Wordle has officially been acquired by The New York Times. The game, which has lately been the cause of your Twitter feed being filled with colored blocks, was purchased for “an undisclosed price in the low-seven figures.”
NYT announced the deal on Monday, saying that the game will be free to play for new and existing players and that no changes will be made to its gameplay.
Since Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, released the guessing game in October 2021, Wordle has grown exponentially in popularity. Only 90 people played it on November 1, but just around a couple of months later, you got millions grinding daily.
For the uninitiated, Wordle is basically a word guessing game, only that it’s limited to 5 letter words. It offers 6 tries and each wrong guess offers new clues to the right answer using a color-coded block system. Yellow letters are correct guesses in the wrong spot, while green letters match up with the solution.
Until now, the game has been completely free-to-play and isn’t bundled with ads or in-app purchases. There’s no Play Store listing either and it can only be played on the browser. This does not appear to be changing anytime soon and Wordle will only be added to the existing NYT catalog of engaging puzzle games.
Wardle pushed a statement to Twitter confirming he’ll be working with NYT to transfer player scores along with the game itself when its ownership is switched. He also admitted that the New York Times has played a big part in the game’s origin, so the acquisition feels “very natural.”
RELATED:
- Intel aims on supplying millions of Arc GPUs to gamers every year: Raja Koduri
- Modder runs GTA 5, Doom, and Crysis on the classic Game Boy
- Google brings Android games to Windows, but its in limited beta
- Sony PlayStation 5 may soon be able to run older PlayStation 3 games
- Nvidia GeForce Now game streaming service brings back Fortnite to iOS devices
