The NYT says Wordle will continue to be free and no changes will be made.
New York:
The New York Times on Monday announced it had bought Wordle, a phenomenon played by millions just four months after the game hit the Internet, for “an undisclosed price in the low seven-figures.”
Created by engineer Josh Wardle, the game consists of guessing a five-letter word each day in just six attempts.
According to The New York Times, the game – which launched in October – had only 90 players in early November.
At the beginning of January, it had more than 300,000 – and now millions of people play it daily, partly driven by the ease of sharing spoiler-free results on social media.
Jonathan Knight, general manager of the New York Times Games, said: “The game did what very few games do – it captured our collective imagination and brought us all together. a little bit more together,” Jonathan Knight, general manager of the New York Times Games, said in a statement.
“I have long admired The Times’ approach to the quality of their games and the respect they treat players,” Wardle said in the statement.
“Their values align with me on these issues and I’m delighted that they will be the game’s manager in the future.”
Wardle, a British resident of New York, initially decided not to monetize the game with ads or subscriptions, before selling it to The New York Times.
The newspaper says that the game will continue to be free and no changes will be made.
The acquisition comes as The New York Times continues to diversify its output, offering special subscriptions to crosswords and other games that surpassed the one-million-subscriber mark in December.
Other products unrelated to the news include NYT Cooking and the audio platform Audm. These products accounted for 11% of turnover in the first nine months of 2021.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
