TAG | Scrabulous developer settles Hasbro lawsuit, but the Facebook game has changed |
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| Information technology news - Internet | |
| by Angus Kidman | |
| Saturday, 13 December 2008 | |
  
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In a brief statement issued on Friday US time, RJ Softwares said that it had settled litigation with Hasbro, which owns the US and Canadian rights to Scrabble. "Pursuant to the settlement, RJ Softwares has agreed not to use the term Scrabulous and has made changes to the Lexulous and Wordscraper games (in the U.S. and Canada) to distinguish them from the SCRABBLE crossword game," the statement said. The biggest of these changes -- albeit not mentioned in the statement -- is that the game now uses eight letters for each player, rather than the seven used in Scrabble. Hasbro sued RJ Softwares in July, claiming that its game Scrabulous, then offered both through Facebook and on a standalone site, was an unauthorised copy of Scrabble. RJ Softwares responded by removing Scrabulous for US users in July and for all players in August, while launching Wordscraper, which used a different board design which players can customise. Following the suit, RJ Softwares continues the Wordscraper game within Facebook and the basically identical game Lexulous on its own site, both of which mimic the basic Scrabble concept of making words from a random selection of tiles on a crossword-like grid. RJ Softwares changed the configuration of the games to add the extra letter last week, but only posted a notice linked to the phrase "See why we had to make the changes" this weekend. The changes to Wordscraper and Lexulous may have avoided costly legal action, but aren't likely to leave players content. For one thing, many sites devoted to helping players word games by suggesting anagrams and possible solutions assume a seven-letter word length, and hence won't offer assistance for the new versions. The rights situation to Scrabble online also continues to create problems for the average game player. Because Hasbro only owns the US rights, its official Scrabble version for Facebook won't allow US players to compete with players from elsewhere in the world. Scrabulous did not have that restriction, and it attracted more than half a million players at its peak. According to Facebook, Wordscraper currently has just under 200,000 active monthly users. |
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