Facebook Scrabble Rip-off Capitalizes on Mattel's Lethargy 216
mlimber writes "The Facebook app Scrabulous was written by two Scrabble-loving brothers in India, has over 700,000 users, brings in about $25,000 per month in advertising revenue, and is in flagrant violation of copyright law. The corporate owners of Scrabble, Hasbro and Mattel, have threatened legal action against the creators and have made deals with Electronic Arts and RealNetworks to release official online versions of the game. But according to an NYTimes article, 'Scrabulous has already brought Scrabble a newfound virtual popularity that none of the game companies could have anticipated,' and according to one consultant to the entertainment industry, 'If you're Hasbro or Mattel, it isn't in your interest to shut this down.' Hasbro's partner RealNetworks is 'working closely' with the piratical brothers, but Mattel says that 'settling with the [brothers] would set a bad precedent' for other board games going online."
Uh, Flagrant Violation of What? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that viral vids sell music (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't kill off the goose that lays the golden eggs
Re:Uh, Flagrant Violation of What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Uh, Flagrant Violation of What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Right. Microsoft sued about the name "Lindows" as a trademark violation, not copyright. They didn't win, but they did settle, and it's not called Lindows anymore. "Scrabulous" is clearly making a reference to the Scrabble trademark, and is profiting from that reference. There are probably other issues, as people have mentioned, about gameplay (the layout of the board), but I think the thing with the name has got to be about trademark.
They have a claim (Score:5, Interesting)
Would Scrabulous be as popular if it wasn't instantly recognizable? Probably not.
"bad precedent" (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, given that the company hasn't produced anything new in years that was worth paying attention to, this comes as a surprise how?
Re:Scrabble cannot be copyrighted. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, drug dealers make a lot of money and look where they end up? Still think they're bright?
They stole the game and put it online. Why are people defending them? They pirated the game: when people rip movies and put them online and sell them for $25,000/mo and the FBI raids their home does anyone on
I hope Hasbro sues them for every dime they've made. You can't just rip-off popular board games and cry foul when the owners bitch. How stupid is that? Anyone want to make a online Monopoly... er, I mean "Monopolious"... and cry then Parker Brothers sues? It'd be total anarchy if Hasbro let's these guys continue. Hell if they somehow get away with this I'm making Starcraft Universe (WoW clone) and I'm gonna be a millionaire!
Re:The problem is that viral vids sell music (Score:3, Interesting)
Golden eggs? Hasbro sells 1-2 million boards a year, and that's before the "golden egg" Scrabulous existed. They don't need Scabulous.
However these brothers are still making 25k/mo on something Hasbro had to pay good money to buy [wikipedia.org]. And they already make a PC version of Scrabble [gamespot.com]. This is like someone making a online version of Starcraft and then bitching when Blizzard comes after them. What sense does that make?
if you want to use someone's property you have to do the right thing: ask them to use it and pay them if they demand it. You can't just steal it and say "but I'm doing some good with it!" Life doesn't work like that.
Re:Scrabble cannot be copyrighted. (Score:3, Interesting)
They are expecting to make huge amounts of money from those old fashioned games, unfortunately reality is setting and and old fashioned board games, are really just bored games, games people play when they are truly bored but have absolutely no desire to pay for them ie. once a request for payment is made, people just shift to another free web based game.
So as it turns out the oldest board games that managed to survive have also mostly lost or are about to lose their copyright protection and of course there a very of those that even marginally succeed. Most of the titles only get the odd free nostalgia play and EA is already starting to feel the bite of money going out and very little returns and is forcing the issue via Hasbro.
Wrong Strategy, Mattel (Score:3, Interesting)
Step 2: actively and repeatedly suppress on-line implementations, despite the obvious unmet market need and potential source of revenue
Step 3: when a wildly popular implementation pops up, instead of licensing it and splitting the revenue, try to squash it on shaky legal grounds
Step 4: hire a big gaming company in the US to implement a new version at 10x the cost of licensing the developing-country version
Did I miss anything? Sounds like a broken strategy, Mattel.
Turning it around... (Score:4, Interesting)
I know that sympathies are clearly with the Scrabblicious developers here, so I won't try to argue that point. The feeling in the community appears to be that since the guys aren't selling it and because Scrabble's been on the market for a while, it's fair game for a copy, and no authorization or payment to the rightsholder should be necessary. But, as a thought experiment, what would happen if the situation were reversed?
I think it's obvious that the consensus Slashdot sympathies would not be with Hasbro.