[1] Hilary Lantz, a software designer, helped her husband with the math behind the exponential growth being modeled in Universal Paperclips.

[2] Lantz announced the free Web game on Twitter on 9 October 2017; the site initially went down intermittently due to its immediate viral popularity.

[5] The game follows the rise of a self-improving AI tasked with maximizing paperclip production,[6] a directive it takes to the logical extreme.

In the final act, the player launches self-replicating probes into the cosmos to consume and convert all matter into paperclips.

Some of these probes are lost to value drift based on their level of autonomy, and turn into "Drifters" which eventually number enough to be considered a real threat to the AI.

Through the power of exponential growth, the player's horde of probes overwhelms the Drifters while devouring the remaining matter in the universe to produce a final tally of 30 septendecillion (3×1055) paperclips, and ending the game.

"[1] Lantz states that exponential growth is another strong theme, saying "The human brain isn't really designed to intuitively understand things like exponential growth" but that Paperclips as a clicker game allows users to "directly engage with these numerical patterns, to hold them in your hands and feel the weight of them.

"[9] Lantz was also inspired by Kittens Game, an initially simple videogame that spirals into an exploration of how societies are structured.

[10] Brendan Caldwell of Rock, Paper, Shotgun stated that "like all the best clicker games, there's a sinister and funny underbelly in which to become hopelessly lost.

"[11] Emanuel Maiberg of Vice Media's MotherBoard called the game mindlessly addictive: "The truth is, I am kind of embarrassed by how much I enjoy Paperclips and that I can't figure out what Lantz is trying to say with it.

"[12] Stephanie Chan of VentureBeat stated: "I found myself delighted by sudden musical cues and the occasional koans that appeared in the activity log at the top of the page.