- GeeksSpeakFont, on 12/16/2008, -3/+13i love scrabble and scrabulous. i say the more the merrier!
- hooplow, on 12/16/2008, -8/+1I'm glad it worked out well for the scrabulous guys. Hasbro seemed to want to knife that baby, and it looked pretty bad for a while.
- Leviathan433, on 12/16/2008, -7/+2Woot!
- gobbleplex, on 12/16/2008, -3/+43Considering that Hasbro offered to buy Scrabulous off of the people who created it, I can't say I feel at all sorry for the guys that got sued.
- jezsik, on 12/17/2008, -4/+7No, I feel sorry for Hasbro stockholders. Time for a change of management.
- fuhcough, on 12/17/2008, -0/+3hasbro has stockholders? gives a new meaning to blue chip i guess.
- jezsik, on 12/17/2008, -4/+7No, I feel sorry for Hasbro stockholders. Time for a change of management.
- benologist, on 12/17/2008, -1/+6The real link:
http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7734/contentdetail.htm?c ... - alanr19, on 12/17/2008, -13/+9***** Hasbro anyway.
Just because for now their PR people managed to shout down their legal people doesn't mean they're nice guys all of a sudden. - t3rmv3locity, on 12/17/2008, -4/+5And how much money did Hasbro make by suing the makers of Scrabulous? Nada.
Smart business decision to make in a recession...- HOTM, on 12/17/2008, -1/+4Cause they started this lawsuit during the recession.
- expatcatalyst, on 12/17/2008, -0/+2What I really wonder is, how much money would they have made based on the free marketing? All those facebookers get hooked online and buy the real thing for their family and friends.
- jezsik, on 12/17/2008, -9/+7People playing the on-line version became interested in the real world version and bought the game. So, what does Hasbro do with this boon? Sue the guys who just increased their sales. Way to go, Hasbro! That'll teach 'em!
- roctimo, on 12/17/2008, -4/+5Take a business class
- jezsik, on 12/17/2008, -4/+5You mean the sort of business class that all the member of the MPAA and RIAA attended? You know, the one that teaches you that you should never change your business model and that litigation is easier than innovation? Thanks, but no thanks.
- ASfinkterSezWut, on 12/17/2008, -1/+3I took lots of business classes... they teach you to THINK - not just react.
People who would be stupid enough to advise Hasbro to sue Scrabulous need to go back to school. - CalcProgrammer1, on 12/17/2008, -2/+1Lol..."business"..."class"...hahahahaha
That's like "good evil", "pretty ugly", "Microsoft Works", etc. A class to teach you how to corrupt things, steal money, and be greedy? You really need a class for that? - jezsik, on 12/17/2008, -0/+3Yeah, you do, CalcProgrammer1. It's called "law school."
- Frumbler, on 12/17/2008, -0/+2I don't know it if helped their sales of physical units any. I only play it online or pass the IPhone back and forth, I'm too impatient to play on a real board now. It was wise for them to shut down scrabulous, EA's version was weak for awhile, but now it kicks ass.
- roctimo, on 12/17/2008, -4/+5Take a business class
- WiretapStudios, on 12/17/2008, -1/+24They didn't make any money, but they replaced Scrabulous on Facebook with the official Scrabble version. I was a big fan of Scrabulous, but it wasn't like 50 people playing it, it was hundreds of thousands of people. Nothing wrong with protecting your trademarks and controlling how your brand is presented.
- librarychic, on 12/17/2008, -3/+4Scrabulous was much better than the offical version... less frills better game play
- WiretapStudios, on 12/17/2008, -1/+5Agreed. I'm just saying I understand their stance on the issue.
- expatcatalyst, on 12/17/2008, -2/+5Also nothing wrong with getting your product in front of about a gozillion consumers, who will now probably purchase the real thing...
- wendelgee2, on 12/17/2008, -0/+1I did. The travel version.
- Incman, on 12/17/2008, -1/+3So does that mean 'Lexulous' will be called 'Scrabulous' again?
- librarychic, on 12/17/2008, -0/+8Wordscrapper will end up suing the college students that make the first nano-implant version of it 50 years from now.
- Darunium, on 12/17/2008, -3/+17It's kind of lame to so patently rip off scrabble too. You could come up with thousands of different word games all on your own. Whether Hasbro needs more money or not they shouldn't let people repackage and distribute their work. I'd be pissed if I came up with a popular board game and some one made a copy of it for online use, especially when I already had a free online version.
- dema, on 12/17/2008, -1/+5Basically they bent over backwards for Hasbro. The lawsuit against Scrabulous actually produced the wonderful idea of making a fully customizable version of the game, called "Wordscraper" on FB. This was great for a while because one could both be creative with the boards and still custom make the typical board. However, eventually they decided to sell out and implement functions to stop the creation of any setup similar to a Scrabble board, including the tile values and letter counts, undoubtedly at the behest of a settlement clause. So basically, they are fully admitting guilt and setting a terrible example for other "look and feel" lawsuits (actually I'm not even sure if that applies here, I think Hasbro was more concerned with trademark, but that just makes "RJ Softwares" look even dumber). Thanks a lot, fellas.
- Incman, on 12/17/2008, -0/+2"Wordscrapper" was created before Hasbro sued Scrabulous. I don't know what you are talking about.
- dema, on 12/17/2008, -0/+1It was only added to FB after the lawsuit, which is all that really matters considering what FB did for the popularity of Scrabulous. Either way, the rest of the comment remains valid as the changes came because of the settlement, so your inability to know what I'm "talking about" is either ignorance or foolishness.
- Incman, on 12/17/2008, -0/+2@dema
OK.. my comment was specifically in regard to this remark made by you:
"The lawsuit against Scrabulous actually produced the wonderful idea of making a fully customizable version of the game, called "Wordscraper" on FB."
a) The wonderful idea of Wordscraper was created before the lawsuit.
b) No where I could find a reliable source mentioning that Wordscraper was added to FB only because Hasbro sued Scrabulous.
To be frank, since your comment started with an inaccurate sentence, I didn't bother to read the rest of it. But yes, I do agree with what you had to say about the changes made to Wordscraper because of the legal tussle between Hasbro and RJ Softwares. - dema, on 12/17/2008, -0/+1> To be frank, since your comment started with an inaccurate sentence, I didn't bother to read the rest of it.
Fair enough (: I was an avid user of Scrabulous/Wordscraper on FB. So the history as I remember it was that Facebook actually blocked Scrabulous after Hasbro put up it's competing application and then complained. That's when I first heard about Wordscraper, so maybe it was there even before.
- Incman, on 12/17/2008, -0/+2"Wordscrapper" was created before Hasbro sued Scrabulous. I don't know what you are talking about.
- tavallai, on 12/17/2008, -0/+3I wouldn't mind the "official" Scrabble if it, you know, WORKED ON FOREIGN IPs.
- tobster85, on 12/17/2008, -0/+2Hasbro only owns the Scrabble rights in the US. That's why there is a US version and a 'rest of the world' version.
- Ragarnok, on 12/17/2008, -0/+5A M W E O S E
- Claude1971, on 12/18/2008, -0/+1i don't think that word is in the Scrabble dictionary. Maybe the dyslexic version
- bffoley, on 12/17/2008, -0/+4I love the incredible amount of nerd rage that appears on the internet whenever a company protects its IP. They have every legal right to do so and just because they dropped the suit because of bad PR doesn't mean they're wrong.
Imagine what kind of world we'd live in if all this internet outrage wasn't aimed at companies protecting their IP from copycats or their software/music from pirates, and aimed at real crises in the world. - hurlyburley, on 12/17/2008, -0/+4I work for a company that was sued by Hasbro over a clone of one of their games. We had to teach them US copyright law: you can't copyright the rules to a game. It's quite clear; even I understood that part of copyright law reading it on my own (IANAL). You can copyright the artwork. You can copyright the printed rules, bound in a book. You can trademark the name. But you can't copyright the rules themselves. So call it something else, don't copy their artwork, and you're fine.
When we pushed back, Hasbro dropped their pending suit (four weeks later), acknowledging that we were right. Along the way we found remnants of their having sunk other small companies via frivolous litigation. Fortunately we had the money to spend on the lawyers and it didn't sink us, but it very well could have.- dema, on 12/17/2008, -0/+4Congrats to you. Very similar to the situation with TTC threatening lawsuits against various Tetris-like games, claiming to have copyright on falling blocks and rectangular game boards. It's unfortunate that RJ Softwares rolled over like this.
- MazdaEric, on 12/17/2008, -2/+1V I C T O R Y
- Phillyberg, on 12/17/2008, -1/+0FTW!
- gelatina1996, on 12/17/2008, -1/+1They lost, we won!
- rebotfc, on 12/17/2008, -1/+1They finally realised they ***** up all interest in scrabble by taking scrabulous offline. They should sue themselves for being re-*****-tarded.