> At the time it moves to The New York Times, Wordle will be free to play for new and existing players, and no changes will be made to its gameplay.
"At the time" is the sticky bit.
"At the time" is the sticky bit.
2. If they want to spend 2M to build in features or integrate with their crossword, why shouldn’t they make something back on it?
NYT making money isn’t scary. Imagine Microsoft getting its hands on this.
More seriously, the creator promised to never have ads in it[1] now it's going to be in a site that has ads. Whenever a product/company is sold the creator can no longer make any promises and prior promises are null and void.
NYTimes isn't some benevolent benefactor, WORDLE could have stayed in the realm of relatively untouched private enterprises that makes people's lives a little bit better (think Craigslist) and now I can look forward to a banner ad telling me I need to subscribe to NYTimes to save democracy a couple times a year.
There are free clones, but talking to friends and random distant co-workers about todays word was fun. That won't last.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/wordle-will-s...
It's like adding truffle shavings and gold flakes to a hot dog. It misses the reason people love the hot dog.
Its not like they pulled an AWS and just ripped off an open source MIT licensed clone in their newspaper or something.