How many points do you get for the word “COMEBACK”? Just two days after Scrabble maker Hasbro succeeded in using the DCMA to take Facebook’s Scrabulous app offline, creators Jayant Agarwalla and Rajat Agarwalla have rebirthed the app as “Wordscraper“. Not that this is Scrabble, mind you; oh no, this time the tiles are circles, not squares. The new board also has some other features, too (ie. multi-point tiles are in a different pattern). The changes ensure son-of-Scrabulous retains the basic rules of the Scrabble game, but not the look, the feel or the name. Some users reported their Scrabulous games had not been carried over, however.
So now Facebook’s Scrabble devotees have at least three variants to choose from… Hasbro’s own version (which is only available in US and Canada and has attracted Scrabulous diehards’ ire), J.W. Spear’s international version (which doesn’t even work with the redesigned Facebook) and Wordscraper. The licensing requirement to split Facebook’s official Scrabble presence between two owners is clearly unsatisfactory and something that might just cause many fans to stick with the Agarwallas.