Puzzle Game Wordle Acquired for a Hefty Amount of Money
The wildly popular word puzzle game Wordle has been acquired by The New York Times for a seven-figure amount.
The New York Times has acquired the word puzzle game Wordle, one of the biggest phenomenons of recent months.
The amount of the deal was not given, limiting itself to saying that it was a "low seven-figure sum," so a few million dollars at most. Pretty good considering it's the work of a single developer - Josh Wardle.
What is Wordle?
In Wordle the player's task is to guess a five-letter word. After each attempt the game informs us whether a given letter appears in the word or not, and if so, whether it is in the right place.
Wordle is available only in browser form, but it works well not only on PC - you can also check out the title on mobile devices.
Wordle is a phenomenon
The project debuted in October 2021. Initially, the game was doing only decently, gathering about 300 thousand users, but its popularity began to grow quickly. In mid-January Wordle was already being played by millions of players.
One of the sources of its success is the fact that the results can be shared on social media - and without providing a solution. Friends only see an image with the squares corresponding to our attempts. Twitter and other websites quickly filled up with distinctive sets of colored boxes, encouraging more users to play along.
Why did The New York Times make this purchase?
The New York Times is investing in games because they're supposed to help it reach 10 million digital subscribers by 2025.
Until now Wordle was free and ad-free. Commenting on the acquisition, Josh Wardle assured that the game will remain free. The New York Times, however, is less open to long-term declarations on this matter, stating only that this aspect will not change "in the near future".
A flood of clones
The App Store and Google Play are overflowing with fakes, some of which have microtransactions. Many of these projects quickly gained popularity. Wordle - Daily Word Puzzle and Wordle - Daily Word Challenge debuted just a few days ago, and each of these apps has already been downloaded over half a million times. Clones are sometimes removed, but new ones constantly appear in their place.
Wordle's popularity has benefited from older games of the same name
As a fun tidbit, it's worth mentioning that there are older mobile games using this title. Wordle! has been available on the App Store for five years now. Its author, Steven Cravotta, recently decided to donate the money earned from this app to charity, figuring that he shouldn't keep the funds earned from the popularity of another game.
There is also a mobile game by FatCat titled simply Wordle (you can find it on both iOS and Android), which was released in 2018 and is now experiencing a renaissance in popularity thanks to the success of Josh Wardle's work.
