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Glaser on Scrabulous: “Silly” Split Rights For Scrabble Led To This

Rob Glaser, the CEO of RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK), spoke last week at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle, just hours before Hasbro filed a lawsuit against the makers of Scrabulous, and assailed the rights issues associated with the game as the reason for this confusion in the market. The rights for Scrabble are complicated: Hasbro owns the rights to Scrabble in North America, and Mattel in the rest of the world. RealNetworks has a digital deal with both companies, but Electronic Arts also has a digital deal with Hasbro.

Glaser said that the split IP for Scrabble was a clear example of old-fashioned boxed product firms unprepared for the global online marketplace, reports CasualGaming.biz. The “silly” split rights issue, Glaser explained, is currently what prevents a potential officially-sanctioned Scrabulous from existing as it prohibits global multiplayer gamers. He said: “The problem is that because of the rights, between Hasbro and Mattel, they don’t let people from America play against people from England. There are these silly rules.” He said Real is pushing for them to work this out and realize that the same rules don’t apply in the physical space.

There were some previous reports that Real was interested in buying Scrabulous from the two Calcutta brothers. He said: “If we were able to put together the layer cake where everybody was happy—and there were a lot of everybody’s in this case—sure it would have been great to buy Scrabulous. But at the same time if you can’t get everybody aligned on a philosophy on how to work these things out, it would have been putting the cart before the horse.”

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Jul 28, 2008 4:06 PM ET
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Posted In: Legal, Companies, Facebook, RealNetworks, hasbro, mattel, scrabulous

  • Steve Thornton

    Exactly. Scrabulous was the biggest marketing coup Hasbro's ever had; it lured something like a million new customers. They have now sprayed all of those potential customers with feces. Brilliant move, guys. Their replacement app, Scrabble Beta, is a complete abortion that doesn't even load for most people, and even if it does, it is the single ugliest and functionally inept piece of crap software I've ever seen. EA should be ashamed. Hasbro should be ashamed.

    I know I'll never buy anything from Hasbro again. And Scrabble? It goes back on the top shelf of the closet with Parcheesi.

  • DavidB

    Nathan, not sure about boycott, since i would bet a lot of players of Scrabulous are first time players. This was Hasbro's chance to get them hooked, but it coulnd't.

  • Nathan Richardson

    Does Hasbro have management that comes out of the old line music industry ?  Do they realize the power of Facebook and what an opportunity they missed?  I can imagine that millions of people will boycott HASBRO products in support of the new model, Scrabulous people…

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