EA Joins Hasbro to Battle Scrabulous

Written by Daan Jansonius on February 16th, 2008 | no comments

The Hasbro vs the Scrabulous Facebook application case is a great example which shows why most companies still don’t get the new world of marketing. Bloggers and tech pundits alike unanimously slated Hasbro for this, what some described as ‘idiotic’, move.

For anyone unaware of what Scrabulous is, it’s one of the most used and downloaded Facebook applications. Nearly 600,000 users play the game on a daily basis. The game was created by two software developing brothers, Rajat and Jayant Aganwalla, from Calcutta.

Hasbro found out about the game and decided they were being infringed on their copyright and ordered the game to be taken down. This sparked protest from Scrabulous’ loyal fans. The application which had reinvigorated the brand and re-acquainted hundreds of thousands of people with a game which was collecting dust on many an attic, was now being punished by trigger happy lawyers with no grasp of new marketing.

The latest news is that EA, who acquired the rights to bring Hasbro games into an interactive format last August, are going to produce their own online and interactive version of Scrabble.

I’m sure the hundreds of thousand pissed off Scrabulous fans are jumping for joy!

Share your opinion and leave your comment below. Subscribe to our rss feed, connect to Twitter, get and spread our Viral Friday widget or sign up for our monthly e-mail newsletter.