Reddit's r/Place is making a comeback — but what is it exactly?

Reddit's r/Place has made another comeback with its launch on July 20th, and people do not seem to be elated about it, but what is r/Place and why are people not amused?

Let's rewind to 2017 when Reddit introduced r/Place as a collaborative project where individual users can edit pixels on a large canvas measuring 1000x1000 pixels.

Users were given the ability to insert a single coloured pixel on a vast 1000x1000 pixels digital canvas measuring once every ten minutes which gave them a pixelated tapestry that symbolises the community's diversity and camaraderie as a whole.

The app's latest feature soon became everyone's favourite online social experiment which made an unprecedented comeback in April 2022 after making waves with its initial release in 2017. 

Reviving this incident, which has been jokingly dubbed the "Pixel War," has ignited the creative passions of numerous people all around the world who have united to leave their artistic imprints on the digital fabric, according to Dataconomy.

In the Reddit r/place 2023 event that will run from July 20 to July 24, users will be permitted to insert a pixel once per five minutes.

The canvas which will initially be blank, will be filled as users add pixels.

The objective of the game is to cover a sizable blank square — a 4 million-pixel virtual canvas with a 2000x2000 pixel size — with the national colours, symbols, logos, and flags of internet users from around the globe.

The game's guidelines on Reddit are simple: players have five minutes to fill in a pixel with one of the 32 available colours.

However, according to The Verge, Reddit's most recent launch comes at a time when users are still irate over issues like the company's decision to delete chat history from before 2023, without much notice, and its recent announcement that it would be sunsetting the current system to give Reddit Gold.

These issues include Reddit's API pricing, which forced cherished third-party apps to close down.

Users have reacted with harsh comments online towards the app's CEO Steve Huffman, addressing him on his app.

In a short announcement video, the company’s tagline for the event is “right place, wrong time," which indicates that the company may not be aware that the time is not right for the launch.