wordle is a free browser game and only a browser game – it has no accompanying apps, something that some people (myself included, unfortunately) may not realize in an age where almost everything has an app.
This leaves plenty of room for fake wordle apps to supplant app stores in an effort to get around the sudden popularity of the word puzzle game. But there is an app that happens to be called word! that’s not a clone – it actually existed before the browser game itself. That’s why the developer is collaborating with the mind behind the browser-based wordle, Josh Wardle, to use the accidental success as an opportunity to give something back, according to a report by GameSpot.
The story unraveled in a thread on twitter, of word! app developer, Steven Cravotta, describes how his coding project blew up unknowingly five years after it was founded wordle‘s jackets. He developed an iOS app called word! in 2017 to brush up on his coding skills, and while it got around 100,000 downloads, it wasn’t as successful as a previous game he built called Schedule, so Cravotta decided to stop updating and promoting the app.
Cravotta says downloads for word! slowed down to about one to two a day, but when the browser-based wordle started to take off, just like his app. The app racked up 200,000 downloads in one week, albeit from confused users who mistook it for the browser-based app. wordle. Cravotta reached for wordle app developer, Josh Wardle, and informing him of his plans to donate the proceeds from his app to charity – Wardle sent out a tweet of his own acknowledging the gesture.
Cravotta later confirmed that he and Wardle decided to donate all of the money earned to word! to BoostOakland, a charity focused on mentoring and mentoring young people in Oakland, California. When The edge when he contacted Cravotta, he told us that he has raised just over $2,000 so far and that he will donate the total amount earned by the end of this month.