I'm sure it likely sold for enough that the owners can retire early and wealthy. Maybe they'd get more money serving ads, or maybe it's a fad and it dies out in a month or two. I'd rather just take the payout and move onto other personal projects, given that Wordle is pretty much complete.

> made more money by serving ads

That seems pretty unlikely. As a funnel to NYT games, the NYT decided this thing was worth over a million. It's very questionable whether Wardle could have extracted a million in revenue from ads on Wordle.

Do you know how much ads pay? It's peanuts. And really, the "full lifetime value" isn't much. These fads die out really quickly.

If anything, this is a win for almost everyone. Dev gets paid handsomely, code still remains available for people who care, and the experience seems mostly unchanged for people who don't.

The NYT has a games section; it brings in money that helps pay for journalism. And they've been publishing the crossword since 1942, so this isn't a brand-new idea.

It's entertainment, for the most part, and always has been. Crosswords have been popular in the NYT forever.

Ads would've resulted in people complaining about user experience. And no one pays a full "lifetime" for anything. For an acquisition like this it's usually a multiple of 5 years of earnings. Probably more because of the popularity.

What the heck? You want the guy to run ads on the site because you don't like the NYT? Thank god he didn't do that. What was the lifetime value in your eyes? Adding popups and paywalls like many other online games? He made > $1 million dollars.

I never said I don't like the NYT. It's important to read only what people say, not combine what they say with what you think.

I didn't realize he got over a million bucks. In that case, it was a good move. I doubt ads would've paid that much.

As soon as he'd start serving ads people would leave in droves.