Game Over: Scrabulous Shut Down on Facebook
Facebook says the decision to block Scrabulous for U.S. and Canadian users was made by the Scrabulous developers, not Facebook. — Scrabulous has been shut down on Facebook. — If you try to pull up the popular Scrabble-like game …
Context & Ripple Effects
Scrabulous had been under pressure since Facebook was asked to remove the game in January, while its popularity was large enough to be part of the online Scrabble boom's effect on game sellers. The developers' decision to block U.S. and Canadian access turns that earlier dispute into a concrete loss of distribution on Facebook.
First-order effects
- Scrabulous users in the United States and Canada lose access to the Scrabble-like game on Facebook.
- Facebook no longer carries a popular third-party game for those users, while Scrabulous loses its distribution through the platform in those markets.
Second-order effects
- The episode raises the commercial risk for Facebook developers whose applications depend on brands or game formats controlled by other parties: platform reach does not settle underlying rights disputes.
- Facebook's application catalog becomes more dependent on developers' ability to secure and retain the rights needed to serve its user base.
Third-order effects
- If rights disputes repeatedly remove prominent applications, social-platform app ecosystems will favor licensed properties and developers with clearer control over the intellectual property behind their services.
The trend: Social-network platforms are becoming major distribution channels whose third-party app ecosystems are constrained by the intellectual-property rights those apps must carry.