The owner of the popular online game Wordley is taking legal action against the New York Times geography-based World. The Times, which bought World for a seven-figure sum in 2022, says World is faking it and trying to capitalize on the goodwill associated with its brand
Corey McDonald, a creator and software developer at Worldall, plans to contest the challenge, and points out that many of the games have similar titles. He mentioned an entire game project with similar naming constructs in place and said that Wordle is about words, Worldle is about worlds and Flaggle is about flags
The New York Times asserts in its legal papers that Worldl World is virtually identical in form, sound and sense, and offers the same commercial impression the Newspaper refused to mention further than which it legally issued.
British designer Josh Wardle created Wardle in 2021 as a project to impress his girlfriend. Since then, the game has grown into a global phenomenon with millions of players. By contrast, Worldl, which McDonald operates out of Seattle, attracts about 100,000 players a month and is only available via the web. Most of the revenue from his game goes to Google from the use of Google Street View images, McDonald said.
Finding it humbling that so many people played his game every month, McDonald expressed surprise that he would face legal action. He did not expect such success. He acknowledged that there are other games riding on the success of Wordle, such as Quardle, Nerdle and Hurdle, as well as Worldle, another country-selection game.