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Scrabulous Is Dead, Hasbro's Version Brain-Dead
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jul 29, 2008 10:37 AM
from the awesome-job-hasbro dept.
from the awesome-job-hasbro dept.
eldavojohn writes "Sometime this morning, Facebook shut down Scrabulous to American and Canadian users. Scrabulous, we hardly knew ye." This is sadly unsurprising, now that Hasbro's finally taken legal action against the developers, after quite a few months of letting it go unmolested. Seems like they waited until there was an official Scrabble client available (also on Facebook), while the snappy and fuller-featured Scrabulous kept people interested in a 60-year-old board game. The official client, which is at least labeled a beta, is a disappointment. This is not a Google-style beta release, note: it's slow to load, confusing, and doesn't even offer the SOWPODS word list as an option, only the Tournament Word List and a list based on the Merriam-Webster dictionary. (Too bad that SOWPODS is the word list used in most of the world's English-speaking countries.) It also took several minutes to open a game, rather than the few seconds (at most) that Scrabulous took — it's pretty impressive, but not in a good way, that the programmers could extract that sort of performance from the combination of Facebook's servers and my dual-core, 2GHz+ laptop. The new Scrabble client has doodads like 3D flipping-tile animations, too, but no clear way to actually initiate the sample game that jamie and I have attempted to start. I hope that once we get past that obvious hurdle, we'll find there's a chat interface and game notebook as in Scrabulous, but my hopes are low.
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[+]
Hasbro Sues Makers of Scrabble-Like Scrabulous 395 comments
Dekortage writes "As today's lawsuit indicates, Hasbro has apparently had enough of Scrabulous, the online word game remarkably similar to Scrabble. Filed in New York, Hasbro's suit is against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, brothers from Kolkata, India, and asks the court to remove the Scrabulous application from Facebook, disable the Scrabulous.com web site, and grant damages and attorneys fees to Hasbro. Why did Hasbro tale so long to 'protect' its intellectual property rights in court? They waited 'in deference to the fans' until EA had launched the official Scrabble Facebook app earlier this month. EA's version has netted fewer than ten thousand players, versus Scrabulous' estimated 2.3 million. This was the next logical step for Hasbro after filing DMCA takedown notices against Scrabulous in January."
[+]
Scrabulous Returns To Facebook, As Wordscraper 262 comments
porcupine8 writes "Good news for those that have had a hole in their heart (and Facebook profile) since Hasbro forced Facebook to remove Scrabulous over copyright and trademark issues. The creators of Scrabulous have wasted no time in tweaking the game and have launched a new tile-based game called Wordscraper. In addition to changing the name, they have changed the board look so as not to directly copy the colors, etc of a Scrabble board, and have even made provisions for players to create their own board layout! Interested Scrabulous fans can add the application now. Only time will tell if the changes were extensive enough to keep Hasbro's lawyers at bay."
[+]
Hasbro Finally Drops Scrabulous Lawsuit 51 comments
The Associated Press reports that Hasbro Inc. has now dropped the lawsuit it launched earlier this year against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the creators of Scrabulous, a Scrabble clone that found a sizable following on Facebook. We previously discussed Scrabulous' return to Facebook under a different name, as well as the "official" Scrabble client, which was not exactly well received. Hasbro's IP rights to the game are limited to North America, and the AP story adds: "Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble outside of North America, filed a lawsuit against the brothers in India claiming violations of intellectual property. It was not immediately clear what the status of that lawsuit is."
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Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hasbro would have done a lot better to do something like this:
"We'll give you an endorsement and let you use the Scrabble logo and *not take legal action* if you will maintain certain standards and give us a cut of your advertising profits as a licensing fee."
And then negotiate as fair a deal as both parties can agree upon.
This is where modern copyright litigation really fails these companies: they're so quick to shut down anyone who might potentially be stepping into their IP, they're passing up really amazing opportunities at making use of their innovation. If these guys can do Scrabble so well, why not encourage them to do other Hasbro games in a way that makes Hasbro money?
Parent
You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
If these guys can do Scrabble so well, why not encourage them to do other Hasbro games in a way that makes Hasbro money?
Stop making sense.
Parent
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
I ran in to David Byrne just the other day. He's same as he ever was ... same as he ever was ...
Parent
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Funny)
No, the whip company is finding many new potential sources of revenue on the web.
--The FNP
Parent
Milking their cash ponies (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of Hasbro's board is so old they probably have to have oxygen tents built into the boardroom.
That made me laugh out loud.
And it's so true. Hasbro is living in the 1980s, still trying to make money off GIJoe and My Little Pony.
They don't have enough tiles to make the word "innovate."
Parent
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Interesting)
ANYWAY, enough of that rant.
Yes, Hasbro has made a lot of mistakes when it comes to computer entertainment (buying and selling Microprose and Atari; selling away and then buying back digital rights to most of their properties (including Scrabble and Dungons&Dragons)). Add this craptacular version of Scrabble to the pile (and a hefty amount of blame goes to EA too!)
Point being, Hasbro hardly fits the mold of "buggy whip company". They keep trying new things, and yes, lots of them fail. But hey, they could have shut down Scrabulous before they had their replacement ready, so they could have shot themselves in the foot worse.
I am opposed to the actions Hasbro has taken in this. Regretably, they are acting entirely within the law.
Parent
Re:Slashdot filters need revision! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Slashdot filters need revision! (Score:5, Interesting)
Every Friday I get together with a half dozen or so friends and we play card games board games or whatever. If you're playing with more than one other person the fun level of video games drops dramatically since a majority of the players become spectators. Most video games these days don't even offer very good multiplayer modes unless you're playing online, which is useless for local play. There are obvious exceptions but rock band and wii sports don't offer very high levels of intellect, where many board games do.
The most common game played on "Game night" is Killer Bunnies, not a "board game" exactly, but the same spirit.
Parent
Re:Slashdot filters need revision! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hasbro seems to be rejecting the idea that anyone would want to just play the damn game. Clearly people would rather see 3d tiles float around than be able to place them quickly and easily in order to enjoy the game itself.
Parent
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where modern copyright litigation really fails these companies: they're so quick to shut down anyone who might potentially be stepping into their IP, they're passing up really amazing opportunities at making use of their innovation.
This has nothing to do with litigation or the law. That's a business decision of shooting themselves in the foot.
However, in a free country, a business is entitled to shoot themselves in the foot. They can even choose which foot.
Parent
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Funny)
Pride goeth before the fall. And that's what this is: hasboro saying "Mine! My game! Not yours! I do with it what I want! You dint ask purmissin!"
Parent
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:What was the basis of the lawsuit? (Score:5, Informative)
The bit I haven't yet deciphered (I have RTFA, but it didn't really help) is what exactly the lawsuit claims. It says that it's filed under the DMCA, but not what exactly Hasbro are claiming copyright on. Is a game concept copyrightable? If not, can Scrabulous just remove whatever little bit it is that they are claiming on?
They're not claiming copyright on anything if I understand correctly.
They're claiming trademark infringement. It's likely that if Scrabulous changed its name and perhaps trivially tweaked the gameplay, Hasbro would just bugger off. There are plenty of knock-offs of popular games, they're just renamed and re-themed.
Parent
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hello, Your online version of scrabble is horribly done. It takes as long as a couple minutes to load a game and doesn't have the features that Scrabulous did such as a notepad and even the SOWPODS word list. I can understand wanting to protect your intellectual property, but Scrabulous revived Scrabble in the hearts of many people (some of which I'm sure purchased the board game due solely to their efforts). Instead of working with them to create a truly great official online Scrabble, you've sued them off the net and tried to take their place with a shoddy 2nd rate alternative. That shows a greedy, broken business model that values lawyers over ingenuity. I will be boycotting Scrabble and Hasbro over this fiasco. I truly hope that Hasbro's image suffers because of this. Regards, Dan L
It's available here [custhelp.com].
The boycott may not actually do anything, but I try to talk with my wallet in situations like this where I'm disappointed in a company. The lawyers over common sense theme seems to come up more and more often these days and I'm sick of it.
Parent
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't Scrabble still under copyright? If it isn't in the public domain, and Scrabulous is a clone of Scrabble (which it is AFAICT), they have every right in the world to sue. They even took advantage of Scrabble's popularity by giving it a name that was similar. This appears to be no different than selling Leevi Jeens with the classic rivets.
Parent
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Funny)
"Copy our game and do a better job than us, and we will pay you for it rather than making asses of ourselves"
Fixed that for you.
Parent
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? Isn't that how most small-time inventors get noticed by big companies...either developing a new product or improving an existing one?
A couple of college student can't approach Hasbro and say "We've got a great idea for an online version of Scrabble...will you let us make it?" Hasbro will laugh them out the doors. But when they execute it well and have a massive fan base, why would Hasbro NOT want to cash in on what is already there and developed?
Parent
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that I back Hasbro, but purchasing the alleged "illegal copy" of their game would have sent the message "Copy our game and do a better job than us, and we will pay you for it rather than prosecuting you"
And if it ultimately makes Hasbro a shitload of money from the deal what's wrong with that? Another way of putting it would be "Make something profitable and enjoyable from our IP and we'll deal with you so that everybody wins". Hasbro's chosen course of action is either a poor business decision or plain spite.
Parent
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I back Hasbro, but purchasing the alleged "illegal copy" of their game would have sent the message "Copy our game and do a better job than us, and we will pay you for it rather than prosecuting you"
Also known as "Do our R & D for us for free, and we'll give you money if you come up with something really good." That's I message I wouldn't just send, I'd broadcast it at top volume.
Parent
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Insightful)
[P]urchasing the alleged "illegal copy" of their game would have sent the message "Copy our game and do a better job than us, and we will pay you for it rather than prosecuting you"
Well, consider that the US Constitution says that patent and copyright laws are to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", and doing a better job than Hasbro would certainly satisfy the "promote the Progress" part, I'd think that's what the Constitution's authors intended.
Of course, you could question the "useful" part when the issue is a game like Scrabble. But that would be petty, wouldn't it?
Still, I'd think that if someone copies a commercial product and improves on it, the laws should support the people who did the improving. Maybe impose some sort of "mechanical license" between the two parties, as is done with with some performances of music, giving both parties a standard portion of the profits.
We've had a problem from the very beginning of patent and copyright, that the owner can (and usually does) use the law to block further progress. If we really want that Progress that the Constitution promised us, we need laws that prevent things like what Hasbro has just done, and what many others have done before them.
Of course, in this case it's primarily a trademark issue. So it'll be interesting to see how Hasbro reacts to a re-release of Scrabulous under another name that doesn't sound like a derivative of Scrabble.
Parent
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Informative)
From what I understand Hasbro did offer to buy scrabulous and the developers wanted "fuck you money" for it rather than taking what they were offered and thanking Hasbro for not suing them for an obvious trademark infringement.
Parent
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a crossword puzzle!
It's older than your grandpa.
There's nothing to "rip off".
The only thing left that's not public domain is the name.
This is why there are monopoly knockoffs. Their patent
on a PD game invented by the Quakers expired a long
time ago.
Parent
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Informative)
And the layout -- in particular, I suspect that the bonus spaces are the most copyrightable aspect. (There was something, a couple of months ago, that discussed the copyrightability, to make up a word, of game rules. But a quick search couldn't find it.)
While I don't use Facebook, I did see the version of Scrabble up for the iPhone... and at ten dollars, I considered it too much money.
Parent
As much as I am against IP law (Score:5, Interesting)
The Boggle clone changed its name, and its still up. There have been perfectly legal scrabble clone games published since the 1940s. I have some in my collection of antique toys and games. All you have to do is not use the trademarked name.
Re:As much as I am against IP law (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, this is a trademark issue. As it is, Hasbro does have to protect their "Scrabble" trademark if they want to keep it. There are better and worse ways of doing so through, and I'm pretty sure this isn't one of the better ways.
The timing of the matter is a little suspicious if trademark was the focus of the suit. IANAL, but since Hasbro didn't have any competing product in Facebook until the lawsuit, I think the Scrabulous guys can get away with not paying much damages if they quickly changed their name to something entirely unrelated and re-released it. After all, it's not like they outright called their product "Scrabble."
Parent
same old story (Score:4, Insightful)
Just another sad day when an entity demands and is granted the right to continue to profit exclusivly on an idea that is decades old.
Re:same old story (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:same old story (Score:5, Funny)
HIV. It's about as active as scrabble and gets just about as much attention from the general populace. A ton of people have it but nobody really talks about it anymore.
Parent
Facebook is not the Internet (Score:5, Informative)
The Web-based version [scrabulous.com] of Scrabulous seems to be working just fine.
Re:Facebook is not the Internet (Score:5, Informative)
Give it time. It appears to be hosted in Texas [slashdot.org] at ThePlanet.com... we'll see how long they take to pull the server.
Parent
Re:Facebook is not the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
My daughter is in college and is an avid Facebook user.
She also has been playing Scrabble, or is it Scrabulous, for months now. She typically has 2 or 3 games going at once with different friends. If she has an idle minute or two, she'll get online and check how her games are going, whether it's her turn yet, etc.
Most of her Scrabble/Scrabulous activity is of the instant sort, the got-a-free-minute type. If the game doesn't come up in seconds, if it takes minutes to start, what's the point. She didn't have that much time right then, anyway.
Sometimes speed really is of the essence, even in a non-FPS.
Parent
Older than me! (Score:5, Insightful)
We really REALLY need copyright reform. I'm 56 years old. Nothing ever created in my lifetime will reach the public domain while I still breathe, and no matter how young you are nothing created in your lifetime will reach the public domain either. And as this Scabble thing shows, it stifles creativity. When Newton said "if I see farther than other men, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants" (and he wasn't the first to say that), the same could be said of art.
Where would engineering be if patents were endless, like copyrights are? Endless copyrights stifle creativity. Where would Disney be without the Brothers Grimm? And how can we convince our governments that they are hindering artistic progress?
Re:Older than me! (Score:5, Funny)
When Newton said "if I see farther than other men, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants" (and he wasn't the first to say that)
I totally agree. Someone really should have sued Newton for copyright infringement for that quote.
Parent
Re:Older than me! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Older than me! (Score:4, Informative)
We really REALLY need copyright reform.
Scrabble is not under copyright, it's a trademark.
Parent
Re:Older than me! (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet that darn pesky article seems to think otherwise.
Hasbro also asked Facebook to remove the game for violating copyright law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. [nytimes.com]
Which is it? If it is a trademark then the DMCA does not apply [eff.org]. The 'C' doesn't stand for 'Trademark'. And if they are claiming that this is a copyright violation then they are on pretty thin legal ice [thelegality.com] as there isn't a lot about the game which is copyrightable.
So which is it? Copyright or trademark? Has Hasbro engaged in perjury by issuing a DMCA takedown notice over a trademark dispute, or are they pursuing an unwinnable copyright case?
Parent
So countersue! (Score:5, Interesting)
dumb idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
This can only backlash against HASBRO - they will make not a penny from the new Facebook version in any case and scrabulous was advertising the board game splendidly.
Seems like a really, really dumb move guaranteed to annoy the end users.
What do HASBRO think they will get from this? They will only get advertising revenue if they can persuade people to visit their new version, and annoying the customers is not a good method to do so.
On the other hand Scrabulous was shut down by the developers themselves in response to the lawsuit, so either they are covering their asses or this is some attempt to make HASBRO reconsider in the face of user outrage.
Typical. For me Scrabulous was one of the only reasons I used FB - I wonder if this will show up in the FB user numbers as a dip?
Re:dumb idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, well that's because the Trademark still has value. Why should the Scrabulous guys leech off the marketing millions that Hasbro pumped in over the years. If Scrabulous was good enough on its own terms to succeed without trademark leeching, they should have just called it something else: they would have succeeded irrespective.
Parent
Re:House-Hold Name? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is.
Xerox? Generic name for any photocopier. Kleenex? Generic name for any paper handkerchief. Aspirin? Generic name for any painkiller with acetylsalicylic acid as its active ingredient.
Scrabble? Um, highly specific name for a single board game made exclusively by two companies. The average person wouldn't refer to any other board game as "a scrabble", even if it involved making words with tiles.
Parent
yahoo literati (Score:5, Informative)
http://games.yahoo.com/lt [yahoo.com]
(you need a yahoo login)
totally free. huge regular user base in all skill levels. you get to keep track of your score/ rank over many thousands of games. there are different servers for different skill levels
its a java app. i've had problems with it freezing on ie (so you lose a match and it hurts your overall standing), but it works fine in firefox. you can play time limit games, challenge spelling games, etc.
there are some quirks and minor complaints, griping about the dictionary of course being the biggest, as usual, but by and large i'm very satisfied by the player population and the overall challenge and the easy in/ easy out/ waste 20 minutes nature of play
you frequently encounter players with thousands of games under their belt, and you can check if their win/ loss ratio is suspect or their abandoned games count is suspect (meaning: they jettisoned games in the first few seconds before it hurt their score if they don't like their initial tiles, which is really lame). as for the players with the weird win/loss ratios: i don't understand why someone would cheat at such a frivolous nonmonetary past time, but you encounter such players way more than you would think. i don't get it. is someone designing bots for a CS class? is someone so interested in winning over enjoying themselves? i don't understand it
of course, it's not 100% scrabble, but how it departs from scrabble, such as pseudorandom letter tiles (chosen at the beginning of the game and fixed but from a much larger pool of tiles) is interesting. so some games are brutal because of a bunch of Cs, Is, and Us, and the next game might be surprising because of a surfeit of Js and Zs
i'm very happy with literati for wasting 20 minutes here and there
What Scrabulous did makes no sense (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand why the Scrabulous folks took an approach that virtually guaranteed that they would be shut down. The rules of the game are not subject to copyright or any other restriction, so anybody can make a Scrabble-like game. The name itself is trade-marked, and the board artwork is copyrighted. That means that all you have to do to be free of IP restrictions is use a clearly distinct name and different artwork. It would not have been difficult to avoid legal problems. Why they didn't is beyond me.
Re:How does this matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see a single article on the front page that affects everyone.
Your post strikes me as a lame excuse for trumpeting your awesome coolness for not using Facebook or Myspace. Consider your awesome coolness recognized, now leave us alone to talk about things that affect many thousands of people.
Parent
Re:How does this not matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't seen slashdot.org load as "Slashdot: social networking site reviews for nerds", which is what this article would be better classified as.
That's bull. This has exactly zero to do with Facebook, if you pay attention. This is about a cool game getting shut down by an overzealous trademark holder... in other words, exactly sort of thing /. likes to discuss.
Parent
Re:Sixty Years Old?! (Score:5, Funny)
Chessulous? Pokulous?
Pikachulous! I choose you!!
Parent