The Return of Scrabulous? Introducing Wordscraper
When one of Facebook’s most popular applications is mysteriously taken down, the crowds react. And they react fast.
Tuesday, the Calcutta-based brothers who started the instantly popular Facebook application, Scrabulous, finally removed the application from the site because of increasing legal pressure and threats from Hasbro, the creators of the original Scrabble game.
The bitter feud dates back to January 2008, when Hasbro and Mattel, joint owners of the board game, asked Facebook to remove the application citing copyright infringement. 400,000+ Scrabulous addicts instantly rushed to the defense of the game in the form of status updates and supportive Facebook fan groups, and over the coming months the application managed to stick around.
This week, however, Scrabulous finally bowed out as Hasbro introduced its own official Scrabble game to Facebook, which despite a rough (and very buggy) start has already drawn 50,000 users.
The makers of Scrabulous, however, not to be defeated, this morning announced Wordscraper, a very similar game to the original with a completely different look and feel. Whether or not these changes will satisfy the gaming giants remains to be seen, as does whether original Scrabulous users will migrate over to the official Hasbro application or try their hand at the knock-off.
What is clear is that the game’s popularity (and the controversy that surrounds it) has certainly drummed up interest in a board game that many argue had faded into obscurity amongst the Facebook generation. I understand Hasbro’s frustration with not creating the application first, but I can only imagine that Scrabulous has done great things for sales of the original game.
Meanwhile, the saga continues. Certainly, Wordscraper still treads somewhat on Scrabble’s toes…but the question is how hard, and whether Hasbro will continue to fight two guys whose efforts seem only to have benefited the gaming giant — finally lifting the almost 100-year-old game into the Internet age.
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