“Is Hasbro just a stupid Potato Head? Or is this a brilliant game of Stratego?” That’s the big question Fortune’s Josh Quittner (my former boss) asks as he reports that Hasbro, the toy company that owns Scrabble, is trying to shut down Scrabulous,
one of the most popular Facebook apps. Scrabulous lets you play an online version of Scrabble with your Facebook friends. The app boasts 569,000 daily active user, ranking it No. 9 right after Slide’s SuperPoke, No. 8, and ahead of iLike, No. 10.
Scrabulous co-founder Jayant Agarwalla, 21, confirms that Hasbro “sent a notice to Facebook about two weeks ago. The lawyers are working on it.” Quittner suggests that someone start a Facebook group to save Scrabulous, but we all know how much good that is likely to do.
Update: It’s official. See coverage here
I’m surprised it took this long.
We tried to add Scrabble to Yahoo! Games in early 1998, but they wouldn’t license it to us.
I wish they would just take the Q and the Z – I always struggle with those!
Battleship would’ve been a better game or Connect Four
Awesome show of stupidity on Hasbro’s part.
Just acquiring the app might be cheaper(AND strategically meaningful) than throwing their lawyers at this.
Allen
I saw some friends playing something that looked like a cross between Battleship and Connect 4 on facebook the other day.
HG
Damn straight they did. Per #1, I’m surprised it took this long. Sure, buying them would be an option, but then in some ways you’re rewarding people for stealing trademarks and brand names.
@Zaid Completely agree. If they attempted to acquire it, we may also see a pretty interesting effort from traditional game companies (board games, puzzles, etc) in transitioning/ adapting/ playing online in the new online environment many young people (and old!) are reaching towards for entertainment.
Erick
What is your source for the Facebook app statistics … im interested to see what the top 10 apps are.
Jason
#6, The buyout offer will be simple.
The Agarwalla brothers turn over Scrabulous to Hasbro and the application lives on.
Hasbro doesn’t sue the Agarwalla brothers and Facebook.
@Jason
http://www.facebook.com/apps/
then click on the ‘Most Active Users’ tab
*you probably need to be logged in to facebook to see these stats
Well i think Hasbro is trying to make a history. This would definately be a huge gold mine for hasbro. And i agree with Erik, scrabulous is lucky to get this far.
Your information is not totally correct. Message me later. Scrabulous is a great game.
Also check out our Warbook game which has 15 million pageviews a day (more pageviews than Scrabulous).
http://apps.fac...ok.com/warbook/
We also have StreetRace and FightClub (over 1.4m installs):
http://apps.fac...race/?sideNav=1
http://apps.fac...com/fight-club/
Game on!
Cheers,
Shervin
SGN
What do you expect from a company run by a 64-year-old CEO? I bet this guy still dictates emails to his secretaries.
Agreed that they should just shut it down and not reward someone who steals IP without permission. I think the anti-big-company group will say Hasbro’s being stupid, but you need to seriously think about how you’d answer this question: What takes more creativity, coming up with the game of Scrabble or putting something on Facebook?
The worst thing that could be done is for Scrabbulous to put its code in the public domain. Hasbro should buy scrabbulous if they want to keep them quiet. They actually have fewer options to manage this situation than Jayant. I’m pretty sure they couldn’t sue everyone who recreates scrabbulous – given the millions of programmers throughout the world – from the public code. I’d say $3 Million would be a more than fair price (I would push for $5 Mil myself, but that’s just me).
Hey, if Hasbro owns Scrabble and these guys not only used Hasbro’s intellectual property without permission – and then made money with it – Hasbro has every right to shut them down AND seize any profits. This isn’t China for cryin’ out loud. At least not yet…
David B.
@9
If they didn’t want to license it in 1998, what makes you think they will want to have an online version today?
I’d like to challenge Erick to a battle of the bloggers in Scrabble sometime in NYC!
@13
According to Wikipedia, Alfred Mosher Butts invented Scrabble in 1938 and he died in 1993.
Since the game’s creator is no longer alive, the question about creativity should be: What takes more creativity, putting something on Facebook or hiring a bunch of lawyers?
#16 …because in 1998 Y! Games was an unproven entity. We were still behind MSFT Zone. Pogo was still TEN and not doing casual games. AOL had just bailed out of casual games. Y! was not to pay a license fee to Hasbro. They didn’t want to do a barter/rev share deal.
Things have changed a lot in the last 10 years. The Scrabulous app is proven. They should be able to get it for free (or force facebook to take it down).
The Scrabulous website (hosted in India I believe) will be harder to take down.
A lot of newspapers publish crossword puzzles… are they violating anything?
@16
*A lot* has changed since 1998. The Internet isn’t just a “cool new thing” anymore. Many companies once hesitant about the web have changed their attitudes over the years. And rightly so.
@ Steve:
Should creativity’s effect only exist when the author is alive? What do you say to a company who hires someone for his creativity and pays a premium?
It’s moot to argue which one is more creative, because hiring lawyers who understand intellectual property law does not break the law, whereas putting Scrabble on Facebook without permission does.
As much as I like the game and as much as I can see a biz opp for Hasbro in this, Jayant’s biggest upside will be avoiding his own legal fees. From Hasbro’s perspective, paying this guy even a fraction of money would have other developers coming out of the woodwork building {insert-hasbro-game-here} knockoff facebook apps, and consequently lining up for their payday. The fact that they’re old school fuddy duddys doesn’t give us cool techies privilege to implement anything.
I know after a certain amount of time songs become public domain. Can the same apply to board games?
Supposing Hasbro did want to pay…Adonomics has the Scrabulous valuation at $2.9 million (thanks to Center Networks for pointing to that site). FWIW…
http://tinyurl.com/36xwrv
Hasbro could look at this as paying for a technology trial they didn’t have to deal with. Now they might see their inventory of games has a whole new “value”. “Value” in the sense of spreading the word about their games. Not sure how many people would pay to use the games.
how about, this is a company who is trying to protect their intellectual property.
You know, can we please **abandon this notion** that “it’s stupid to sue a website for copying your product online… it’s only giving you exposure… free exposure… duh. what a moron company that doesn’t know what’s good for them. if they were half as smart as me they would acquire this thing and put it to use for themselves…” ….
Honesty.. it takes an idiot to believe that notion… Hasbro has every right to shut this thing down.
How would you feel, Erick, if a new, non-hasbro product was launched on physical store shelves called “Scrabulous” and was like scrabble in every way? Uh.. im pretty sure you’d call foul on that one… (regardless of who is trying to save it.)
I’m rooting for Hasbro on this one because they own Scrabble and never authorized this ninny to make any use of the games attributes (including butchering the name of the product publicly). This guy should be not only have his app removed but he should slapped with a trout (old skool) for being too numb in the cranial area to simply come up with a unique name for his game (exactly what yahoo did in the face of no Scrabble Liscence… release Scrabble, call it something else… DUH!!!!)
Simple Fact: He was counting on the Scarbble name to increase interest in his project, that is a serious weakness and should simply not be tolerated… not by Hasbro and certainly not by any of you fine folks.
and also big LOL to the $3-$5 million (”i would push for $5m myself” … no you wouldn’t. for all the reasons I just stated, no you wouldn’t.)
Call me libertarian, but board layouts and rules shouldn’t get copyrights. Wouldn’t nintendo be able to sue every sidescrolling game after mario. Or how about every shooting game after duck hunt. If Scrabulous had added one more row and column, would this still be an issue? Also, what real damage does this do to scrabble’s potential online market. I’d argue none, as they’ve done nothing in the social space, and until they do and fail, I’d assume they just just don’t have it in the scope of their business.
Now arguing Scrabulous is jocking their name…maybe.
If Scrabulous had added one more row and column, would this still be an issue?
No.
If Scrabulous didn’t have the permission of Hasbro then there is really no reason why they shouldn’t either shut them down or use the app to their benefit.
Well, there is my worthless .02 cents. Now I’m off to play Scrabulous!
http://scrabble.com/
From the Scrabulous creators’ own account, they make only $18,000 from their Facebook app every month: very nice for a small group of passionate developers, but totally irrelevant to Hasbro. However, they would be silly to fail to leverage the power of this little app; it actually *sells* boards, and has gotten many people interested or reinterested in playing Scrabble at home. Lastly, please note that Hasbro only owns the rights for North America. Mattel owns the right for the rest of the world, as the scrabble.com intro page makes clear.
This should be a fun thread…haters of copyright and intellectual property, haters of lawyers, haters of Facebook and its app developers, haters of 60 year old CEOs, just plain haters– all get to come together in a big mud wrestling match!
I think Hasbro may want to shut it down. They may see it as diverting sales away from the physical version of the game (not that I see many folks buying it these days). If they could sieze it and then monetize it or come up with a membership scheme that could work within Facebook, then they may want to let it live.
I hate them….
I’m with Hasbro on this one as well. Also realize that these laws are in place to protect the little guys as well. If Jayant was the one with the IP he could shut Hasbro down and be able to file an injunction with no out of money expense. Lawyers would be all over it to cash out at 30% commission or more.
@ #26, Matt: I’m with you. IP creators will naturally attempt to protect their IP and Scrabulous is obviously leeching off of the Scrabble IP in both name and gameplay. How much money it makes and/or whether it actually benefits the core IP are irrelevant points. The IP creator has the right to dictate how their IP is used and benefit from it. I predict Hasbro will win this.
That said, if you look at casual game cloning it has been shown that game mechanics have proven tough to patent or protect. While you can’t copy Bejeweled outright, it appears that you can legally swap the art and call it JewelGameX. If the Scrabulous guys had made some changes to the game’s look, feel, or rule set, they’d have a leg to stand on. As it is, they’re screwed.
This would be different if the game didn’t use the Scrabble name, same points system, same scoring system, same board layout, same bonuses, etc.
So, yeah, @27, this is totally different. This is more like a Web 2.0 company coming up with a “new game” called “Mariotacular” which is a side-scroller with the same enemies, maps, etc, where you can play Super Mario with a friend and it tracks high scores.
While I LOVE Scrabulous, that’s all they’ve done. They copied every pixel of Scrabble, added multiplayer/ranking/help components and then attempted to market it. If it happened offline, everyone in the world would deride them. Just because it’s online doesn’t make it somehow okay.
Again, if they’d changed the look, rules, layout or something I’d be totally fine. Being “inspired” by a game and creating your own take is totally fine by me. Outright theft is not.
Hasbro is an American corporate institution. They have the right to shut this site down and not required to buy it. Whether it makes sense to all of you free loaders is not the issue. EVERYTHING in life isn’t free. Contrary to popular belief, everything on the internet isn’t free and shouldn’t be. I am amazed at the mentality of web addicts.
I tried the boggle app in facebook.
I won, a lot.
I was banned within a day for “using a boggle solving web site.”
I tried Scrabulous.
Same thing.
Social Media Casual Gaming – enforcing mediocrity since 2006.
I love Scrabulous. And yes, if Scrabble got their sh*t together and actually made an application for Facebook I would play it. The problem is those clowns are too slow on the uptake. It’s a classic case of would you like to play it for free or pay us money to play it? The Hasbro Scrabble is a pay-for program. Scrabulous isn’t. It’s ad supported. Something Hasbro should have done. They still can.
David
Anyone else notice the thing about the Yahoo!/Hasbro/Scrabble conversation…that Yahoo! still has Literati which Hasbro has not come after…even though it’s still almost the exact same game.
I’m going to have to try this…
I hope Hasbro sees this as a good opportunity to take all of their games on to Facebook and similar sites. They could make a mint if they did it right.
Matt is right. Doesn’t sound like many of you have ever created valuable IP, certainly not the people who speculate on what it’s worth.
I agree with Jean-Michele Decombe — Hasbro should realize that the more people play Scrabulous, the more people will buy boards. This is a dumb move that makes them look out of touch and reactionary.
No Betty, you’re the one out of touch. WHat these guys did is illegal, last time I checked. WTF have you been smoking, wheaties?
If you’re thinking about getting life insurance, term life insurance may just be the kind of insurance you’re looking for. Term life insurance provides you with the insurance you need for a limited period of time.
@ bettyrocker. The more people play a game online, the more they will play it offline? Sez who? I personally think the opposite is true. Did MP3s increase CD sales?
But, either way, it still doesn’t matter. The IP owner has the right to determine what the IP strategy is – not some random guy out on the ‘net somewhere who takes it upon himself to create a copy of your product.
@Betty
How do you know more people will go out and buy boards. I play Scrabulous a few times during the week and it keeps me from going out and buying a board.
Either way you want to view what they did was illegal and something has to be done.
Oh and Bali, WTF? Are you that desperate for backlinks?