Bye bye Scrabulous

BBC News - Facebook asked to pull Scrabulous

So it seems Hasbro/Mattel have decided to finally call 'Copyright' on Scrabulous, after a year and a half of it's existence. Perhaps I shouldn't have tipped them off eh?

The thing I'm rather confused about is; why did they wait so long? The game just got more and more popular over time, and therefore - the backlash against these evil corporations daring to try and protect their own IP got that much bigger.

The Save Scrabulous Facebook group was at two thousand members when I read this story at lunchtime - it's up to five and a half thousand now. Some of these people just want to keep playing their game - but a lot of them are going to have a very negative memory of Hasbro/Mattel now, awful publicity or what?

It's also interesting to note the number of Scrabulous players who have (or claim to have) bought a physical copy of Scrabble after having become addicted to the online version. No prizes for guessing what one of the Christmas presents I got was.

Yes, they're protecting their IP, and have every right to do so - but leaving it this late, and just calling in the lawyers without thinking of how to use this online phenomenon to their advantage has left Hasbro/Mattel looking pretty stupid, and left them in a very bad light indeed.

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Thanks to Anthony from Special/Blown it for the tip off.