I can't prove it, but I am quite sure NYT got a positive ROI on the acquisition of Wordle. They paid in the low single millions of USD, which isn't much for a brand as big as Wordle had become by then (2 million+ daily players) and it's been used to drive new digital subscriptions [1]. It's diminished somewhat since then but it has remarkable staying power. I can tell that from the Google Trends data [2] as well as the anecdata that I and so many of my friends and family still play Wordle every day.
[Edit: And, nearly two years on, they say they get "millions" of players per day, and they've assigned a dedicated Wordle editor and write articles about the game frequently. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/17/upshot/wordle-bot-year-in...). They're definitely not having buyer's regret.]
You can look at the comments section to see how popular it is, oftentimes there are a few hundred comments. That is higher than most NYT news stories (back when I used to use their website).
Especially considering wordle has no unique gameplay. Its a very, very old game with a million variations. There was even a TV show called lingo or something that did competetive wordle. The only thing NYT owns is a brand since the game is hundreds of years old.
> Amusingly, Wordle has itself been criticized over striking similarities it shares with Lingo, a 1980s game show that centered on players guessing five-letter words, with a grid that changes color based on accuracy.
Indeed. I know this from TV, grew up with it. Was a fun educative program back in the days.
Siblings have mentioned the TV game show Lingo. I can't precisely date Bulls and cows (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulls_and_cows), but it's hard to imagine that it (the gameplay, if not that particular pen-and-paper game) isn't much older than television, hence than Lingo.
Maybe you can't copyright gameplay, but you can still sue someone for infringement anyway, or even just threaten people with lawsuits that you know they can't afford to defend themselves against so they'll do whatever you want no matter what their rights are. The Times might even win in the courts if it ever gets that far. You can't copyright a musical genre either but that hasn't stopped successful lawsuits against musicians for exactly that (https://abovethelaw.com/2018/03/blurred-lines-can-you-copy-a...).
Suing when your case has no merit is a losing strategy. Eventually you not only lose to someone who stands up to your bullying, you face massive damage to your reputation; something media companies really don't like.
You can patent game mechanics - famous example would be Legend of Zelda's targeting system. Apparently Nintendo is extremely aggressive about patenting game mechanics.
Yeah I stopped playing it pretty quickly. There was that not-wordle game where you had to not get the word. It made me realise just how tricky failing wordle was.
I still do "where taken", which is photos of countries, tradle for oec trade commodities and guess the game for video games. They're all far more interesting than guessing some random word.
> The New York Times — which purchased Wordle back in 2022 — has filed several DMCA notices over Wordle clones created by GitHub coders, citing its ownership over the Wordle name and copyrighted gameplay including 5x6 tile layout and gray, yellow, and green color scheme.
Gameplay can't be copyrighted, but in the case of Worldle, the word lists are probably copyrightable.
Any clone that derives their own word list is probably fine, but any clone that copy/pastes the exact word lists from wordle (especially the shorter list of 2,315 possible solutions) is probably infringing copyright.
I doubt it. The existence of the words themselves is a fact, which is not copyrightable. Only their arrangement can be. Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)
However, to be copyrightable, the arrangement has to be expressive, i.e., it must "possess the requisite originality because the author . . . chooses . . . in what order to place them."
My strong suspicion is that Wordle's word list is randomized. Not a chosen expression of the author.
This is either confusingly written, or what the NYT said is confusing. The article refers to the source code being forked. That would be copyrightable. But I wouldn’t refer to the source code as “gameplay”.
> citing its ownership over the Wordle name and copyrighted gameplay including 5x6 tile layout and gray, yellow, and green color scheme.
So this is referring to trademark (the name Wordle) and copyright — but not patent. It makes sense to go after people who are using the same actual name, since this clearly infringes the trademark, and because if you do not enforce ("police") your mark against minor players, you can end up losing the ability to enforce it against major players.
But the copyright bit is a bit novel from my perspective (lawyer, but not copyright lawyer). If you had asked me what a copyright claim about Wordle would be about, I would have said the precise code. I might have wondered about the specific word lists, even though these would probably fail the "phone book" test (don't remember the case, but these were deemed uncopyrightable). I never would have thought about the tile layout and color scheme. That seems more like what I think of as "trade dress" [1] or perhaps something related to patent (which wouldn't apply here, unless the original Wordle owner had filed for patents a long time ago.
Are there any copyright lawyers who can elucidate how the tile layout and color scheme might be subject to copyright law? I assume the NYT has good lawyers, and has thought long and hard before going after folks on github...
Mechanics can't be copyrighted (unless it's MTG tap mechanic, it seems), but what is weird is apparently the projects it went against were in different languages that Wordle doesn't cover (which I think matters considering Wordle is about guessing words) and using a different name.
The MTG tap mechanic was patented, not copyrighted.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US5662332A/en , claims 4, 5, and 6 - expired in 2014. The actual symbol is also a copyright and trademark, I believe, but right now other games can us the 90 degree rotation.
(Disney's Lorcana, for example, uses 90 degree rotation and calls it 'exerting' a card.)
Lots of other games have the same mechanic as MTG’s tapping. But to avoid legal threats from WotC/Hasbro, most of them call it exhausting or refreshing or other similar words.
I’m skeptical that there’s any valid legal claim there, but if it is more legitimate than well-funded big-corp lawyer bullying, it’s either a trademark claim or a claim that any game with a card-refresh mechanic called “tapping” must be a derivative work of MTG for copyright purposes.
If you work in a field that’s built around intellectual property law, as any creative field including software is, it behooves you to be sufficiently familiar with it to understand that MTG’s tap mechanic was patented not covered by copyright.
This feels like a trademark question, not a copyright question. Seems like an abuse of DMCA; if only it were easier to ensure companies filing fraudulent DMCA claims end up facing real consequences.
Readit News
> > The Times has no issue with individuals creating similar word games that do not infringe The Times’s “Wordle” trademarks or copyrighted gameplay.
Can you really copyright “gameplay”?
This seems like pointless bullying by the Times, who is probably just upset they haven’t got a positive ROI on their acquisition of a free game.
[1] https://www.afr.com/technology/why-on-earth-did-the-new-york... [2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...
[Edit: And, nearly two years on, they say they get "millions" of players per day, and they've assigned a dedicated Wordle editor and write articles about the game frequently. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/17/upshot/wordle-bot-year-in...). They're definitely not having buyer's regret.]
Free games on Epic Store don't make me buy games on Epic Store. I just claim the free goodies and buy on Steam.
Indeed. I know this from TV, grew up with it. Was a fun educative program back in the days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(American_game_show)#/me...
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law....
Deleted Comment
https://kotaku.com/nintendo-is-trying-to-patent-some-really-...
Bruce E. Boyden
https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
In any case, Wordle is too damn easy. Don't think I've ever lost. I recommend sedecordle for word enjoyers
I still do "where taken", which is photos of countries, tradle for oec trade commodities and guess the game for video games. They're all far more interesting than guessing some random word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC0kie6dPjo
Maybe the copyright is on the colors on the game field?
Any clone that derives their own word list is probably fine, but any clone that copy/pastes the exact word lists from wordle (especially the shorter list of 2,315 possible solutions) is probably infringing copyright.
However, to be copyrightable, the arrangement has to be expressive, i.e., it must "possess the requisite originality because the author . . . chooses . . . in what order to place them."
My strong suspicion is that Wordle's word list is randomized. Not a chosen expression of the author.
So this is referring to trademark (the name Wordle) and copyright — but not patent. It makes sense to go after people who are using the same actual name, since this clearly infringes the trademark, and because if you do not enforce ("police") your mark against minor players, you can end up losing the ability to enforce it against major players.
But the copyright bit is a bit novel from my perspective (lawyer, but not copyright lawyer). If you had asked me what a copyright claim about Wordle would be about, I would have said the precise code. I might have wondered about the specific word lists, even though these would probably fail the "phone book" test (don't remember the case, but these were deemed uncopyrightable). I never would have thought about the tile layout and color scheme. That seems more like what I think of as "trade dress" [1] or perhaps something related to patent (which wouldn't apply here, unless the original Wordle owner had filed for patents a long time ago.
Are there any copyright lawyers who can elucidate how the tile layout and color scheme might be subject to copyright law? I assume the NYT has good lawyers, and has thought long and hard before going after folks on github...
1: https://www.inta.org/topics/trade-dress
https://www.reddit.com/r/onlyconnect/comments/169j2p4/have_y...
https://patents.google.com/patent/US5662332A/en , claims 4, 5, and 6 - expired in 2014. The actual symbol is also a copyright and trademark, I believe, but right now other games can us the 90 degree rotation.
(Disney's Lorcana, for example, uses 90 degree rotation and calls it 'exerting' a card.)
I’m skeptical that there’s any valid legal claim there, but if it is more legitimate than well-funded big-corp lawyer bullying, it’s either a trademark claim or a claim that any game with a card-refresh mechanic called “tapping” must be a derivative work of MTG for copyright purposes.
It is simply "our name in your face, on a regular basis, for years" advertising, at a global scale.
Case in point : here we all are, thinking and talking about the NYT.
That is the ROI.
NY Times issues DMCA takedowns of Wordle clones - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618193 - March 2024 (44 comments)