Video game: online panic among fans of “Sutom”, video game adapted from the show “Motus”

Every day, Sutom proposes to discover a different word in six tries. On the morning of March 24, lovers of word games were in turmoil: Jonathan M., the creator of Sutom, announced that the free online game without advertising for which he is responsible must stop. This game, which proposes to discover a mystery word every day in six tries, is a carbon copy of the program “Motus”. Since its launch in January, it has been very popular on social networks, platforms where it is easy to share your score thanks to a system of colored emojis. The panic was only short-lived: a few hours later, the creator of Sutom announced that his game would remain online. What happened ? In a first series of tweets, the developer said on Thursday morning that he feared being sued by France Télévisions, whose legal department notified him by mail on March 11 that he should no longer use the name Sutom, reversing that one. ‘TV show. ? Important information regarding #SUTOM ? The game will close on Friday evening. Thank you all for playing, it made me… https://t.co/u3KBaT1mid— Jonamaths (@? Jo[N]athanMM) Joined by Le Monde, Jonathan M. then explains that he understands the group’s approach, which seeks to protect the intellectual property of “Motus”, even if the program is no longer broadcast. But, according to him, he cannot simply change the name of the site: “I also use sounds and a graphic charter close to the show. This could have become a source of problems in the future. Despite his 230,000 visitors per day, a figure put forward by Jonathan M., Sutom is not monetized and does not generate money – this “personal project” even costs him, since he pays a host. As he prepares to stop everything, Jonathan M.’s plans are changing rapidly: after the intense circulation of his tweets announcing the end of the game (nearly 15,000 likes and 7,000 shares), France Télévisions changes his rifle. End of story? “It’s a pure misunderstanding,” says Muriel Attal, one of the group’s communications directors contacted in the meantime by Le Monde, without giving further details. The public company thus makes it known that no legal action on its part will be taken against the developer and seems to discover the popularity of the online game, which proposed to dust off the program hosted by Thierry Beccaro stopped in 2019. .@Jonamaths ? let’s recognize that we put animation on the networks today. ? @kevboucher https://t.co/ObMgcNzsYG— MurielAttal (@Attal Muriel) Wave of online support messages On social networks, the announcement of the end of the game has disappointed many Internet users. While Jonathan M. received an “incredible number” of messages of support, France Télévisions was the subject of very strong criticism. On Thursday, Sutom and Motus thus climbed into the ten most discussed topics on Twitter in France. The virality of the reactions is not surprising: Sutom was created in January in the wake of the great online success of the game Wordle, launched in mid-October 2021 by Welshman Josh Wardle. This browser-based word-word game was itself loosely based on the TV show “Lingo”… the American equivalent of “Motus”. “Let’s take inspiration from Wordle, I also preferred to pay tribute to the French program derived from “Lingo””, relates Jonathan M. Read also The “New York Times” offers itself “Wordle”, a game of letters online Having become a video game phenomenon at the end of 2021, Wordle was bought by the New York Times in January 2022 for “several million dollars”, according to information given by the American daily. Its success has inspired many creators online: like Sutom, many developers have offered clones in different languages ​​(from Swedish to Japanese), even geographical, musical or even mathematical versions. Pierre Found