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The New York Times Bought Wordle. Is the Party Over?

Reading Time: 2 minutes.
Alright, kids, party’s over. The fun police are here.

Wordle website, edited to read "What? Noooo"

Wordle is a simple game you can play in your browser. Every day, there’s a 5-letter word and you get to figure it out. Make a few guesses and it’ll give you hints to the word by telling you whether or not a letter is in the word and if it’s in the right place. There’s just one game a day and everyone gets the same word. It’s perfect for playing and competing with your friends and family. A game everyone can enjoy.

Now the New York Times has purchased the game.

Does this mean the fun’s over? No.

But also maybe yes.

Word Games from The New York Times

I’ve played a crossword or two. But, I’ll admit, when the NY Times finally put a limit to the crosswords I could play, I stopped. I wasn’t about to spend $5/month for a daily crossword puzzle. The popular word game is joined by others owned by The NY Times, like Spelling Bee, Vertex, and more. Now the NY Times can add Wordle to their possessions. But, unlike a NY Times article, a paywall isn’t about to block the content.

Not yet, anyway.

The NY Times purchased Wordle from its creator for a price “in the low seven figures,” according to the paper. The paper sees it as a way to “grow digital subscriptions to 10 million by 2025.” These games fund their journalism. In the case of The NY Times, that’s a $6.7 billion business.

The Times reports that the game will initially be free for current players. It may eventually hide behind a paywall. The game had no data collection, ads, or paywalls. That’s what made it so popular. It’s so rare to find something just benevolently created on the internet. Something that just exists for the joy of it. Of course, the Times had to take that away.

We can’t blame its creator, Josh Wardle (yes, the game was a play on words with his name). It’s incredibly hard to maintain a website that millions of people visit every day. It was inevitable that he wouldn’t be able to do it forever, for free, or alone. However, it’s a shame that The New York Times plans to turn it into something that will require a subscription, a cheap way to push their digital subscriptions. The fun of the game is the social aspect, and people just aren’t going to sign up to pay for this with a tenth of the audience. The fact that it wasn’t something ruined by the constant pursuit of more money is what made it so popular.

You’ll still be able to play Wordle, for now. There’s no word on when the paywall will go up, but all of your history and stats will transfer over to the NY Times when it does, if you still want to play anymore.

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