Scrabulous Is Dead, Hasbro's Version Brain-Dead 395
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.
Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
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 ...
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, the whip company is finding many new potential sources of revenue on the web.
And it sounds like Hasbro picked up the buggy part...
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."
Slashdot filters need revision! (Score:3, Interesting)
the significance of an argument about how web 2.0 apps are changing the business landscape.
He have caps filters and characters-per-line filters but no MBA-speak filters?
I kid, I kid :P
I agree with your post though. I always have wondered how Hasbro, Mattel and some of the other toy companies are staying afloat. It's always amusing when I see an ad for a Wii game or something followed by an ad for...a board game. I guess they make money on families who can't afford video game systems, or have some sort of moral problem with them (there are a lot of parents who think video games "rot their children
Re:Slashdot filters need revision! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's still a deal at $15. The board is better quality than most new cheesy games, and the pieces are still wooden and engraved with the letters.
I've bought a couple of them; one for the house, one for the cottage, and find they're an incredible deal.
I also bought the versions for Palm and Pocket PC. My only beef with the PPC version is that it doesn't show your score as you build a word (and rearranging the tiles can be awkward
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...$45 for the deluxe version (prices from Amazon). It is risky starting out, but once you have something popular it's easy to put out the same product year after year and rake in the money.
I'm sorry are you talking about the board games or the computer games?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
However, in a free country, a business is entitled to shoot themselves in the foot. They can even choose which foot.
And, in a free country, a business is allowed to decide whether it wants to use a dainty .22 pistol, a .45 semi-auto, or a M-79 40mm grenade launcher. of course, the US isn't exactly a free country any longer, but that's another topic.
No wonder businesses have so many problems (Score:3, Funny)
They are finding it difficult to toe the line.
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!"
Re:If the Scrabulous people have any pride... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They can still reach such an agreement. However, if the Scrabulous developers did not wish to enter into such an arrangement, no one can compell them to do so.
If they *are* guilty of infringement of IP or tradmark, then either shutting them down or seizing their infringing properties and handing it over to Hasbro is necessary as an option or else the infringers could simply say "No, thank you, we'd rather compete with you than work for you," and Hasbro would have no recourse.
Certainly win-win business agre
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty sure the board is copyrighted (though, hell, the game is so old oughtn't that to have expired by now?)
You can't copyright games (Score:3, Informative)
Game rules are not copyrightable. The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it....Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merchandising, or playing of a game. See http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html [copyright.gov]
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The functional aspects of the game layout are not protected but the non-functional, artistic aspects are. Scrabulous should have been okay if they used a board with the same dimensions and locations for the double word scores and so forth but different colors, fonts, and other details.
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Especially if you're a lion.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAL, but it's my layman's understanding that copyright violations only apply to verbatim copying. Sorry.
The name "Scrabulous" may actually be actionable from a trademark standpoint, but changing the name will fix that problem.
What else specifically is in violation?
I'm very curious if the Scrabulous folks choose to fight this in court. I think they have a very good chance of winning. Maybe this case is something to ask sites like Groklaw about?
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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?
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.
Everyone is missing the obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It would only be of limited PR value to pay the developers to keep their code and it would encourage other people to make programs based off of Hasbro's games.
It's not about PR. It's about buying large, established user-bases.
Why would they put all the time and effort into building facebook versions of their games without knowing which ones will take off, when developers can do it for them?
They can just sit back and pick off the most successful ones for guaranteed profit.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as I can tell, if the makers of Scrabulous change the name and remove all trademark infringing IP like the game board, they can re-release the game.
Yeah; that was what I suggested. Actually, I think they should do something better: Make part of a game's parameters the board size, and maybe a few other variables like the number of double/triple letter/word squares, and the number of letters that you start with. That way, users could tailor a game for their personal interests. You could get a small
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They probably didn't want to reward the people who ripped off their game.
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.
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.
Re:And is that INNOVATIVE? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except...Hasbro had nothing to do with the development of Scrabble. Neither did Selchow & Richter, who owned the assets before they were bought by Hasbro.
That's irrelevant. I didn't build my house. Neither did the family I bought it from. Nor did the people they bought it from. But we transferred the rightful ownership of such through various transactions.
Same with Scrabble. Capitalism would fall apart if all of a sudden we could say "ahhhh, you weren't the original owner/creator/inventor/builder of that, give up your ownership now!" Why would anyone bother to acquire rights of a property such as Scrabble, knowing they were worthless. They wouldn't. Those rights were bought for what both parties agreed was a fair price at the time, and there's no reason to invalidate that ongoing ownership today. Each of the companies involved speculated on the value of scrabble, up until Hasbro today, and is rightfully benefiting from it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So instead they chose to punish people who played their game. That's brilliant!
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sixty Years Old?! (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Chessulous? Pokulous?
Re:Sixty Years Old?! (Score:5, Funny)
Chessulous? Pokulous?
Pikachulous! I choose you!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
yea, cause like noone plays poker anymore.
Re:Sixty Years Old?! (Score:4, Funny)
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)
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.
Re:same old story (Score:4, Insightful)
Should I fax it to you, or is a simple scan and email enough?
I was actually going for insightful, rather than funny. A ton of people have HIV but nobody really talks about it. Just like Scrabble.
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I talked with my daughter after she got home from work, today. She lost 2 in-progress games, one with her boyfriend and one with a friend from high school. She's more upset about losing her game statistics, though. Her boyfriend was over for dinner tonight, and he's tried the official Scrabble. It didn't get very far before it crashed. She's downstairs playing dead-tree Scrabble with my wife, now.
Don't know what will fill the niche Scrabulous used to occupy.
Re:Facebook is not the Internet (Score:4, Informative)
They only can shut it down in North America. Hasbro does not own the rights to Scrabble elsewhere in the world.
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.
Re:Older than me! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Older than me! (Score:4, Informative)
We really REALLY need copyright reform.
Scrabble is not under copyright, it's a trademark.
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?
Re:Older than me! (Score:4, Informative)
Most articles that I have read about this say that the Scrabble rules and format are copyrighted. The name is certainly trademarked; that doesn't mean that other parts of the game can't be copyrighted.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/07/25/hasbro_sues_over_scrabble_copyright_infringement/ [boston.com]
Now, with that said, this game is very old and I feel the lifespan of copyrights is too long.
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.
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.
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
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Put simply - Yes.
well, at least I won't lose my last game ... (Score:3, Funny)
It's like Niggle on the Palm (Score:4, Interesting)
Niggle is a freeware Scrabble on the Palm that is fairly vanilla looking but is a far superior implementation of Scrabble to the official Hasbro version, but when they came out with official Scrabble on the Palm the authors of Niggle, of course, pulled it.
Scrabulous should patent its game. (Score:4, Interesting)
The feature list provided, the integrated chat, the quick loads, and word list, all describe a sort of a tile based game that is essentially different from scrabble the board game. Really, by Hasbro making an online tile thing, they are infringing on scrabulous's intellectual property. Scrabulous should patent everything about their work, and sue Hasbro for infringement on their invention.
Just like Tetris (Score:3, Interesting)
Re-Read TFA! (Score:4, Informative)
It's been updated [nytimes.com]. Apparently the decision to block US and Canada from Scrabulous was the Scrabulous developers' own decision, presumably a pre-emptive move to prevent themselves being sued under US law (or Canadian law, for some reason). Curious that it has occurred at the same time as Hasbro launch their own version - maybe a deal was struck after all..?
Am I the only one that likes the new version? (Score:3, Interesting)
It looks better. Some people have complained about the animations; they don't take that much time, and Hasbro has announced they're going to implement a switch to turn them off, as well as keyboard (based upon user feedback). Hasbro owns the rights to the game, implemented their own version, and are enforcing the rights.
I don't know why everyone has so much hate on for the new version. It looks better, they're fixing up the couple of things people have complained about.
Most importantly, with Scrabulous you had to refresh your page manually, or set up a 2-minute auto refresh. Not great for games with any interactivity. The official Scrabble doesn't need this refresh, it tells you when someone has moved, instantly, which really is a make-or-break feature in my book.
Yes, some games are one-turn-per-day, and each works fine for that. But when you want a play-the-game-now interactively with someone, Scrabulous was a joke.
I don't see it as a big loss, in my opinion. The new one works fine, and should be even better when it's out of beta.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
False. They own the rights to the name, to the specific wording of the rules, and to those aspects of the board's appearance which are not necessary for its function - that is, they own the rights to the particular color that they use for double-word score, but they don't own the right to a 15x15 grid.
And they only own those rights in North America.
In no way do they own the rights to the "game". The concept of the game itself is in the public domain.
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.
www.scrabulous.com - facebook not required (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't need facebook. You can play at http://www.scrabulous.com/ [scrabulous.com] - there's even an email version, which will email you when your opponent has played his/her move.
Scrabulous was the reason I originally joined Facebook. When I found that I could play without having a Facebook account, I had my account deleted (mailed them and told them to delete everything!) and I play exclusively using the email version of the game.
T.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be more accurate to say that Facebook is already sort-of mainly translated into many languages. I use it in Spanish, and at times the mistakes are painful.
To pre-empt those who want to point out that it's Web 2.0 and I should get involved, I have. I've installed the translation module, translated a couple of phrases, and voted on a lot more. But it's not infrequent that when I find a mistranslated phrase the translation module claims not to know anything about it.
Re:let's see (Score:4, Insightful)
It means he thinks that there aren't millions of non-US facebook users because he hasn't bothered to look.
/Mikael
Re:let's see (Score:4, Funny)
And why would that in any way affect their choice of dictionaries? Are some dictionaries illegal in the US?
How does this not matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are still plenty of us who care about myspace / facebook. Most people on the Internet are on one (or both) of those. I see why this article justifies front-page status.
Or how about I bitch about all the articles about C and Ruby and a whole load of other programming languages I don't know? Or websites that I personally don't care about? Should the front-page only have articles that we all care about? I'm guessing that would be quite a short list.
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.
Re:How does this not matter? (Score:4, Funny)
Has there ever been a poll about which social networking sites people on Slashdot use?
/. is my social networking site. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wouldn't that be more of an anti-social networking site?
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
It's funny how, as far as I've seen, people don't complain when there's a Slashdot story about Perl - yet that is relevant to orders of magnitude fewer people than MySpace or Facebook do.
It's also funny how "cool" means one thing on Slashdot, and quite another in the world at large. Somehow I don't think the two sets overlap much.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like to see Slashdot return to actually discussing important technical news
Then find some and submit it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The parallel is even closer for M:tG fans as there used to be a quite nice piece of software floating around the 'net about 10 years ago called "Magic Suitcase".
Instead of buying it and creating a licensed version that fans would appreciate and support they just killed it outright if memory serves.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bob