Big surprise: Scrabble manufacturer targets 'Scrabulous' online game
That noise you just heard was the sound of several hundred thousand procrastination-happy Facebook users gasping in panic.
Josh Quittner at Fortune reports that Hasbro, manufacturer of the timeless board game Scrabble, is trying to shut down Scrabulous, an unauthorized electronic version of Scrabble that has gained a rabid following on Facebook. The reasons are obvious: licensing. Scrabulous profits from advertising revenue. Hasbro, citing infringement, wants to see it scrapped.
There's no online version of Scrabble, but as Quittner notes, electronic rights to the game belong to video game manufacturer Electronic Arts. One of Scrabulous' creators confirmed to Quittner that Hasbro has contacted Facebook about removing the application.
Scrabulous was started in 2006 as a standalone site operated by a pair of 20-something Calcutta, India-based brothers, Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, but the game exploded when they created a Facebook application that currently boasts 2.3 million active users and soon became the workplace productivity drain du jour. It's currently the ninth most popular application on the site. If Hasbro decides to take legal action against Scrabulous--which seems rather likely--it'll make a whole lot of cubicle monkeys very, very sad.
But Hasbro cares about its intellectual property, not about the desires of bored office workers. And, sadly, Scrabulous really does mirror Scrabble letter-for-letter: the "Rules of Scrabulous" section of Scrabulous' FAQ even redirects to the Wikipedia page for Scrabble. As Quittner wrote in his article, all good things must come to an end.
(Full disclosure: I have four active Scrabulous games in progress on Facebook.)
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Hasbro almost certainly has a good case for copyright infringement, but for the sake of good customer relations with all the millions of Scrabulous users who probably are currently Hasbro customers for the physical Scrabble game and other games, it would make so much sense for them to make the Scrabulous developers an offer they can't refuse and keep them on as well paid employees - of EA if necessary. This will be best for Hasbro's bottom line since they will retain the advertising revenue from the huge user base and the enormous customer base for future offerings these great developers they could come up with based on Hasbro's game catalog.
Shutting down Scrabulous will create a big backlash against Hasbro - I for one will probably boycott buying from them in future. I will certainly not be interested in payin
as well as highly skilled I.T. supervisors
willing to help with Scrabble e-business investment expansion
then
what was mentioned by "thewi2kbug" as far as
employment opportunities are concerned
is
QUITE JUST and worth positive consideration.
Unless the people behind the initiation of the
class-action so happen to have more inclination
to giving jobs to non-ethnic origined persons
and those whom are only located in their
USA domain.
site
is one between me,my eldest brother,
a newspaper journalist,and a tourism industry
university lecturer.
It is only there BECAUSE
my general access to the other Scrabulous matches
not established on FaceBook
has been denied and thus rendered unreachable along "website restructuring" grounds.
The Scrabulous organisation has been around longer
than my participation with the group.
My introduction to Scrabulous was as a birthday gift
to me on July 1,2007 from my
West Australian based eldest brother Bruce Axtens.
Himself a Scrabble fanatic
and
an employee at Strapper Technologies in Perth
West Australia.
I have since played more than 100 2-way matches against him,
my schoolteacher cousin from Sydney,
two of my politics journalism associates,
and
been involved in 3-way and 4-way contests
involving people from eastern Australia
of whom I would never ever get
to meet up with for hardback boardgame matchplay
opportunities.
Just a simple takeover of the group and
maintaining existing unfinished matches
should be considered
RATHER THAN
condemning hundreds of Scrabble players
to endure substantial heartburn that their
catalogue of previous match results have been
buried and destroyed in a hail
of power plays from big time entrepreneurs and
business operatives
targetting
sub-continent based entreprenurial minnows.
As to why the main complainant is screaming
blue murder over copyright issues NOW
when this situation has been going on
for more than a decade
and
not just by Scrabulous either
IS BEYOND MY COMPREHENSION!
As to whether it is worth the effort spending
money on litigation procedures when the
stockmarkets around the world are in freefall
and with it sales of Scrabble boardgames
dropping with it on affordability grounds
is up to them to decide!
Yours sincerely,
Christopher Axtens
(D.O.B. 1/7/1969)
Scrabble player since 1976
Assistant Secretary,
Lismore Workers Cricket Club
Assistant Secretary
Lismore Branch, New South Wales Division
Australian Labor Party
- by coni68 September 26, 2008 5:36 PM PDT
- years ago I bought the scrabble disc to play online with other people who also had bought the disc. This site is no longer available. Does anyone know of another place to play scrabble. I loved scrabulous, and hope something is resolved so we can continue to play the game and make many on line friends.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(13 Comments)