Give me Scrabulous or give me death

Are you a fan of Scrabulous?  If so, you’ve probably noticed that the popular Scrabble-clone has vanished from Facebook.  I’ll let you go for a few minutes while you blow off some steam.

. . .

Feeling better?  No?  Don’t worry – about half a million other Scrabulous players are feeling the same way.  Several blog posts explain the situation, but nowhere is the frustration more obvious than on the Facebook walls of both Scrabulous and Hasbro’s SCRABBLE Beta.

Here are some snippets (viewer discretion is advised):

  • “I didn’t have an interest in playing the board game until I started playing scrabulous online. Have several friends who’ve purchased the board game simply because they became hooked on scrabulous.”
  • “This is a sad day. In the big Scrabulous game of life, Hasbro made a BAD MOVE!!!”
  • “I will personally ban the Hasbro application, they have left a very negative impression over this whole issue….I am moving to Europe where I can once again enjoy playing scrabulous!”
  • “Hasbro sucks big fat donkey d*ck!!! I looked forward to 2 things daily… my morning cup of coffee and playing scrabulous… Sad sad day”
  • “What the shit! Don’t they realize that because of this app I actually went out and BOUGHT a scabble board! I’m sure alot more people have done the same, now I dont even want to play the real thing I am so pissed. What a bunch of losers!”
  • “Just more corporate greed. The folks at Hasbro can go screw themselves!”
  • “Are you fucking kidding me??????????????????? I met the possible love of my life playing this game. I shall never, ever buy another Hasbro product again!!!!!!!”
  • “This is pathetic. Who was being hurt by people playing this game? I’ll be sure to remember this when it comes time to do my Christmas toy shopping.”
  • “So you fucking take scrabulous down and cant have a working application? Fucking ridiculous.”
  • “wait. now i have zero scrabble options. this is better how? AT LEAST PUT YOUR CRAPPY BETA BACK ONLINE.”
  • “Your application is pitiful. I can’t believe you killed Scrabulous for this piece of crap.”
  • “Gosh, this application is awful, a bandwidth/CPU hog, and buggy as hell! I expected more from the combined corporate resources of Hasbro and Electronic Arts. How do you spell L-A-M-E?”
  • “Great idea to shut down Scrabulous before you even have a working replacement…Jackasses.”
  • “oh. and please note that every 5 minutes ur getting a new negative message about your game. Oh and also I can still play scraboulous by proxy. Lick my balls.”
  • “BOYCOTT Hasbro!!!”

This is surely not the PR Hasbro wants to be getting right now.  Still, they should have seen it coming.  Did they think they could shut down an application with over 500,000 daily users, not offer a working replacement, and get away unscathed?  If so, they are severely overestimating the power of their brand.

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Posted by Shawn at 2:48 pm on July 29th, 2008. View Comments
Categories: Facebook. Tags: , , .

  • saying Hi to all ..well I am from the same city Kolkata where the Scrabulous’ owners live…well actually here in India we are really not very knowledge abt copyrights issues as much as in silicon valley !! as VC options & startups are coming up from here we think we do need to think on other areas like this apart from the coding or the business model..

    But not being partial but I still feel it wud have been better for Hasbro to take over Scrabulous and retain the users for some $$ as in India 1$ still = 40 ruppes so they did not have to lose too much!!
  • To play Devil's advocate... Doesn't Hasboro have a right, actually, don't they have a responsibility to protect their brand and their copyright? The argument that I hear most is that Hasboro should have just bought Scrabulous, but they really didn't need to seeing as how the people that created it had absolutely no claim to the game or brand they piggybacked on. It's much more cost effective for them to simply shut down the copy-cat and build their own.

    Granted, you've found a few comments about people saying they purchased scrabble boards because they played Scrabulous, but I feel that's the exception and not the rule. In reality, Hasboro owns arguably the second most recognizable board game brand in the country (after Monopoly, which obviously has been ripped off every which way) and I can't blame them for wanting to protect it.
  • As I said in my post, I'm not quite sure where I stand. I suppose I'm confused because essentially it's the same game. I don't see why it matters if you're playing on a white board or a red board.

    I agree that a working replacement should be offered and it's a really bad start for Hasbro. A part of me wants to side with Scrabulous creators, but what did they expect? They copied a game and changed its name. It was bound to catch up with them eventually.

    Hasbro, on the other hand, could be less of a jerk about it.

    (Thanks for the link love!)
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