The New York Times has acquired Wordle — the viral word game — for an "undisclosed price in the low seven figures", which makes Josh Wardle, the game's creator, a millionaire at least one times over. The NYTimes also reported today that it hit 10 million total subscribers.
Stuff-that-isn't-news
For the NYTimes, buying Wordle makes a lot of sense. For the past few years, the newspaper has been trying to diversify its revenues away from just its "core news" product. Games (mostly word-based), a dedicated cooking section and audio stories have formed the bulk of its "stuff-that-isn't-news" segment, which has grown into a $22m-a-quarter business, more than 7x where it was just a few years ago. If that business was a scrappy start-up, it would almost certainly be a unicorn in today's market.
Nothing will change, until it will
Wordle will initially remain free to new and existing players once it moves over to the Times’ site... the key word of course being "initially".
The agreement gives plenty of scope for the NYTimes to eventually put Wordle behind their paywall, giving them a shot at converting the game's millions of daily players into becoming NYTimes customers, and growing that "not news" business even more.
