Scrabble vs. Scrabulous

As you may have heard, Scrabulous, a blatant rip off of Scrabble and one of the most popular applications on facebook.com, was disabled for US and Canadian users last week. This saddens me because the Artist and I were two of the estimated 500,000 daily users of Scrabulous.

Competitive stats geeks that the Artist and I are, we have recorded the score of every game of Scrabble/Scrabulous that we have played for the last 3 years or so. We have explored a number of formats: playing together in person, playing online in real time, and playing online as time permits. We play head-to-head, we play teamed with our wives, we play a 4-player game with our wives where we can help our significant others and the scores are combined. We have tried a number of formats and have found that Scrabulous gave us by far the most opportunity to play. The ability to make a turn when you have a free moment allows us to play many more games than having to schedule a free hour and a half or the once a year or so that we're in the same city.

So now I face a moral dilemma: do I boycott the new Scrabble application for exercising their copyright and killing Scrabulous, or do I give in and switch to the new Scrabble facebook application? I understand Hasbro/Mattel's position that they own the copyright plain and simple. I find Scrabulous' contention that Scrabble has been so copied and imitated that it's basically in the public domain to be laughable.

However, I am surprised that the two sides couldn't work out a compromise. Scrabulous has a loyal following, most of whom are upset by its demise, and many of whom own their own Scrabble board game game anyway. Hasbro/Mattel has to date made thoroughly crummy electronic versions of Scrabble. I own the Playstation 1 version which is okay for playing against the computer but you can't play another human. I've tried other licensed versions for the computer but (in the past) they have required you and your playing partner to both own copies of the game and/or to pay an annual fee.

Hasbro/Mattel had the chance to make a deal with Scrabulous: Hasbro/Mattel gets royalties and a well tested, wildly popular product with no developmental costs. Scrabulous gives up some profits, but legitimizes themselves and avoids being shut down entirely and having no profits. Why couldn't they make this work? I have heard rumors that Scrabulous rejected overtures from Hasbro/Mattel, but every source I've read has quotes from Hasbro/Mattel denying this. Regardless of who's at fault, Scrabulous has lost most of their users and Hasbro/Mattel have come out looking like bullies. To add insult to injury, apparently the new Scrabble Facebook application is full of bugs and no one likes it. So in the end, we're all losers.

Whatever I decide regarding the new facebook Scrabble, I no longer have proof that I once scored 158 points with ACETATES. And that makes me sad.