Looks Like Someone Learned From The Scrabulous/Hasbro Mess

from the good-for-them dept

Mon, Sep 29th 2008 2:14pm — Mike Masnick

We've talked about how both Hasbro and Mattel seriously screwed up in dealing with Scrabulous, the online version of Scrabble written by two brothers in India and placed in Facebook where it became a huge hit. While the companies did make overtures to working with the brothers, eventually they sued to shut down the game, pissing off plenty of legitimate fans, leading to widespread boycotts of Hasbro and Mattel games, and allowing the brothers to create their own new game that has also won fantastic reviews.

It appears that not every game company is so short-sighted. Reader Doug Schneider writes in to let us know about a guy who created a virtual copy of the popular casual game Bejewled inside the virtual world World of Warcraft. Yet, rather than shut the guy down or threaten to sue him, the makers of Bejewled, Popcap Games, hired the guy to create an official version for World of Warcraft, saying that the original version lacked polish, so they figured it made sense to just hire him to clean it up and make an official version. What a concept.

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Filed Under: bejeweled, fans, lessons, scrabulous, video games, world of warcraft
Companies: hasbro, mattel, popcap games

10 Comments

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Adam_v1, 29 Sep 2008 @ 3:09pm

Its a hit
i can tell you this little addon has been spreading like wildfire through our guild and everyone loves it. excelent timekiller for flights, waiting on the raid to start and such.
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GuildWars Fanboy, 29 Sep 2008 @ 3:36pm

or what you could do is...
Or you could just play a game that has map-travel and not waste time at all.
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Hoeppner, 29 Sep 2008 @ 5:41pm

even in guildwars I've ended up having to wait just as long on average because someone is in a group doing something else.

and holy off topic batman.
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Cyn, 29 Sep 2008 @ 5:49pm

Re: Its a hit
Adam_v1, why don't you play a game that isn't so boring you have to play another game in it?

Or you know...go out and meet girls. They're infinitely more fun than video games, I assure you.

And yes, I played WoW, but it was too tedious and felt slow, so I played EVE Online and eventually got tired of the bugs and poor support, then a brief stint in AoC, but all my friends were stuck on WoW. so now I'm playing 0 MMOs. The scenery is better at the gym anyway, if you know what I mean.
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- Soulless, 29 Sep 2008 @ 6:28pm
  
  Re: Re: Its a hit
  Uh huh, gym is well known to be gay church
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  - Denis, 30 Sep 2008 @ 9:22am
    
    Re: Re: Re: Its a hit
    Hmmm I play an MMO (not wow) and I can tell you that the gym for me is not a gay church. I go to the gym 6 days a week and if you think that you have to be gay to go, you must be the lardass straight guy.
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- Agonizing Fury, 29 Sep 2008 @ 10:44pm
  
  Re: Re: Its a hit
  Or you know...go out and meet girls. They're infinitely more fun than video games, I assure you.
  
  yes but games don't leave us when they decide the grass is greener in another pasture
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- Adam_v1, 30 Sep 2008 @ 1:20am
  
  Re: Re: Its a hit
  where did i say WoW was boring, i just stated that there is time within it to play some Bejewled between pulls/wipes in a raid and when waiting on other people.
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ehrichweiss, 29 Sep 2008 @ 7:27pm

going there...
I'm going there now to "reward" them for truly civil and outstanding behavior. Seriously, it's people like that who deserve to make money, not the asswipes trying to sue you or an innovative developer.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Oct 2008 @ 5:23am

Offical Scrabble Version- 5,000,000 users
Wordscraper Version - 2,000,000 users

Although wordscraper may overtake the offical EA version it doesn't look like many people are boycotting Hasbro or Matel.
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