The Bullshit Stalker

Hasbro and EA Kill Scrabulous On Facebook

By admin on Aug. 2, 2008.

And so goes the cat and mouse game…

If you haven’t seen this (article on Mashable), Hasbro has forced Scrabulous to shut down.  Why?  Because the most popular game on Facebook and the one touted the most for its success on Facebooks open platform, was effectively an electronic version of Scrabble.  Electronic Arts owns the rights to the electronic version, so we have two large corporations versus two Indians.  The fact that Facebook chose to pull the plug on an application that was used by nearly half a million members is both surprising and, quite frankly, bullshit.

I’m all for preserving your rights.  It is the American way.  But in this era of open source, and free Internet trade, these big companies are losing site of the big picture.  The money should follow the users, not the other way around.  Hasbro and EA missed a great opportunity to partner with these guys and mine that resource of customers.

To their benefit, Hasbro and EA did see a surge in new users after Scrabulous was shuttered.  But the creators of Scrabulous haven’t gone away.  They released a revised version (under a different name).  So, expect more to come as the battle wages on.  In the mean time, Facebook has their top application back online and all is good with the world.

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