Hasbro and Mattel Move to Shutdown Scrabulous; Help Save It!

January 17, 2008

Mattel and Hasbro, makers of the board game Scrabble, have asked Facebook to remove the popular Scrabulous game from the social network, according to the BBC. While clearly a violation of copyright, when was the last time there was so much interest in Scrabble? Scrabulous currently has almost 600,000 daily active users, which, I assume is a lot more people than play the board game on a daily basis.

As several others have noted, Mattel and Hasbro ought to just buy the application and enjoy having more engaged consumers. Combined, the two companies (who split the Scrabble trademark) have a market value of nearly $10 billion – they could probably acquire Scrabulous for less than they’re about to spend in legal fees to protect their trademark.

In any event, users are flocking to a Facebook group called “Save Scrabulous” to protest a shutdown. Since I started writing this post, another 300 people have signed up for it, so there is clearly a viral movement on the way to save the game.