The creators of Scrabulous came up with a solution to keep their user-base happy and at the same time avoid a lawsuit with Hasbro, the owner of Scrabble’s North American rights. Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, Scraboulous’ makers, decided to remove the game from Facebook and introduce its users to a brand new version called Wordscaper, which presents a whole new set of rules that distances it from Scrabble but at the same time provides all the needed options to turn the game into another Scrabble copy.

The plan is to take the heat off the developer, as there are no longer any limitations inside the game and the user is the only one responsible for choosing a specific set of rules to play by.

The new release allows users to choose the size of their board and also lets them pick the high-scoring spaces, thus offering the possibility to replicate a Scrabble board. The game has its share of flaws, from the spaces on the board which are too small to the undistinguishable colors, but still managed to attract a large number of players. As of Sunday, more than 100,000 of Facebook’s users tuned in to play the game, in addition to the thousands accessing the company’s Web site Scrabulous.com.

Hasbro decided to step up to the competition and announced that using the feedback received from its players, it is currently developing with Electronic Arts an upgraded version which is scheduled for release later this month. The upgrade was badly needed, as the company registered many complaints about the game’s bugs, blocking users from entering certain words or leaving letters that were impossible to play.