Wordle. Whether you’ve played the immensely popular online word game or not, you’ve definitely heard the name. Maybe you’ve overheard a conversation in the hallways, or maybe you’ve seen people’s results posted online. Wordle, developed by former Reddit employee Josh Wardle, was released only in October 2021, but the game has already reached over two million daily players. 

On January 31st, popular newspaper The New York Times bought Wordle for more than 1 million dollars, per Time magazine. Twitter exploded; thousands protested the purchase of the site, saying that the free game would eventually cost money to play as a result.

Later that day, the Times posted an online article confirming that Wordle was officially its property. Author/Journalist Mark Tracy, the man who wrote the article, said, “The company said the game would initially remain free to new and existing players.” Players pointed to the word “initially” to prove that the game would eventually become another subscription-only part of the New York Times website. 

The same article said, “The purchase, announced by The Times on Monday, reflects the growing importance of games, like crosswords and Spelling Bee, in the company’s quest to increase digital subscriptions to 10 million by 2025.” This proves that the New York Times bought Wordle in order to get more subscribers, and the game may start to cost money any day now.

In the following days after the purchase, people got more and more antsy. Knock-offs of the game popped up on the app store, with names such as Wordus, Word Guess, and PuzzWord. 

On February 9th, Brits were outraged that the day’s word was in the American spelling instead of the original English spelling (the answer was “Humor”). Social media users who didn’t play the game complained that Wordle news and scores were swarming their pages. Currently, Wordle is very relevant to pop culture, but now all of that is in jeopardy.

As of February 10th, Wordle is still free to all players, and although the Times said that they will “initially” keep the game free, the future is uncertain.