A developer of an app that’s been called Wordle for five years has donated his profits to charity after discovering that people are mistaking it for the current viral trend game.
- READ MORE: Why ‘Wordle’ is all over your timeline
As reported by GamesRadar, developer Steven Cravotta shared on Twitter that he created an app called Wordle when he was 18, but abandoned it when it didn’t succeed in the way that he was hoping for.
Cravotta then said he was “shook” to discover that 200,000 people had downloaded his app in the last week. That’s because people were mistaking it for another game called Wordle, the free browser-based game that has taken the internet by storm in recent weeks.
Cravotta explained that when developer Josh Wardle’s game went viral, articles started covering it without specifying that it was browser-based, so people started looking for Wardle’s version of Wordle and instead found his.
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.
— Steven (@StevenCravotta) January 12, 2022
Once the case of mistaken identity was solved, Cravotta reached out to Wardle to see if “this very strange, once in a lifetime scenario” could be turned into “something amazing”.
This has resulted in the proceeds for Cravotta’s Wordle being donated to ‘Boost! West Oakland’, an organisation “that focuses on literacy for youth”.
Meanwhile, Wardle said that Cravotta “reached out to me unprompted and asked about donating the proceeds,” adding that he was a “class act”.
Not all Wordle developers have dealt with the trend in the same fashion – last week, someone who recreated Wordle with a paid version received backlash for “shamelessly” cloning the game for profit.
In other news, the creator of Stardew Valley is working on an unannounced third game. Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has already teased early gameplay for Hotel Chocolatier, but has now shared that he’s working as part of a team on yet another game to follow that.
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