A few months back this blog covered the dispute between the designers of the popular Scrabulous Facebook app and the toy makers, Hasbro and Mattel, who were threatening to sue them for breach of copyright. Well, the episode finally came to a head last week, with the developers deciding to suspend the app in the US and Canada after Hasbro pursued legal action.
The problem simply is that there is too much money at stake for the toy companies owning the rights to the Scrabble format to ignore the issue. Ultimately the whole episode has worked out pretty well for Hasbro, who had the enviable position of being able to launch a sure-fire hit of a product (its own official Scrabble app), without having had to do any market testing or much in the way of beta trials - Scrabulous had paved the way.
However what are the implications for small third-party developers on Facebook, now that their creativity has considerably more constraints on it than was the case previously? Might we see a decreased level of activity with regard to new apps, now that the potenial risks (especially regarding copyright laws) are greater?
The maturity of Facebook as a market for commercial apps is increasing with each day - so will it be simply a matter of time before we also see official versions of Connect 4, Othello, Monopoly, Cluedo and others? The problem is that small third party developers who might have attempted to develop such apps will now surely abstain after the Scrabulous episode provided a pretty clear example of how such situations would develop.
I guess we'll maybe be seeing more original game apps in the near future now that popular copyrighted formats and clearly and definately out of bounds. It's no great loss to Facebook, or its users, but more of a redefining of the state of play for developers - the earlier phases of totally free experimentation are certainly over, and instead we have a much more commercialised and regulated arena in which to design apps.
Unfortunately there is little that can be done to reverse the process - companies like Hasbro have a responsibility to their shareholders to maximise profits, while Facebook must stand aside and let the legal system intervene where a breach has occurred. We are left to ponder the maturation of Facebook Platform, now in its second year, and contemplate how such developments will change the trajectory of the whole thing.
At least we will always have chess and checkers for example - luckily no matter how commercial Facebook becomes some of the classics will always remain refreshingly untouchable...
Dejan Levi
