The New York Times it is closing digits, the math-based puzzle game that launched in beta in April. if you visit the game page, you’ll see a message that says “This game will be gone on August 8th.” If you click on the game, you will also see a message.
In digits, The goal is to add, subtract, multiply, or divide six numbers in an attempt to add up to a certain target number. If you get the exact number, you get three stars, but you can get one or two stars depending on how close you are to the number.
Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge
It was a fun concept, but it seems the game didn’t get the traction it needed to become a full game. NYT Games offer. “We always approach our experiment with Digits as a limited-time beta test.” NYT says spokesman Jordan Cohen in a statement to the edge. “During this time, we learned a lot about how players interacted with the game, and we’re grateful for your feedback. Right now, we are focusing on increasing viewership and engagement for our other games and look forward to beta testing more games soon.”
In May, I spoke with Jonathan Knight, the game director of the NYTand even then, it sounded like digits cannot make the cut to permanently join the from the nyt line up. “I think the jury is still out on digits,” he said. “We’re very happy with the engagement and the audience. But we’re still learning, and we’re still evaluating whether that’s something we want to add permanently.”
But that evaluation is a normal part of from the nyt process. “We’ll turn things off, [and] we will remove them until we really feel like there is something we want to commit to as part of our portfolio,” he said. “There is a process there. It is important to kill games. It is important to try many things.”