As many already know, Scrabulous, the wildly popular Facebook game based on Scrabble, developed by bothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of Calcutta, India were sent a cease and desist letter back in January from the lawyers of rights holders to the Scrabble's concept and brand; Hasbro (US and Canada) and Mattel (international), and then latter sued in July. Between January and July, Hasbro licensed the rights to Scrabble to Electronic Arts (warning: superfluous press release) and they began development on the official version of the game. Scrabulous was taken down by the developers and put back up days later as Wordscraper: Scrabulous with a slightly different look and point system. The officially licensed Scrabble for Facebook is still in beta, has some bugs, and users can bee seen complaining in the comments of the application, cursing Hasbro/EA for making a gaming application that is substandard in comparison to Scrabulous, and for not engaging the developers of Scrabulous so that it could become the official version.
What is interesting is that Facebook and the F8 platform were probably not on the radar of Mark Blecher, Hasbro's general manager, or Hasbro's licensing department. And if it was, no one wanted to lose their jobs by: a) risk licensing the game to someone just to see it fail or b) by suggesting that the licensing structure is outdated in the age the borderless, digital world of the internet. Not only would India be Mattel's licensing territory, but having a foreign party license a product intended for use worldwide (including the US and Canada) would further complicate Scrabble's outdated business model. The licensing structure was probably developed around packed goods only. This is the reason the new Scrabble application is only available to Facebook users in the US and Canada. With stamens like "Hasbro has always had the same two priorities...great playing authentic game for fans and the second is to protect our intellectual property” coming from Blecher, it is clear that Hasbro is hypocritical when it comes to user experience, bad at innovation, and only hungry for opportunities to use just like the RIAA.
Now that Scrabble's popularity has been validated by the Scrabulous developers who went out and took the risk without approval or influence from Hasbro (while adding value to the Scrabble brand), Hasbro has new opportunities to license the game Electronic Arts for a Facebook version, an iPhone version, and now also to Subway for their Play Subway Scrabble contest.
If it takes "passionate pirates" to help a risk averse brand with a broken licensing structure to fully realize new opportunities, and you need to punish them for not following it, there is a problem. Bullying innovators and inconveniencing fans deserves no reward.
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