Malicious attack takes down Scrabble on Facebook

UPDATED: Thanks to readers who raised good questions Hasbro's legal claim (see below), we decided to ask Ian Ballon, a noted intellectual property and Internet attorney, for a lesson in copyright law. You can read his take here. In addition, Scrabble is now back up, but so is a new version of Scrabulous, called Wordscraper.

After their word game was shut down this morning, many of the Scrabulous faithful on Facebook turned to the official Scrabble game for some action. But they found no relief. It didn't work.

Electronic Arts, which created online Scrabble on behalf of Hasbro, said there was a good reason for that: Hackers had taken down the game. It was rendered unplayable for most of the day and still didn't work just before 4 p.m. In a statement, the Redwood City, Calif., game company said:

EA’s Scrabble Facebook game experienced a malicious attack this morning, resulting in the disabling of Scrabble on Facebook. We’re working with our partners to resolve this issue and have Scrabble back online and ready to play as soon as possible.

There was no word on whether the attack was orchestrated by fans of Scrabulous. But it dealt another public relations blow to Hasbro, which owns the North American rights to Scrabble. On the day that its legal tactics resulted in the shutdown of a game that the toy company said infringed upon its copyrights, it missed a prime opportunity to transition Scrabulous players to its own version of the game.

Hasbro, which last week filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York against the makers of Scrabulous, suffered a deluge of criticism on its Scrabble page on Facebook. Incensed at losing access to Scrabulous, users blamed Hasbro. One commenter, Lesley Marton, summed up the views of several players when she wrote on Scrabble's feedback board, "At least get things ironed out here before taking away Scrabulous!"

Analysts say the blow-back from Scrabulous fans, although painful now, will probably be temporary. "There are a lot of people who are just disappointed and angry at losing Scrabulous," said Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Forrester Research. "But people are going to get over it over time. Many of them will adopt Scrabble."

-- Alex Pham

Photo: Scrabble for Facebook. Credit: Electronic Arts

Comments

i will never buy another game by hasbro - what a ridiculous and petty attack this is - grow up- we are in the 2000's now - i will never buy anything with a hasboro label - had gm taken the same stance with asian competitors they would have been driven out of the market- grow up -play fair - you are looking petty and desperate

[Steph W]

OK, hacking the Scrabble site to spite them is just dumb. Hacking is just dumb.

How would critics of Hasbro feel if someone stole the game the invented or owned the rights to?

Some people are so spoiled and have no respect for the legality of basic rights.

[Ted]

[[i will never buy another game by hasbro]]

Well, hopefully, then, you'll find copyright- and trademark-infringing versions of all your favorite Hasbro games to play instead.

[[what a ridiculous and petty attack this is]]

I agree. The attack by the hackers was ridiculous and petty.

[[grow up- we are in the 2000's now - i will never buy anything with a hasbro label - had gm taken the same stance with asian competitors they would have been driven out of the market- grow up -play fair - you are looking petty and desperate]]

Protecting their property is "petty and desperate"?! The ridiculous ones in this debate are the indignant Scrabulous users who are angry at Hasbro for protecting their property because suddenly these users have to switch to a different FREE version of this game. My God - what a colossally obnoxious sense of entitlement the Internet has unwittingly bestowed on so many millions of users. I'm really surprised that out of all the thousands of angry Scrabulous fans, there's not at least a few who have worked on their own creative property and can comprehend the injustice they'd be faced with if someone else stole their idea and began making money on it. Oh, but that's somehow "different," huh?

[celeste]

wow really cool love it.

[James]

Often copyright infringement is a gray zone. But this one's just too obvious. Scrabulous was an outright theft of Scrabble. The makers sought to gain (and they DID gain, in a big way) from a copy of Hasbro's game.

As inconvenient as this may be for players of Scrabulous, it's clearly evident that Hasbro is only protecting its own rights. Furthermore, if RJ Softwares' principals believed their position legally secure. they'd have no need to take down "their" game.

There's real money at stake, and on its face, it appears that money rightly belongs to Hasbro. One wonders if the Agarwalla bros. have pals in the hacker community; and whether some of their uh, redirected income has wound up in some vandal's pocket.

Without copyright law, the efforts of productive people to benefit from their own ingenuity would be wrecked. If you think Hasbro should have no such rights and protections, then guess what? You shouldn't either. Nor the company you may work for (Bye bye job).

[Ames]

I wouldn't have a problem using Scrabble (assuming it worked) instead of Scrabulous. Only problem is that Scrabble is only available in America, whereas the rest of the world still gets Scrabulous. I've been living abroad for a couple years and only just returned to America a few days ago, and now all of my overseas friends (the only people I play Scrabulous with) and I can't play each other at all on either version of the game. This pretty much sucks for us. I guess we'll have to resort to playing zombie and pirate games instead. Sigh.

[jessi]

i have no problem playing the scrabble app. but it doesn't work. it didn't work before it got "hacked" (which i highly doubt that happened since this is the first time i've heard of it and i've been looking into this since this morning). i tried playing this morning around 8 (after i found out i couldn't play scrabulous) and it took probably 30 minutes for the board to load. then i tried around lunch and it was loading for an hour before i just gave up. i just want to play scrabble on my work breaks but i couldn't do that today. i wish hasbro had all the kinks worked out on their beta before pulling scrabulous. and they should have known that their server was gonna crash when the pulled scrabulous and they should had compensated for it. all i want to do is play scrabble. but i can't do that now because no app works for me.

[MM]

If Scrabble was smart they would have developed their own facebook game!!!!

[h]

Try Jamble at it'syourturn.com
It is better than scrabulous by far.

[casey]

What a dumb move by Hasbro. Sure, there is no doubt they had the legal rights to this game, but why not buy out Scrabulous. Just because they are legally in the right doesn't mean they aren't alienating people. Their role isn't to some ego or what is legally theirs, it's to their stockholders, who would probably like to keep the general public happy with Hasbro. Scrabulous had half a million users, Scrabble had 15,000. If the old school doesn't get with the change they will lose out.

[Sarah]

HA! Yes, it's immature, but it made me laugh!!

[Mat]

Hasbro dealt with this in a pathetic, immature way. They should have put their game up, tested it, made sure it was decent, and then had Scrabulous taken down. At that point, everyone just migrates over. Instead, they're on the cover of the LA Times for being morons.

I'm all for protecting your copyright. That said, there's still a right way to treat your fans and customers.

[Sardar Mohkim Khan]

What a cheap way to go about banging on a competition and then hiding faces telling the world their service is under 'ATTACK'. God save them! Funny and pretty desperate.

[redcram]

>>

hasbro should have brought the software, they had the legal pressure, and them they would inherit all the users. now it makes them look greedy and bitter

[James]

Sarah, if they were playing Scrabulous, they weren't Hasbro's customers.

But I certainly agree with some of the criticism. There may be reasons why Hasbro wasn't getting its own game implemented well and globally -- and Scrabulous may be one of those reasons -- but none of them are adequate excuses for their stockholders.

Even so, it looks to me as if Hasbro is within its rights, and Scrabulous is a blatant rip-off that Hasbro is actually obligated -- to those same stockholders -- to put out of operation.

[Jason]

One thing that most, if not all the articles I've seen that covered the Scrabble/Scrabulous situation have missed:
The official Scrabble game has a terrible interface. Sure it's prettier then Scrabulous, but it is a bunch of flash at the expense of a good playing experience. Hasbro has fallen for the trap that many failed computer game companies have as well: graphics don't substitute for gameplay experience.

[Professor_Arkham]

I've been boycotting Hasbro ever since Hasbro destroyed Dungeons & Dragons. Rock on, scrabble players.

[Monty Flinsch]

Does anyone else think that Hasbro/EA has found an easy out with a claim of malicious hacking to cover the fact that they are hugely late to the realities of Web2.0? How sure are we that hacking was the cause instead of a much simpler explanation related to poor execution of code?

Hasbro does have a valid right to protect their game, the own the intellectual property and Scrabulous was a clear violation of IP law. That being said, there's a certain logic to the idea that you have to use that property in order to avoid having your lunch eaten by more aggressive competitors.

Much of Hasbro/EA's strategy, while being legal, smacks their loyal game fans in the face. This really sounds like defensiveness regarding their failure to meet the challenge of the web rather than a valid case of hacking.

[Professor_Arkham]

I looked through the comments by other readers after posting my first mini rant. I don't like Hasbro for other reasons; however I must agree that it (Scrabble) is their property and copyright infringement IS a big deal.

Now, what Hasbro should have done; as other readers also pointed or alluded to, is to just work a deal for crying out loud. Everyone is out to make money; we get it. Work out a win/win situation for both companies and move on.

The internet has been around for over 12 years. Hasbro has shut down or sent cease and desist letters to many other scrabble clones over those years. Obviously there was and is a demand for this game online. Hasbro has had plenty of time to come up with a solution. Only when Scrabulous refused to back down did Hasbro make a half-hearted attempt to provide something for the fans.

Also, Scrabble itself is about 70 years old. I'd argue that the game should be placed in the public domain much like checkers, chess, backgammon, or poker.

"i will never buy another game by hasbro - what a ridiculous and petty attack this is - grow up- we are in the 2000's now - i will never buy anything with a hasboro label - had gm taken the same stance with asian competitors they would have been driven out of the market- grow up -play fair - you are looking petty and desperate"

How is protecting their property NOT playing fair? If anyone needs to be told to play fair, it's the developers of Scrabulous. The game (and name for that matter) are BLATANT copyright infringement.
Now, I'm no fan of groups like the RIAA or MPAA, but at some point the line needs to be drawn. This has nothing to do with sharing, it's a completely different sort of copyright infringement. Scrabulous was benefiting from the idea of Scrabble, not their own idea. The developers of Scrabulous seem bright enough that I imagine (hope?) they can put together a new game that is all their own idea and design.
That's the real spirit of competition. Innovation. Not mindless imitation.

[[but why not buy out Scrabulous.]]

Yes, let's PAY the people who broke the rules. That's a perfectly logical business model.

[Karl]

First of all I can tell none of you are lawyers...

YOU CAN'T COPYRIGHT SCRABBLE. THE GAME CANNOT BE REGISTERED COPYWRITTE OR STOLEN. IT COULD BE PATENTED. Maybe there is a patent issue here, but I severely doubt it since scrabble is ancient and patents expire in due time.

HASBRO is and has every right (in fact are required by law) to defend their TRADEMARK "SCRABBLE" which "SCRABULOUS" (for use in a board game), potentially infringes on.

Now, THis is a required move by Hasbro, lest they lose the right to the trademark by failing to defend it in court.

None of this has anything to do with the fact that the EA Hasbro port is garbage. I have the same one on my iPhone and it doesn't recognize more advanced or obscure english words. Perfect if your vocabulary is at a 9th grade level. It also crashes all the time. Go EA.

Now, why did Hasbro not simply purchase SCRABULOUS? Perfectly simple: EA has purchased the rights to electronic versions of all of hasbro's games.

Sorry, but if SCRABULOUS had simply called themselves something else they might not have found themselves in this mess.

Hacking is dumb? Surely you mean EA is dumb. EA should have designed and tested their software better.

And if I were working for EA I'd concentrate more on fixing the product rather than blaming hackers for their problem.