Scrabulous on Facebook is almost D-E-C-E-A-S-E-D

by Stevie Smith - Aug 26 2008, 13:00

Following on from its existing copyright clash with leading Rhode Island-based toymaker Hasbro, contentious online gaming application Scrabulous has now been officially dropped by social networking giant Facebook in all countries apart from India.

According to a Facebook announcement concerning the Scrabble-inspired word game, the decision was made to yank Scrabulous in countries outside of North America after international rights holder Mattel submitted a formal request for it to do so.

The only Facebook destination where players can still enjoy Scrabulous is Facebook India, which has not yet removed the application as Mattel’s lawsuit against it is still pending in that particular country.

The hugely popular Scrabulous application was first dropped from Facebook in the United States and Canada around three weeks ago when North American rights holder Hasbro accused its Indian creators of committing copyright infringement in order to develop an application far too closely aligned with Hasbro’s classic Scrabble board game.

By way of response, Scrabulous creators Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of Calcutta-based RJ Softwares instructed Facebook to pull the game before promptly revamping its design, structure and rules, and re-releasing it as Wordscraper.

While the Wordscraper replacement has gathered up some of the traffic attributed to Scrabulous -- which was drawing some 500,000 players prior to its closure -- it has certainly fallen well short of the same wealth of popularity.

While the Indian brothers instructed Facebook on the removal of Scrabulous from the U.S. and Canada, they have voiced their displeasure at the social network’s decision to pull the game internationally without prior consent.

Speaking in a statement, Jayant Agarwalla said he found Facebook’s action to be “astonishing” given the network’s bold claims of being “a fair and neutral party.”

“It surprises us that Mattel chose to direct Facebook to take down Scrabulous without waiting for the (Indian court’s) decision,” added Agarwalla. “Mattel’s action speaks volumes about their business practices and respect for the judiciary.”

Hasbro and Mattel began targeting Scrabulous soon after the Facebook release of the official Electronic Arts-made Scrabble application, which has thus-far failed to gather similar user momentum.

Around the Web