Much ado over a lot of letters

Under a partnership with Hasbro, Electronic Arts (EA) is releasing an authorized version of Scrabble on Facebook. The game will be available exclusively to players in the United States and Canada.

Scrabulous, a popular Facebook app based on the Scrabble board game, was served a cease and desist from Hasbro and Mattel in January. The act upset a few hardcore users, some of which launched a Facebook group called Save Scrabulous. Today the group hosts 45,666 members.

Aside from its US/Canada exclusivity, EA's "authorized" version of the Facebook app is not expected to differ much from Scrabulous. Scrabulous served almost a half-million users per day, figures EA hopes to replicate.

Under a separate deal with Mattel, RealNetworks availed a version of Scrabble to players outside the US and Canada, reports MediaPost.