Has Apple taken motion towards apps that cloned the favored net recreation Wordle? They have now disappeared from the App Store, after several publications (together with The Verge) known as out a flood of copycats so blatant as to be named “Wordle” and that featured the identical gameplay and UI, every benefiting from the truth that developer Josh Wardle didn’t create an Apple app of his personal. While we’re nonetheless seeing a number of clones on the App Store, they don’t use the Wordle identify.

The clone apps had a highlight shone on them right this moment, when one developer started bragging about how many downloads his version of Wordle was getting. Following some intense backlash from the neighborhood, he set his account to personal, however individuals had already began discovering many different apps prefer it on the App Store.

Apple didn’t instantly reply to The Verge’s request for affirmation that it was the one which took motion towards the Wordle-alikes, nevertheless it appears vanishingly unlikely that every developer determined to take down their app within the area of about an hour. If Apple actually is initiating a crackdown on the apps, it’s tipping the scales considerably to guard the unique recreation.

While there have been comparable high-profile conditions up to now — as Protocol points out, Flappy Bird and Threes vs 2048 come to thoughts — it’s arduous to consider a latest instance the place Apple stepped in as closely because it appears to have accomplished right this moment. Apple does have language about copycats in its developer guidelines, nevertheless it’s notably imprecise: “Come up with your own ideas,” part 4.1 reads. “Don’t simply copy the latest popular app on the App Store, or make some minor changes to another app’s name or UI and pass it off as your own.”

There have been questions about how Apple would deal with blatant clones, because it’s seemingly let issues slide in some cases. With disappearance of the Wordle-alikes from the App Store, we could have gotten a precedent for a way comparable is just too comparable.