Wordle’s sudden success gave different game with same name 10 million downloads

Wordle was a viral sensation back in 2021 and remains incredibly popular to this day, but the game’s rise in popularity also helped a different app with the same name earn millions of downloads and changed the creator’s life.

In case you’ve been living under rock, Worldle is an online game where players must figure out the word of the day by making six guesses and narrowing down the right letters. It blew up around four years ago, was purchased by the New York Times, and has spawned a number of themed spin-offs and clones.

But in 2016, there was another game called Wordle sitting on the App Store, created by then 17-year-old Steven Cravotta. Fast forward five years and it suddenly received millions of downloads by players who mistook it for Josh Wardle’s version.

Wordle brought millions of downloads to 5-year-old game

Cravotta told the fortunate story in a July 16 X post, where he said that he “gave up on the project” after only receiving around 100,000 downloads since his Wordle went live.

“It sat in my Apple developer account, until in 2021 another developer named Josh built a web app game, also called Wordle,” he explained. “Josh’s game went viral globally. A lot of people searching for his game went to the App Store and downloaded mine instead.”

When the Wordle we all know took off, it was only available through an internet browser. However, people naturally heard about it and searched on the App Store, leading many to mistake Cravotta’s game for Wardle’s.

Apple did begin purging the platforms of any clones and knock-offs, but given that it had been around for five years previously, they left it in place. This caused a huge uptick in the number of downloads virtually overnight.

“Apple wiped out all the competition. I was the only ‘Wordle’ on the App Store,” he continued. “My little mobile app ended up being downloaded over 10M times in the span of a few weeks. It changed my life forever.”

Following the surprise success, Cravotta gave $50,000 of the money he earned to the West Oakland charity “Boost!” after reaching out to Josh Wardle.

He was then able to quit his day job and fulfil his dream of becoming a full-time app developer and entrepreneur, and has gone on to help build a number of successful apps.