Hasbro and Mattel, the owners of the Scrabble game, are trying to shut down Scrabulous, one of the most popular games on Facebook and a direct rip-off of Scrabble. Much has been said about whether this is a good move of not by a company trying to protect its trademark and whether this will be a public relations disaster in the name of patent protection.
3 things to note
- Scrabble is one of the most popular board games of the last few generations with no sanctioned online version
- Scrabulous is bringing in new fans to Scrabble
- These fans are buying the physical game
Naturally, a Facebook Group has been created to try to save Scrabulous (called Save Scrabulous - go figure). As of 3:20 this afternoon, the group has 8850 members. The group is growing too fast and too big for Hasbro/Mattel to ignore. We saw last month how the Facebook group Fair Copyright for Canada contributed to delaying a piece of legislation in the Canadian legislature; can the groundswell of Facebook users influence a multinational corporation?
Hasbro outlines its position:
SCRABBLE has been entertaining millions of people around the world for 60 years so we are not surprised that fans have thoroughly enjoyed playing Scrabulous on Facebook.com. What consumers may not realize, however, is that Scrabulous is an illegally copied online version of the world’s most popular word game, the copyrights and trademarks for which are owned by Hasbro in the U.S. and Canada and Mattel in the rest of the world. We encourage fans to continue to lay down online tiles at sites that have legally licensed the interactive rights to host SCRABBLE fun. (bold is mine)
Remember - there is no online arena for Scrabble. Plus, Hasbo misses the point by a mile: players don’t care about licensing. They care about the game. Matthew Ingram says: “…how people interact with your brand is pretty much up to them, not you. If you’re smart, you will be glad they are interacting with it at all, and you will find a way to capitalize on it.”
Will Hasbro clue in and join the new millennium by embracing Scrabulous or will they demonstrate a RIAA-like inability to adapt to new market conditions? Can the mobilization of the Facebook army Save Scrabulous?
(3:45 and the group has 9200 members: 350 members in 25 minutes? Pay attention, Hasbro)
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