Key details:

• Take Take Take will use Lichess as the infrastructure of their new play zone, in a win for open source
• No changes to Lichess, it will remain as it always has - free/libre and open-source software
• Players on Take Take Take will now be able to easily create Lichess accounts, and play games on Lichess through the Take Take Take app
• All of our players (those on Take Take Take or using the Lichess website or apps) benefit from everything Lichess promises - privacy, data integrity, and moderation
• Take Take Take will contribute to open source by contributing to Lichess directly and indirectly, including financially and with increased visibility

Earlier this year, Take Take Take approached us with a unique proposal. Rather than building their own proprietary play zone from the ground up (a “walled garden”), Take Take Take have asked us to share our “digital commons” and use our infrastructure and play zone.

At first, we considered the proposal with caution, and maybe even some wariness. Lichess has often been approached by companies who don’t understand us or our values, and just want to use or even exploit our players and community. But after careful scrutiny, and getting to know the team behind Take Take Take, we think this cooperation has the potential to be a real positive for chess as a whole.

For chess enthusiasts and players, it represents more healthy competition within the chess ecosystem. Competition and having more choice is inherently a good thing for any market, including chess. It forces money that was originally destined to be paid out as dividends or funnelled up to institutional investors to be reinvested back into chess. It means that innovation by making genuinely useful new features, or arranging major tournaments and events, must occur in order for a service to stand out. This ultimately improves what’s on offer to the chess community and to chess players, forcing all online platforms to step up their game. Healthy competition and a more diverse market should be welcomed by our peers who truly wish to grow the game.

Beyond supporting more market options within chess, we also view this as a major win for Lichess and for free/libre open-source software as a whole. Instead of Take Take Take building and maintaining another walled garden for millions of dollars, like several expensive foibles before them, they realised we already offer a free and available digital commons, and asked if they could help us expand it. By choosing our open-source software instead of building their own proprietary play zone, this is a significant recognition of our software already being the best in the market.

This kind of model is adopted quite often in the open-source space. For example, various Linux distributions are open-source, and are the backbone of the internet with the majority of web servers running Linux. But even though that code is open-source and can be used or forked, it’s the scaling and technical know-how which is packaged. Similarly, we’re providing Take Take Take the expertise of our developers, infrastructure, moderation and general operations, who have been maintaining and improving Lichess as a whole for over 15 years.

The games played using Take Take Take will be running on Lichess. New players, including those finding us via Take Take Take, will sign up for Lichess accounts, and they will play on our servers and use our infrastructure. They’ll have the same data rights and protections we give all of our community, and our same high level of moderation. Ultimately, they are Lichess games, being treated exactly like Lichess games should be treated. That’s Lichess becoming more than just a playing platform, but becoming an infrastructure layer for free online chess generally.

At the same time, our independence, our philosophy and values remain non-negotiable. Lichess will always remain free and open. Our software will always remain open source. Any play zone using Lichess must always be free to play, even if other tools are built around it which are not. And we must and will have complete integrity of user data, user privacy, and moderation actions.

Equally, the Take Take Take team have very much understood that, and given us a lot of openness and transparency. They understand that we’ve built something which began as a hobby site, and has grown into a major global platform, serving millions of players a day, instantaneously transmitting thousands of moves a second, giving the best experience for fast time controls. That we’ve taken technical optimisation as far as we can, but also organisational optimisation, with content, broadcasts, moderation, and administration being done on less than 1% of Chess.com's estimated annual revenue. They understand what we’ve achieved, and that’s why they’ve chosen to trust us to be their play zone. As the chess market has become increasingly monopolised, enshittified, and surely even corrupted from an original vision, we similarly must adapt to ensure the chess community isn’t trapped and exploited for private gain.

We’re intrigued and keen to see how this cooperation changes things within the chess ecosystem, as we stay true to our philosophies and values. While we can sometimes feel like an isolated pawn in a commercialised landscape, it’s always refreshing when we find like-minded allies who want the best for chess and recognise our vision for that. Now, through the unpredictable nature of the game, we find ourselves in a pawn phalanx with Take Take Take, and a global community supporting us and believing, like us, that chess belongs to everyone. We’re looking forward to sharing chess with more people, together.

You can read the announcement from Take Take Take's perspective, on their site also.
Reuters

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Update - 07-Apr-2026

1. TTT makes their own play zone and is successful - Lichess squished between two large corporate entities.
2. TTT makes their own play zone and is unsuccessful - status quo.
3. TTT makes a play zone with chess.com - monopolisation increases further, with limited options for the community.
4. TTT makes a play zone with us and is successful - open source benefits.
5. TTT makes a play zone with us and is unsuccessful - status quo.

• Is it possible that TTT separate to their own play zone in future?
  Yes! However, Lichess will still be here, offering everything we do for free and without adverts or tracking - so we think we will still be able to comfortably compete - just like we do currently with other platforms.

• Are Lichess users now the "product" for TTT, and are unwillingly commodified?
  The "product" is that we have provided relaxed rules regarding API access for playing games. This API access is already publicly available in a limited form to anyone else, including several commercial eBoard manufacturers. Just as you could already be playing against a user on a DGT board or a ChessUp board, you could also now be facing someone using a "TTT board" (their app). The benefit for you is that you have more choice. More choice of platforms with which to interface with Lichess and more users to play against using these platforms.

• Does Lichess lose some of its autonomy by receiving income from a corporation?
  In short, no. Although we understand the concerns, the agreement in place does nothing to restrict Lichess's activity, decision making, or values (free and open source). The vast majority of income is expected to remain as user donations. The contributions by TTT will be made to compensate for extra load on our servers, and our team - but do not entitle TTT to influence over our decisions beyond this.

• Are there concerns about the involvement of Peter Thiel as a TTT investor?
  We share the community concerns about the influence and reach of Thiel, but we wouldn't have entered this agreement without doing our diligence there. Our understanding is that one of the many investment funds Thiel has invested in, contributed to TTT. The exact proportion of the investment can only be answered by TTT but we would not have entered this agreement if we were not confident and comfortable that the exposure to Thiel is incidental and extremely small. We see this more as an unfortunate side-effect of the wealth inequality in the world - that most enterprises come into some contact with the ultra wealthy and those whose values may not align.

• Will user data be sold?
  No, the only information shared with TTT is already publicly available. By playing on Lichess through TTT you would share your username, and grant an authorisation token for access - that does not share additional information, only the ability to play games. Other information such as games played is already available for all at database.lichess.org. Private data such as IP addresses, email addresses, messages, etc is never shared - please refer to https://lichess.org/privacy for full details.

• Are Lichess player donations now supporting TTT indirectly?
  No, donations from our community will only ever be spent on Lichess, and the additional costs imposed by TTT will be covered solely by TTT.

• Is this splitting the community?
  Our hope is that this will bring more players to Lichess (as the TTT play zone will show "powered by Lichess", and that players will be able to enjoy aspects of both platforms.

• Why wasn't the Lichess community consulted?
  Lichess has always operated through internal decision making among our team members both for efficiency and for consistency. However, we do take the concerns of the community seriously (as hopefully shown by our openness in responses here). We hope that you trust that we do have Lichess's best interests at heart, or we wouldn't volunteer so much of our personal time and energy to the project.

• Are there risks to Lichess?
  Yes, and we believe we are going into this with our eyes open to those risks (such as those shared above). We are hopeful and positive about this cooperation but will always remain vigilant to ensure we remain independent, and open for everyone. We also felt there were risks with not entering this agreement - primarily a non-competitive market reducing Lichess's visibility, as monopolies are never a good thing.