Scrabulous shut down on Facebook in Canada

by Jon Cranny on Jul 29, 2008 at 11:33 am

If you are like me and an avid Scrabulous player on Facebook, then you would have been just as surprised when you logged in today to check your games, only to see this message: “Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.”

I’ve been hearing rumours for months that Hasbro, the developer of Scrabble, was pissed and trying to shut down Scrabulous because of copyright infringements. Well that day has come and it sucks, according to a report on CNET. The creators of Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, are faced with a lawsuit and have been forced to shut down their Scrabulous application.

Scrabulous was one of the most popular applications on Facebook and was a great way to play friends and kill some free time. I know the Facebook community is pissed and there will likely be groups and petitions to bring Scrabulous back.

I found an application called Scrabble beta on Facebook but, It is not fully operational yet. Hasbro has partnered up with EA and has given the digital rights to them to create this application. I am sure that it will be fully operational very soon and will most likely be just as popular as Scrabulous, unless there is a boycott.

You can still go to the link Scrabulous site if you are against Hasbro's decision and play a game there.

Comments (4) Add New Comment
jfwerb
Jul 29, 2008 at 6:01 pm
NOOOO! [I believe that's worth 15 points on a triple word square]
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Robin McMillan
Jul 30, 2008 at 11:27 am
In all reality, we saw this coming. Back in January, Hasbro sent out a cease and desist order to the makers of the Facebook application. But die-hard Scrabulous fans would have none of it. They screamed in caps lock across the internet – “SAVE SCRABULOUS, DOWN WITH HASBRO”, as they formed online support groups and petitions. There are probably many more support groups now, including this one, which has almost 50,000 members. There is also a Boycott Scrabble Facebook group, for those interested in joining.

Scrabble Beta was released in early July, as Hasbro kindly insisted that they did not want to pull the Scrabulous plug until the “official” version had been launched. So far it’s been getting mixed reviews at best, including criticism from Facebook reviewers for its lengthy load up time and confusing interface. I also tried it out yesterday afternoon, but I was greeted by a frozen screen and had to force quit my browser. EA says this was due to a “malicious attack” that resulted in the disabling of Scrabble Beta.

Hmmm, Scrabble-anarchists??
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Chris Slater
Jul 30, 2008 at 4:56 pm
This one's been around a while but I'm reminded of it again so I'll post it: Craziest.
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Jon Cranny
Jul 31, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Hasbro won't like this. The brothers that created Scrabulous have made a very similar game called Wordscraper for Facebook. I'm trying it out and it looks a lot different but plays more or less the same.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20080730/1936041842.shtml
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