The New York Times originally purchased Wordle back in 2022. — Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash
While the popularity of Wordle at the tail end of 2021 gave birth to countless clones of the word guessing game, it appears that its owner, The New York Times, has now started cracking down on these Wordle-like games.
According to a report from 404 Media, The New York Times has issued numerous copyright takedown requests to the developers of these clones on GitHub over its ownership of the Wordle name and copyrighted gameplay.
"The Times has no issue with individuals creating similar word games that do not infringe The Times’s ‘Wordle’ trademarks or copyrighted gameplay.
"The Times took action against a GitHub user and others who shared his code to defend its intellectual property rights in Wordle.
"The user created a “Wordle clone” project that instructed others how to create a knock-off version of The Times’s Wordle game featuring many of the same copyrighted elements.
"As a result, hundreds of websites began popping up with knock-off ‘Wordle’ games that used The Times’s ‘Wordle’ trademark and copyrighted gameplay without authorisation or permission," its statement reads.
The New York Times originally purchased Wordle back in 2022.
The latest copyright takedown request targeted Reactle, which is an open-source version of the game that other developers were freely able to build upon and create their own Wordle-like game.
This notice also targets the numerous other versions of the game made via a fork of Reactle. Reactle’s code has since been taken off GitHub according to its developer Chase Wackerfuss.
Other clones that have been issued a takedown request include a Korean and Bosnian version of the game, among others.
