You got hyper fixated on my use of the word _story_ and completely missed my actual point.
NYT bought "Wordle" from an indie dev for $1M+. The article complains about the fact they're protecting their newly-bought and very expensive IP. The orphan-crushing analogy is a strawman, because Josh Wardle wouldn't have been incentivized to protect the IP. The incentive to protect "Wordle" happened when $1M+ was exchanged and has nothing to do with NYT as a company. Any company or person would do the same.