Hasbro dropped the long-expected hammer on Scrabulous today. The company sued the creators of the popular Facebook Scrabble knock-off, alleging copyright infringement.
The toy maker, which owns the Scrabble board game brand in the U.S. and Canada, also asked Facebook to take down the popular application under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Mark... (Read more)
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As a board game publisher I've noticed there are very few real physical "board games" apps on Facebook and if the games exist they are by small companies just like Scrabulous, ie copies.
In fact I made a list;
http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/31999/item/671822#item671822
(You may need to be a member to see this, but I've connected all the main board games to their Facebook apps)
The likes of Mattel and Hasbro have just missed the whole social thing, that is until someone made it successful.
I publish a board game called GiftTRAP that's voted "best party game" by Games Magazine and Creative Child Magazine. I'd be over the moon with this much exposure.
Right now I'd be delighted if someone has been promoting my game to the extent Scrabulous has promoted Scrabble.
I've even created a Facebook app in the vein of Free Gifts, but getting your social app moving is no mean feat. Hasbro has only managed 10k users with al the noise on the web about scrabulous.
If you are interested in Facebook apps check out http://apps.new.facebook.com/gifttrap/
Unlike the Free Gifts app your friend gets to choose their own gift, the question is will you match.
The board game is on sale in Barnes and Noble right now which is pretty cool (no doubt next to Scrabble). I'm just a few million copies behind them! Ah well.
The fact that Scrabulous is succesful I guess gave Hasbro and Mattel no other option than to sue, it's also no doubt driven sales for Scrabble. What would they have paid a PR company to generate this much noise?
I'm amazed a deal hasn't been done for undisclosed sum. The problem is the scrabulous traffic as calculated on http://adonomics.com/ is worth at $2.7m
Now those figures are inflated, but it must make it hard to accept a deal from Hasbro or Mattel when you read about there sorts of numbers.
The split ownership must also make it much harder for them to do a deal.
What's surprised me most is that Scrabulous haven't added to their apps portfolio while they can.
I'm not sure they have really copied anything, but Hasbro has to be seen to go through the motions.
It will be interesting to see what Facebook does under pressure.
The "valuations" Adonomics reports are garbage and everyone knows that. I hope the Agarwalla brothers aren't holding out on a deal because of that number.
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