lying about the site.
I know you can't stand that yet another competent developer is making a lot of money by doing things that you refuse to do like offering products that people want to use, but making up things to be angry about doesn't help you.
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Re: The great idea?
Wow. Even on such a basic concept as this game, you've completely failed to grasp anything about what made it entertaining and useful.
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He also seems to think Wordle itself spammed social media, when actual people âspammedâ it themselves. Hell, part of the fun of Wordle is comparing results and maybe even trying to guess the route people took to get the right word (if they did get it). I donât know how long thatâll last when the Times finally gets hold of the game, though. (I suspect the NYT will paywall the game within a year, maybe two at the most.) But yeah, itâs funny how a simple, free-to-play brainteaser game with no ads and a fun way of sharing results on social media can turn into a huge hit, huh.
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Re:
Funnily enough, I've never shared my scores on social media. Part of that is because my first couple of games were embarrassingly poor, and partly because I don't necessarily play every day. I'll banter a bit with friends if I spot someone who did worse (or better) than I did, but I don't view it as anything but a distraction for a few moments in the same way others would view the daily crossword or such things (which is why the NYT have bought it).
But, according to this guy what I did isn't possible. Yet another example of a failure so complete, he can't deal with the same universe the rest of us occupy.
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Re: I AM THE ARIEL RODENT PERSON!
Is there like a giant copyright symbol that lights up the night sky every time someone decides not to maximalise an Intellectual Property?
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Re: The great idea?
Your great idea was to spam everything on this site about Meshpage, dummy.
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"...who's creator..."
"who is creator"?
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