Tonight May Be Game Over for Scrabulous

Creators scramble to make a deal as deadline looms
By Sam Gale Rosen,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 22, 2008 2:44 PM CST
Tonight May Be Game Over for Scrabulous
Jay Bruns Director of Marketing for SCRABBLE, Hasbro Games, left, and John Williams, Jr., Executive Director of the National SCRABBLE Association, far right, present a check for $5,000 to Aune (pronounce Ow-na) Mitchell, 14, of Ridgefield, Conn., second from left, and Matthew Silver, 13, of Westport,...   (Associated Press)

Scrabulous—the wildly popular Facebook app based (without permission) on Scrabble—may have to fold up its board tonight. Hasbro and Mattel, which jointly own the rights to the board game, have set the deadline for the online game to either shut itself down or sell itself to Electronic Arts, which owns the online rights.

Scrabulous's creators would rather shop around for a better deal, but they aren't in much of a position to negotiate, reports TechCrunch. So the 46,000 members of the "Save Scrabulous" Facebook group may have to look for a new way to amuse themselves. Maybe some of them will even go outside. (More Scrabble stories.)

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