Board-game manufacturer Hasbro has taken issue with a Scrabble clone on Facebook, and is taking steps to shut it down.
Scrabulous, developed in 2006 by brothers Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, proved so popular that they decided to produce a Facebook version of the game, which launched in June 2007. Since then, the game has become even more popular, with over 2.3 million active users and 70 million pageviews in December, according to a report in Fortune. But now Hasbro is taking action to have the Facebook application terminated.
“They sent a notice to Facebook about two weeks ago,” Jayant said. “The lawyers are working on it.” Currently, both the original Scrabulous site and the Facebook application are still available, and Jayant expressed hope that some kind of compromise could be reached, adding, “We’re trying to work out some kind of deal.”
While Scrabulous does generate large numbers of pageviews on Facebook, Jayant said the game wasn’t cranking out massive amounts of money. He said Scrabulous revenues are currently over $25,000 per month, but refused to go into further detail.
Hasbro announced in August that it had entered into a deal with Electronic Arts that gave it exclusive worldwide rights to publish games based on various boardgame properties, including Scrabble, but there is no indication at this point that EA is involved with the action.
