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.
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:1, Informative)
As does the facebook version if you get at your US or Canadian facebook account via non-US or Canadian proxy.
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.
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:Older than me! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Older than me! (Score:4, Informative)
We really REALLY need copyright reform.
Scrabble is not under copyright, it's a trademark.
Re:yahoo literati (Score:3, Informative)
Put simply - Yes.
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: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.
Re:Why didn't they just buy scrablous? (Score:2, Informative)
"Sorry
Scrabble is temporarily unavailable due to maintenance. Please check back later."
Lame.
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.
Re:facebook app performance (Score:3, Informative)
Bob
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-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..?
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:3, Informative)
Re:Slashdot filters need revision! (Score:2, Informative)
A very little research gives us details on the Directors of Hasbro.
http://markets.ft.com/tearsheets/businessProfile.asp?s=us%3AHAS [ft.com]
The mean ages, which missing out one of them, Bennett Schneir, is 53 years old.
So yeah, perhaps they just would have never considered it.
But just to make another point, consoles and PC games are a different beast than board\card games. It's quite possible to enjoy both.
For your interest here are a few of my current favourites, Zombie Flux [fluxxgames.com], Cthulhu 500 [atlas-games.com], Bang! [davincigames.com] and Give me the Brain [cheapass.com]. Check them out, you might enjoy them :-)
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.
Re:Am I the only one that likes the new version? (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.