Comments on: Big surprise: Scrabble manufacturer targets 'Scrabulous' online game

Hasbro has reportedly served a legal notice to Facebook about a potentially infringing game on its developer platform. Unfortunately for you, it's that game you play all day at the office.

[arutam]

Think win-win!

You'd think they could come up with a way to license it to FaceBook for a portion of the revenue, or simply buy the application from the developers. That way everyone would be happy. Including me, since it is about the only app I use on FaceBook.

[Lagoyu]

When will big corporations learn to use the web?

I have played a number of 'official' versions of Scrabble on my computer, pda and phone over the years, both online and offline. Most have been poorly implemented and lacked any significant user base. Scrabulous is by far and away the best implementation and its Facebook version has made it phenomenally popular with players of all different levels.
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

[Gwhat]

2.3 million

2.3 million active users can't be wrong

[thewi2kbug]

Hasbro should purchase Scrabulous

rather than slapping a class-action on these two talented gentlemen that created Scrabulous, they should buy the rights of Scrabulous, give these guys two good paying jobs and rebrand Scrabulous as Scrabble.... turn this into a perfect business investment

[D.A.W.]

Hey now

stop making sense. There's no room for good sense in IP law.

[Chris Axtens]

Global expansion shouldn't be a scary proposition

If there is such a large audience of potential Scrabble players on the sub-continent
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.

[sportsfan206]

They already own the rights

That is the point of the lawsuit. Scrabulous is a blatant rip of of Scrabble, why should Hasbro shell out one cent for something they created?

[Chris Axtens]

Scrabulous deserves a small bit of leverage,as do current match players

One of those 4 matches on display in the FaceBook
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

[Simurgh30]

Hasbro, get a life!

I agree: Hasbro should buy this marvellous and beautifully crafted on-line game, and make it a truly international version (that is, appropriate for web use) by also creating an electronic International English dictionary which truly complies with Scrabble's rules (the two which Scrabulous uses dont' which is annoying), and includes British, US, Asian English vocabulary, including definitions. One fun aspect of the game is learning new words!

[redwall_hp]

I fully agree

I couldn't agree more. Hasbro needs to stop being idiots. They should buy Scrabulous, pay for server costs, and keep the scrabulous guys on as workers. Even better, they should do what Google did with YouTube and let the founders keep running the service themselves, but integrate the service into the parent company.

[LapCat]

get real

What is it about FaceBook users? This is like the ...10th article I've glanced at this month that highlights their naiveté; their absolute delusion of entitlement. From whining about their potential employers easily discovering their drunken stupidity (and it's inevitable consequences)to this; blatant & illegal copyright infringement. Is anyone in the REAL world actually surprised by Hasbro's actions; after Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts, or the RIAA. Wake up and smell the $. And "this" is the internet generation :snicker:

[speedy21]

typical corporation...

why don't they learn. if they shut down scrabulous people will just flock to other sites like ISC or quadplex.com they should either license or buy it outright

[coni68]

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.