in Windows 10. This edition includes four other solitaire games: tripeaks,
spider,
freecell, and pyramid. Microsoft has included the game as part of its Windows product line since
Windows 3.0, starting from 1990. The game was developed during the summer of 1988 by the
intern Wes Cherry. The card deck itself was designed by
Macintosh pioneer
Susan Kare. Cherry's version was to include a
boss key that would have switched the game to a fake
Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, but he was asked to remove this from the final release. Microsoft intended
Solitaire "to soothe people intimidated by the operating system," and at a time when many users were still unfamiliar with
graphical user interfaces, it proved useful in familiarizing them with the use of a
mouse, such as the
drag-and-drop technique required for moving cards. Lost business productivity by employees playing
Solitaire has become a common concern since it became standard on Microsoft Windows. In 2006, a New York City worker was fired after Mayor
Michael Bloomberg saw the
Solitaire game on the man's office computer. In October 2012, along with the release of the
Windows 8 operating system, Microsoft released a new version of
Solitaire called
Microsoft Solitaire Collection. This version, game designed by
Microsoft Studios, with visual design led by William Bredbeck, and developed by
Arkadium, is advertisement supported and introduced many new features to the game. As with the original release of the game, William Bredbeck is quoted as saying "One of the intentions of the redesign was to introduce users to the novel changes incorporated in the new Windows 8 operating system". This design is still in use through
Windows 11.
Microsoft Solitaire celebrated its 25th anniversary on May 18, 2015 with a tournament broadcast on the Microsoft campus and broadcast the main event on
Twitch. In 2019,
The Strong National Museum of Play inducted
Microsoft Solitaire to its
World Video Game Hall of Fame. By its 30th anniversary in 2020, it was estimated that the game still had 35 million active monthly players and more than 100 million games played daily, according to Microsoft. ==Features==