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1. Comment - Scrabulous creators sued in United States by Hasbro

   (Jul 25, 2008 - 12:12 AM)

   It's funny.
   
   I'm a board game publisher ( http://www.gifttrap.com/ ) and I know lots of independent board game publishers who, like me, would jump at the chance of getting 500k users per day playing and talking about your game even if you didn't own the site that's collecting $25k/month in ad revenue.
   
   Hasbro and Mattel have both benefited from sales increases due to the born again popularity of their cash-cow game. They sell over a million copies a year when really nobody really needs another copy.
   
   Scrabble is a board game that's not turn based. Scrabulous is an online game. There are as many differences as there are similarities. Scrabulous defined the bar for an online word game.
   
   Scrabulous have made the game work online and generated a dedicated crowd.
   
   Now, as a follower, Hasbro with all the fuss has only managed 10k users per day.
   
   Isn't Scrabulous just a better Mouse Trap – they didn’t copy an online version as Scrabble didn’t have one. There are other copies too and I bet they aren’t being sued, simply because they haven’t created the attention or the dedicated crowd.
   
   There are many other "copycat" game apps on Facebook and they aren't getting sued.
   
   I have total respect for the Scrabulous guys. We created a Facebook app in the vein of Free Gifts to help promote our game but getting your social app moving is no mean feat. Translating a board game to an online game is far from obvious.
   
   The Free Gifts apps get 100k daily active users on Facebook, which is pretty cool. Our game precedes Free Gifts, but you can’t fight the viral nature and you’ve got to be first on the right platform.
   
   Check out our app here; http://apps.new.facebook.com/gifttrap/
   
   Unlike the Free Gifts app your friend gets to choose their own gift, the question is will you match. We have turned virtual gifts into a game.
   
   The GiftTRAP board game is on sale in Barnes and Noble right now which is pretty cool (no doubt next to Scrabble). I'm just a few million copies behind them but gaining fast, but then we do have some pretty cool awards to our name.
   
   I hope Facebook doesn't drop Scrabulous. My sense is they will, but it's hard to call.
   
   Adonomics.com currently value Scrabulous at $2.7m so $10 sounds like greed came before the fall.