Well ….. looks like Facebook developers who write applications that everyone likes ….. get wiped out eventually, according to a post in TechCrunch today by Erick Schonfeld – Endgame: Scrabulous Gets Wiped Off Facebook

"…Long outplayed by two Indian brothers, Hasbro finally delivers a massive counter blow to Scrabulous, one of the most loved games on Facebook. Scrabulous fans in North America will see the following message when they try to play the game:

Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.

Hasbro has long contended that Scrabulous infringes on its trademarks for Scrabble. It licenses the North American digital rights for Scrabble to Electronic Arts, which announced its own Facebook version of the game earlier this month. (RealNetworks owns the international digital rights, and is not taking as aggressive a stance against Scrabulous)."

And what was so bad about letting Scrabulous stay up?   Wouldn't it drive more people be aware of scrable – and probably drive some sales of the game up too?

Last week, Hasbro filed suit against the owners of Scrabulous, Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla. The same day, EA publicly launched its officially-sanctioned Scrabble game on Facebook. (See screen shot below, which I took that day).

I know this is tricky – but instead of taking down an application game off of Facebook that people liked, Hasbro ought to have simply launched their own and let people decide which one they liked better.

I find that brands still don't get it.  People will not be happy their favored application was taken from them and replaced with what is probably a frail copy -

"…Hasbro and EA planned their moves very methodically and waited patiently for their chance to strike. Perhaps EA felt that it could not compete with Scrabulous other than by taking it out at the knees. Scrabulous boasts 509,505 daily active users. EA’s Scrabble Beta has 14,956 (after only five days). Now, the question is whether Scrabulous fans will boycott the official version of Scrabble on Facebook or switch over to satisfy their word lust."

I predict most fans of Scrabulous won't switch of the Hasbro Scrabble application – and I hope they don't.    Brands have to play in a new world – Brand doesn't own anything anymore – they just think they do.

Hasbro doesn't own Scrabble – it just thinks it does, and the legal system agrees, but people don't care  … they don't care about Hasbro, they care about all that garbage the Brand cares about – they care about their relationships – but the don't like a Brand coming in and interfering with their fun.

I think Hasbro made a big mistake getting Scrabulous taken down – and I hope they reverse the decision.