scrabble

Scrabulous would no longer be accessible to users except in India. The restriction is due to the case being held in the Indian High Court.

Most of the Facebook users are aware that Scrabulous cannot be accessed in Facebook. The popular game developed by Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla of Calcutta is a game similar to Scrabble. Interestingly, Scrabble owns the rights outside North America and Hasbro another company owns the right to Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada.

Following the complaints and court proceedings, Facebook has replaced Scrabulous with a similar game called Wordscraper. Wordscraper is no different than Scrabulous except that it uses circles instead of boxes.

The most famous application on Facebook is disappearing in many countries. A search for Scrabulous results in a message stating that “We’re sorry, but this application is not available to you. Please visit the Application Directory to find other applications.

Scrabulous, developed by the Agarwalla brothers had good popularity among the gaming community. However, it has created issues with Mattel who own the rights for Scrabble a similar game outside North America.

The Agarwalla developers commented in Facebook stating:

“Sometime on 22nd August, Facebook took the unfortunate decision to restrict most users from accessing Scrabulous. This was in response to Mattel sending them a “take down notice” on 14th August.

Mattel itself had approached the Indian Courts in February 2008, seeking an order for taking down Scrabulous from Facebook and other servers. The Hon’ble High Court has reserved judgment in this matter after hearing both parties. It surprises us that Mattel chose to direct Facebook to take down Scrabulous without waiting for the Hon’ble High Court’s decision. Mattel’s action speaks volumes about their business practices and respect for the judiciary.

It is even more astonishing that Facebook, which claims to be a fair and neutral party, took this step even though they were fully aware of the circumstances under which the Mattel letter was sent to them.

We now await the decision of the Hon’ble High Court and shall accordingly decide our future course of action with regard to Scrabulous.

We wish to thank our fans for their continued support and hope to give them the best results sooner than later.”

It looks like Facebook is removing the game one country after another.