Developer of unrelated Worldle app donates proceeds to charity

It’s early in 2022, but one thing is already clear: WordleOne of the top-selling games of the year has been “The Game.” Its success gave a boost to an iOS app that was launched five years ago called Wordle — which is totally unrelated to the popular word game currently taking over the internet — much to the developer’s surprise, IGN reported.

Steven Cravotta designed the Wordle mobile App Store game when he was 18, “mostly for fun, to sharpen my coding skillz, and maybe make a quick buck,” he explained in a Twitter thread. The app didn’t take off, unlike his prior creation, an app called Grid, and so he stopped updating it after roughly 100k downloads. As of last week, he says the app has “gotten 200,000 downloads in the past 7 days and it’s not even slowing down yet.”

This viral game is available in browsers WordleJosh Wardle created, which allows you to guess a five-letter word six times. The game’s hook is simple and makes it very easy to use. The game’s popularity landed it coverage in a number of prominent publications, which almost certainly led to people searching for the game’s name in the App Store, as Cravotta explained in his Twitter thread.

But there isn’t a Wordle app — not from the creator of the browser game, at least. Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from searching for the game in the App Store. This has led to some shameless copycats that have stolen the title from others. Wordle concept. These clones are now gone from the iOS App Store.

Cravotta’s WordleIt is entirely different from any other app and was created independently. In light of the app’s popularity, Cravotta reached out to Josh Wardle, and the two chose to donate the proceeds to Boost! West Oakland is a 1997 charity that provides tutoring and mentor support to students.