Hasbro Using DMCA on Facebook Game Apps

Boggle Addict writes "Rather than participating in the online gaming market, Hasbro is suppressing it with litigation. Scrabulous, a Scrabble imitation, is already fighting to prevent being shut down. Today, Hasbro sent out DMCA notices to other apps on Facebook, including Bogglific, a Boggle imitation. Copyright law has has always held very limited protections for games. This may be opening a can of worms for Hasbro.

Re:Okay, I get it, but...

[KiloByte]

Actually, they do threaten and sue people over the rules, board shape and so on as well.

Ten years around or so, my roommate created an implementation over the name "Szkrable". Once Hasbro found out, they demanded it to be removed, together with all dissemination of any related software, including the dictionary which later replaced the Polish ispell one (GNU had 300kb of data, MaF had 22MB at the moment). A simple rename didn't work.

After receiving legal advice and deciding there's no way for a poor student to fight Hasbro whether a copyright over the board shape is valid, my friend came up with totally changed rules and board, making a wordgame which resembled Scrabble in spirit and strategy, but nothing else.

You can find the thing here [kurnik.org].

Hey Hasbro

[syphax]

We actually bought a Boggle game recently because of an online boggle-like game (which I won't link to, though if you search for 'web boggle' I suspect you mind find it rather easily...).

Let me say that again: We started playing a Boggle-like game online. We loved it. But we recognized that it would also be fun to play the real game sometimes (b/c sitting around a table is more social than staring at a screen, etc.). So we bought your damn game.

Hasbro, I've got four kids under six. I am your wet dream demographic: I have both money and kids, and I love toys. Don't piss me off.

Try a different strategy. [thepiratesdilemma.com]

Re:Okay, I get it, but...

[dnoyeb]

Hasbro has had an abysmal online presence for over 10 years. My wife liked scrabble so we bought their offering of computer game. The online part was terrible. They had someone else do it a year later. That version was super sucky too. Then sites like MS gaming site or whatever it was called had their own scrabble and others did too. Hasbro made them ALL stop. I don't get why knock off people can build excellent scrabble online and offline versions, but Hasbro the owner in over 10 years can not make a single one...

Re:Sounds like...

[tepples]

Hasbro *has* a monopoly on board games. At least, on the board games that appear in general stores like Target or Walmart.

I have seen both "Apples to Apples" and "Scene It?" games in the board game section of Wal-Mart stores in Fort Wayne, Indiana. "Apples to Apples" is Mattel/Out of the Box, not Hasbro. Likewise, "Scene It?" is Screenlife, not Hasbro.

List of companies Hasbro owns, stolen shamelessly from Wikipedia:

* Avalon Hill (an imprint of Wizards of the Coast, see below)
* Claster Television
* Coleco
* Galoob

Which means Hasbro bought the goodwill associated with Codemasters' Game Genie product, which Galoob Toys marketed in North America. So are we seeing an about-face from Galoob v. Nintendo [wikipedia.org]?