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After Everyone Downloaded This 5-Year-Old Wordle! App by Mistake, Its Developer Donated the Profits to Charity

Faith in humanity has been temporarily restored.

 

Leslie Knope

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Wordle, the game where I recently lost my 8-day win streak and, like a phoenix, rose from the ashes to guess the next day’s word in three tries, is quickly becoming one of 2022’s saving graces. However, throughout the course of its rise in popularity, there has been a bit of confusion as to where to play the free word game. The answer is on the official website, which works on your phone via a web browser, but many assumed that it was a mobile game app that you downloaded so went straight to the iOS App Store.

I can’t say I blame them, as games like this tend to run parallel to whatever “merge items together” title that may or may not feature Kathy Bates.

The mix-up has led to an unexpected surge in game downloads for App developer Steven Cravotta who made his own version of Wordle called Wordle! On top of his version not being the one that folks were actually looking for, his version is 5-years-old!

Originally reported by Games Radar+, Cravotta made his game back when he was 18. Cravotta writes in his Twitter thread that it was a fun way to sharpen his coding skillz (with a z, as it should be) and make a quick buck. “It didn’t quite take off like my previous app, Grid, did. So after a few months and ~100k total downloads, I stopped updating and promoting the app.”

Things stayed like that up until about a week ago when Cravotta noticed a sharp increase in downloads of his old game. “I figured someone ran a bot script and artificially sent downloads to the wrong app or something. But after a quick google search, I realized I was very wrong.” This is when he discovered Wordle, by Josh Wardle (yes, I adore the wordplay here), the browser-only game that people mistook his game for. “It caught traction and soon major publications started running articles about his Wordle game, but none of them clearly specified that this was an ‘internet browser’ only game, so naturally people went to the AppStore to search Wordle,” Cravotta writes. “Low and behold, those people came across my app, also conveniently named Wordle.” 

According to Cravotta, his game had gotten 200,000 downloads in just a week’s time (though 3 days ago, The Independent reported that it was at 500,000 downloads).

This is astonishing to think about when compared to the number of downloads the game got in its lifetime before this. Half a million downloads are impressive, but keeping in mind that the game tapered out at around 100,000 makes this even more extraordinary. Instead of keeping the good fortune to himself, or even going full force in promoting his Wordle! (with an exclamation point), Cravotta decided to reach out to Wardle and come up with a charity to donate his profits to.

The Wordle of the day is “proud.”

via GIPHY

via GIPHY

via GIPHY

The charity chosen was Boost! West Oakland, whose mission statement is as follows: “BOOST! seeks to strengthen students’ academic performance, and cultivate leadership in self and community through individualized one-on-one tutoring, mentoring, community activities, and enrichment opportunities.” You can donate to BOOST! right here.

And while you can technically download Cravotta’s Wordle!, the app he’s currently promoting is Puff Count, a free app that helps folks to quit vaping.

(Image: NBC)

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Author
Briana Lawrence
Briana (she/her - bisexual) is trying her best to cosplay as a responsible adult. Her writing tends to focus on the importance of representation, whether it’s through her multiple book series or the pieces she writes. After de-transforming from her magical girl state, she indulges in an ever-growing pile of manga, marathons too much anime, and dedicates an embarrassing amount of time to her Animal Crossing pumpkin patch (it's Halloween forever, deal with it Nook)

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