Scrabulous is one of the most popular Facebook Apps out there, with a reported 594,924 daily players. Hasbro and Mattel are trying to get Scrabulous shutdown, claiming (quite possibly correctly) that it violates their copyright on the game as it is very closely based on the game Scrabble
This could be an extremely short sighted decision. Hasbro has been trying since 1999 to establish an online gaming presence (see this story, Hasbro, Go2Net Team Up for Games.com) and still nothing has been developed for Scrabble.
A better business decision would be partner with the developers to continue to develop the application, or buy them out. Even Wired asks the question:
Even though the Mattel and Hasbro would probably do well in court (against both Facebook and the app’s developers), one can’t help but wonder why buying the application hasn’t been explored. After all, they’ve previously occupied a minimal footprint in the social networking world and the application nets about half a million users a day.
There could be an underlying issue here with their newish partnership with EA to develop games, and that could be the crux of the situation. Hasbro may not have had a choice but to pursue the lawsuit.
For the over 2 million registered users of Scrabulous, and the 594,924 active users this will be a very disappointing development, but lets hope Hasbro and Mattel get their act together and replace Scrabulous with something just as good, if not better.
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Technorati Tags: facebook, scrabulous, hasbro, mattel, scrabble
2 responses so far ↓
1 Renee // Aug 20, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I loved Scrabulous…I played regularly and when it was announce that Hasbro had forced them to shut down…I was more than willing to give Hasbro a chance. I loaded the application and tried to play and all I can say is that “THAT VERSION SUCKS”. It is unreliable. You can’t always load a game or it freezes in the middle of game. The ability to see others on the network is inconsistant. The first time I tried to play, it felt like I was the character in I Am Legend…the only one out there. Scabulous needs to come back…until then nothing else will be acceptable. So much for the giant corporations.
2 bill.hutchison // Aug 21, 2008 at 2:20 am
Right now Scrabulous still appears to be working in markets outside of the USA and Canada, so it’s now a fragmented market.
I still stand by the notion that Hasbro or Mattel should have purchased Scrabulous. They would have instantly had a massive user base and worked on somehow developing a financial model out of that, instead of trying to develop a (flawed) replacement.
In the mean time the makers of Scrabulous have released a new version called Wordscraper. It has some changes, which they hope are enough to avoid copyright issues again, but a lot of the same game play is still there.
You can checkout Wordscraper here.
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