Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluescrn | Hacker News Reader

Probably Mattel/Hasbro and trademark/copyright issues.

Official mobile games have to be ruined by aggressive monetisation and scammy in-app ads, it seems.

Words With Friends got away with a making A Scrabble clone by using a slightly different board layout and dictionary. But they eventually transformed that into a very annoying experience overloaded with the usual F2P clutter.

WordFeud seems to be the recommended mobile Scrabble clone these days.

View on HN

I play Wordfeud almost every day, and it is the best 3$ (I think it was 3$ at the time I paid for it years ago, not sure what it costs now) I ever spent on an app.

So how does Wordfeud get around copyright issues with Hasbro? Do they pay them a royalty?

It’s $6 now. And I’m happy to pay it. The official scrabble app is a horrible testament to psychotic UI’s being passed off as “normal”. I swear to god, it’s like living in a clockwork orange. I just want to play the game but there are chests and gemstones and adds you can watch and unlocks mid game and on and on…

It is just nuts. I installed a mobile game couple of days ago, liked it. Paid 4.99 to "remove ads" without realizing that it only removed some ads. They got me. I uninstalled it, 5$ down the toilet.

I understand game makers need to pay rent too, that is why I spent that 5$ to support them. But they treated their customer (me) like shit, lost me forever. Good job guys

This insatiable greed to make more and more and more money...Yikes

So far, Wordfeud hasn't done anything crappy like this. I hope they stay that way

I just played 2 games on wordfeud and wow it is both amazing and sad how little I need to be satisfied and how hard it is to find such an app. Anyways, I uninstalled scrabble and am invested in this one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com