RSSScrabulous returns to Facebook as 'Wordscraper' with circular board
by Michael Hatamoto
After being officially removed from Facebook less than two days ago due to a legal threat from Scrabble maker Hasbro, Scrabulous has returned to the social network site with a new name and visual changes.
Dubbed "Wordscraper," the Facebook application is technically a new word game, but it retains certain similarities to the now defunct Scrabulous.
The custom board can be made to look like a regular Scrabble game, although the brothers behind the service will likely be safe legally, because it is up the users to make the change.
Along with the regular double and triple score on the board, there also are new tiles that offer quadruple points when used during a game.?
Exact game information and rules remain sketchy, as the Wordscraper Facebook application has been inaccessible through parts of the afternoon.
Wordscaper has received praise from players so far, though some of the gamers have requested changes they would like to see added into the game. The game isn't completely finished, and will be receiving future updates at the discretion of the Agarwalla brothers.
Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, who created the Scrabulous game, were recently sued by Hasbro and EA, but say they will fight the legal action for as long as they can.Their Scrabulous game had about 2.3 million total users with at least 450,000 users playing daily -- earning them $25,000 a month in advertising revenue.
The official US version of Scrabble is being played by 63,000 users today, while the international version has around 15,000 users. EA and Hasbro have a lot of work to do before they are able to reach 450,000 players, and will face increased pressure due to the return of Scrabulous as Wordscraper.
6 Comments
big or little guy...EA and Hasbro are right. I hope they prevail. Plagery is never a good thing.
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From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble#History):
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In 1938, architect Alfred Mosher Butts created the game as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. The two games had the same set of letter tiles, whose distributions and point values Butts worked out meticulously performing a frequency analysis of letters from various sources including The New York Times. The new game, which he called "Criss-Crosswords," added the 15-by-15 game board and the crossword-style game play. He manufactured a few sets himself, but was not successful in selling the game to any major game manufacturers of the day.[3]
In 1948, James Brunot,[4] a resident of Newtown, Connecticut, (and one of the few owners of the original Criss-Crosswords game) bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold. Though he left most of the game (including the distribution of letters) unchanged, Brunot slightly rearranged the "premium" squares of the board and simplified the rules; he also changed the name of the game to "Scrabble"
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Given that the game was co-opted 60 years ago with very minimal changes, shouldn't the much revised game now called Wordscraper be allowed to exist without legal action?
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baaaahaahaaaa
stop your whining.
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No, because as your post states, James Brunot bought the rights to manufacture the game, and give the original creator royalties. Have the brothers of Scrabulous bought the rights or shared in the revenue? No.
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EA and Hasbro should have been a little more proactive on the topic, they could have used it for their own benefit instead of effectively killing it...
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This is...interesting. I would love to see a case about this reach higher courts because this could really clarify some of those legal questions.
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