NYT Games comes for Scopely and Zynga with Crossplay

• Crossplay will launch on January 21st, 2026.
• The game will be available as a standalone app.
• The NYT Games app has generated a record $7.8m so far in December 2025.

The New York Times Games team is set to challenge Zynga and Scopely with its new scrabble-like game Crossplay set to launch in the US on January 21st, Today reports.

The title is effectively the company’s take on the popular word game Scrabble. As with the classic title, it has players put down letter tiles on a board, each worth a different number of points. By combining them with multipliers on the board, players can increase their score to beat their opponents.

Crossplay features a built-in dictionary, stats and social features like leaderboards. It will also be a standalone game, rather than just bundled with the NYT Games app.

Word game rivalry

The New York Times is moving into a competitive space that includes mobile games giants Zynga and Scopely. 

Zynga’s Words With Friends titles continue to prove popular, with Words With Friends generating nearly $41 million in gross revenue and 3.2m downloads between January and November 2025, according to AppMagic estimates.

The Classic version of the title also remains available and combined the games have accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars over their lifetime. 

Scrabble Go, meanwhile, is Scopely’s officially licensed take on the game. It has generated an estimated $77m across the App Store and Google Play, picking up 61.5m installs.

NYT Games has steadily grown its business and portfolio over the past few years. December 2025 is already a record month for the company, racking up an estimated $7.8m so far.

Crossplay is currently in soft launch in Canada and Australia and is open for pre-registrations in other markets.