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Scrabulous pulled from Facebook in U.S.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Creators of the popular Scrabble knockoff, Scrabulous, have S-U-S-P-E-N-D-E-D the word game on Facebook in the United States and Canada.
Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla suspended the game after being hit with a lawsuit, disappointing wordsmiths who have spent hours playing the game on the social networking site.
Hasbro also asked Facebook to block the program, something the site resisted despite risks of losing immunity protection from copyright lawsuits, according to AP.
Video game maker Electronic Arts Inc. “released an official version for American and Canadian Facebook users under a licensing deal with Hasbro. But the authorized Scrabble has been attracting only 15,000 daily users, compared with some half-million for Scrabulous.”
Are you going through Scrabulous withdrawal? Have you played the official version? Would you give it a thumbs up or thumbs down? Where will you play now?
Comments
By P.
July 29, 2008 6:37 PM | Link to this
I am going through serious withdrawal symptoms! Hasbro is jealous and I will not use their site.
By Carol Goodson
July 29, 2008 9:41 PM | Link to this
Yes, I am not coping well and I am FURIOUS with the Hasbro company for doing this to us. They could at least let us keep playing Scrabulous until they got their game perfected. It came up today, but kept crashing, and now it seems to be completely down. Hasbro DOES NOT CARE about customers.
By UnYawn
July 30, 2008 8:06 AM | Link to this
I have been a member of the online gaming community since it all started. Hasbro should have done their research on companies before hiring Electronic Arts. EA has released several games in the past few years that they have never fully fixed. Battlefield 2 and 2142 are two of the most hacked games out there right now (next to Counterstrike). EA would have been the LAST company I would have hired.
The fact is that these guys got together and developed a properly working application that people love. Now if worked for Hasbro, I would have negotiated a deal with them, including possibly hiring them.
Scrabulous rocks and EA has gotten Hasbro delusional.
By Trunk Monkey
July 30, 2008 8:58 AM | Link to this
it’s a TRADEMARKED product!
Regardless of how much time these guys spent building an interface, how much fun people have playing it, or how entitled some feel to continued access…the reality is that they used someone else’s property as the base…even if that entity took a while to realize they were being ripped off.
You can’t plaigerize a book, change the title and call it your own. You can’t sample music and pretend you wrote it. You can’t take a board game, digitize it and pretend it’s yours.
By The Nerd
July 30, 2008 9:00 AM | Link to this
Although I never played the games (Scrabble and Scrabulous), Hasbro was in the right and they had the right to sue. It’s a direct infringement of their copywright and I hope that the website that created that knockoff if taken off the air (or should I say, internet).
By Justin
July 30, 2008 10:03 AM | Link to this
I’m not a trademark lawyer, but it would seem as if these guys have a fight against Hasbro — the key question probably being whether “Scrabulous” is different from “Scrabble” in the eyes of the average user. Further, if Hasbro had been smart, the company would have written its own Facebook program years ago.
By Medusa211
July 30, 2008 11:28 AM | Link to this
Hasbro is pathetic. They should have been happy that Scrabulous brought back the game to our lives, instead of limiting it to senior assisted living rec rooms.. Shame on them! You’d better believe I’m going through serious withdrawals! That was my way of unwinding, when I had a chance to do that..
By PO'd Player
July 30, 2008 11:40 AM | Link to this
What I don’t get is, the guys that developed it have nothing to gain. It’s a FREE game!