Another genius move by Hasbro. Come on– are they really that thick? They’re going to alienate a half million players rather than negotiate some sort of licensing? “Curse this newfangled internet thing!”

Right. Certainly a bad idea to alienate people using their property illegally. Duh!

F A I L. not worth much as far as points go in the game, but in real life Hasbro failing to recognize the negative conotations that this might have on their public image. I OWN scrabble, yet i play Scrabulous more often because its quicker to play with my buddies over an internet connection than it is to wait for them to show up to my place for some board game action. I could understand Hasbro’s point of view if they hadnt already made enough money off of scrabble in the past 60 years to last them another 60 years fiscally.

Gimp Out

@jsmith, did you read the last paragraph at all?

This is horrible…I love scrabulous on facebook and off and so do a lot of my friends. It keeps us connected.

…Ah, you are all negative towards Hasbro now, but if it was your IP and someone was using it, you’d be singing a different tune. That is precisely why we have IP laws….
And no, I do not work for them nor have any stock in the company..

How convenient that Hasbro waits until the peak of Scrabulous popularity before claiming ownership. Let Scrabulous develop the tool and popularity, and then steal it back. I think a statute of limitations should be imposed to help protect developers. You want it back? Say so at the beginning, not after it has already been developed for you and achieved widespread popularity.

Acknowledge people enjoy scrabulous, force a link to the scrabble app on facebook but don’t sue for financial gain over legal costs, test new versions online, use good results for new board game versions.

-done

Finally. These two brothers ripped off someone else’s idea and tried to make millions off it. Why are people defending these thieves? Let them come up with their own idea — they clearly understand social networking better than Hasbro did, so theoretically it shouldn’t be hard for them to develop a Facebook game that’s more popular than Scrabulous was. Now on the other hand, If they can’t … it proves that it was Scrabble’s good name they were trading on all along….

Considering that Hasbro’s own Facebook app has worse functionality than this “rip-off”, this is more of a situation as stated : “If you cant beat ‘em, sue ‘em”

Agreed on the licensing bit; it would have been easy enough for Hasbro to work out something with the Agarwalla brothers. But I guess big companies are just too used to suing people for IP these days. I am a die hard Scrabulous user but thought I would give the “official” EA version a try. Terrible. The game play is just wretched compared to Scrabulous. We don’t want anything flashy or fancy, we just want a simple format with which to waste time at the office.

So Hasbro’s basic message is: “Thank you very much for making our game relevant again after we let it sink into a marketing abyss for three decades. Now we’re suing you for it.”

Sigh.

Let me use this opportunity to compain about the absolutely ludicrious length and level of protection that US Intellectual Property laws bestow on “creators” (or in this case, creatively bankrupt corporations selling something they bought from someone else). It’s the natural terminous of a system in which all the lobbying money and power is on one side, and the US Supreme Court has abdicated its role in enforcing Consitutionally reasonable limitations.

I fully support companies defending their intellectual property…
Only problem is that the offical versions for Scrabble for both iPhone and Facebook (developed by EA) are horrible, buggy and slow. I would gladly have paid the $9.99 for Scrabulous instead…

F A I L indeed.

Someone needs to sit down with Hasbro’s chief officers, ask whether their MBA knowledge suggests that what they should have done was invite and lure these two developers to their fold to integrate and re-energize Scrabble’s authorized resurgence, indexing that popularity spike to their bonuses. Then, they could work with those developers to develop other Hasbro brand properties for Facebook and elsewhere online. They could be making money here. Carrot, not stick.

Instead, they’re gonna blow it for themselves in legal fees, bad press, and unhappy Facebook users who’d I’m sure gladly pay to play Scrabulous (by Hasbro). Triple-word score: “L O S E”.

I don’t even have a Facebook account, and I can see how strategically foolish this is.

I love Scrabulous. I understand the conflict but couldn’t Hasbro work it out with the Scrabulous developers? Yahoo games has Literati which is totally a Scrabble rip off. They prob have a licensing deal. Why not do something like that?

Terri is right–if it was your IP that you had worked (and spent $$$) to create, and some one else was using it, it would be a very different story. I spend money to buy a camera, I spend money to travel to a place and take pictures, I put them on the web to sell and recover my expenses and then hopefully make money; someone steals them and doesn’t understand why I would be unhappy???

Ultimately, IP laws are about not stealing what isn’t yours. That concept goes back a lonnnng way.

The Scrabble game and Monopoly game are dead and gone from http://www.games.com and with them went hundreds of thousands of players……it was the best design and was extremely user-friendly.

I saw the new Facebook Scrabble game and the one on http://www.pogo.com - they are both slow and not worth playing - the user interface is challenging, to say the least….

Bummer. My wife loves that game (the online one).

Agreed that they are stupid for not trying to leverage a half-million users and instead just shut it down.

The internet generation is crashing into Boomer business suits and guess who’s gonna lose, BAD…

Hasbro OWNS scrabble — they dont want piddly licensing fees from Facebook. It was utterly arrogant of Facebook to make a scrabble clone, publish that globally, and think that was legally OK.

Let’s cut to the chase, people:
Hasbro OWNS Scrabble. IF they don’t defend it, it eventually becomes public property.
The Agarwalla brothers stole Hasbro’s property.
Hasbro was apparently unable to negotiate the return of their property, so now they have sued.
Good for them; I’m sure the Agarwallas naively gave them no choice.
Hasbro will win; the only remaining questions are
(a)whether the Agarwallas will bother to appear, (NYC IP litigation counsel costs say $600 per hour) or, alternatively, settle, and (b)whether Hasbro gets merely cash compensation OR ends-up owning Scabulous, or both.

Hasbro waited to file suit because litigation is expensive for them too, and a negotiated settlement would have been much better for both parties. For example, with every minute that Scrabulous is active on the internet, the monetary damages are going up.

So for everyone outraged at the Scrabulous developers for ’stealing’ someone else’s idea, I have to ask: how many people working at or profiting from Hasbro right now do you think had anything to do with the ‘invention’ of Scrabble?

Unfortunately, given the insanity of our current IP laws, Hasbro will almost certainly win the lawsuit. A few people may complain now, but they will forget Scrabulous soon enough. Scrabble will be less popular, but Hasbro will make more money off of it than they do now, so that’s good enough for them.

I think I’ll start a website based on Monopoly — call it “Webopoly” or something — then act surprised and offended when I get sued.

Hot Dog! I just loaded Scrabble up on my Facebook page, and will send it around to all my fellow Scrabulous playing friends when I get home so we can try it out. Playing the licensed version is so much better than playing the bootleg.

Of course, if it IS as horrible, buggy, and slow as CH, nytropawn, and MKD say, it’s back to the bootleg for me until the official version works. Playing a functional, fun game is so much better than playing a
piece of garbage.

What makes you think that Hasbro didn’t try and work out a licensing deal, or that it waited until now for it to change the name and look of its product? I would imagine that they had some sort of conversation prior to the filing of the lawsuit, which would simply only be an expensive way of engaging in a conversation.

Why didn’t Hasbro get its version out there
first?