2000 Wordle clones demolished by New York Times for copyright infringement

The New York Times has issued a DMCA takedown against Reactle, an open-source project that created almost 2,000 clones of the free browser game Wordle.

The online game’s huge success has resulted in thousands of fans searching for the Wordle answer for today every day. A large swathe of clones have also been created including Loldle, Nerdle, Mathle, Globle, Framed and countless others.

Created by Chase Wackerfuss, Reactle included a detailed tutorial on how to create their own Wordle clones. The tutorial included instructions on how to create words for different languages, introduce themes and more variations.

Wackerfuss received a DMCA takedown from The New York Times requesting the removal of the Wordle clone tool. As posted by 404 Media, via Eurogamer, the takedown took issue with the tool’s creation of hundreds of Wordle clones.

“I write to submit a revised DMCA Notice regarding an infringing repository (and hundreds of forked repositories) hosted by Github that instruct users how to infringe The New York Times Co.'s ('The Times') copyright in its immensely popular Wordle game and create knock-off copies of the same," the takedown notice reads.

“Unfortunately, hundreds of individuals have followed these instructions and published infringing Wordle knock-off games that The Times has spent the past month removing. Gameplay is copied exactly in the repository, and the owner instructs others how to knock off the game and create an identical word game.”

Alongside the initial Reactle repository, GitHub has been ordered to remove all 1,900+ forks of the software on the website. As Eurogamer reports, some vastly different versions of the word game such as Pokemon themed game Squirdle and hex-code guesser Colordle.

Nevertheless, some Wordle inspired games still exist online, including Guess the Game, Guess the Frame and the Doctor Who episode guessing game Whodle. As these games are image guessing instead of word guessing, they may be able to continue without any harassment from The New York Times.

Wordle is currently available to play for free online.