According to Facebook, the decision to take down the game was made by the brothers and not the social networking company. The brothers probably didn’t want Facebook to be caught in the legal crossfire and have vowed to continue their legal defense, but they have a long road ahead of them since their game functions almost exactly like the original Scrabble.
Scrabulous was created by Rajat and Jayant Agarwall from Calcutta, India back in July 2006 and has since become one of the most popular online games with an estimated 500,000 daily players. The game worked as a Facebook application where Facebook members could play against each other in turn-based games. Revenue was generated through text-based ads placed on the borders of the screens.
Now you may be asking yourself why Hasbro waited nearly two years to sue Facebook and the Agarwall brothers and the answer is quite simple – money. Hasbro recently entered into a partnership with Electronic Arts to produce the Scrabble beta online game which is about one week old now. Scrabble beta, however, isn’t enjoying nearly as much success as Scrabulous and is languishing at around 15,000 daily users.
Thousands of Scrabulous fans have already started and signed various online petitions to save the game from Facebook and to show you how much the players love their game, one Facebook petition is humorously titled, “Give us Scrabulous or Give Us Death!” – Now that’s dedication!
No comments:
Post a Comment