The New York Times is shutting down Digits, its math-based puzzle game

The New York Times is shutting down Digits, the math-based puzzle game it launched in beta in April. If you visit the page for the game, you’ll see a message that says “This game is going away on August 8th.” If you click into the game, you’ll see a message as well.

In Digits, the goal is to add, subtract, multiply, or divide six numbers to try and total a certain goal number. If you get the exact number, you get three stars, but you can get one or two stars depending on how close to the number you are.

It was a fun concept, but it seems the game didn’t get the traction it needed to turn into a full-fledged NYT Games offering. “We always approached our experiment with Digits as a limited time beta test,” NYT spokesperson Jordan Cohen says in a statement to The Verge. “During this time, we learned a lot about how players engaged with the game and we’re grateful for their feedback. Right now, we’re focusing on growing the audience and engagement of our other games and look forward to testing more games in beta soon.”

In May, I spoke with Jonathan Knight, the head of games at the NYT, and even then, it sounded like Digits may not make the cut to permanently join the NYT’s lineup. “I think the jury’s still out on Digits,” he said. “We’re really happy with the engagement and the audience on it. But we’re still learning, and we’re still evaluating whether that’s something we want to add on a permanent basis.”

But that evaluation is a normal part of the NYT’s process. “We’ll put things out, [and] we’ll take them down until we really feel like there’s something we want to commit to as part of our portfolio,” he said. “There’s a process there. It’s important to kill games. It’s important to try things a lot.”