One of the most common applications on Facebook, ranked number 9, Scrabulous, is approaching rapidly its deadline decision to be made. And it's really not like the brothers owning it have more than one option: to sell. The only thing that they may try to do is not to sell to whom Hasbro wants them to, namely Electronic Arts, and to try and get the most money out of the deal possible.

EA has been quick enough to register the rights for the game in the U.S. and now, with Hasbro almost managing to pull the Scrabble knock-off from Facebook, it is in the leader's seat in the talks about acquisition. They know that there's no other option but to sell and, moreover, the first buyer by far is their company. Scrabulous looks like it has its hours numbered, as other possible companies interested in the application are being scared away by the legal shade cone it is in.

If you're into this game on Facebook, you'd better play it while it's still there, so hurry up. On the same account, some other knock-off games might get snuffed out as well, Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch.com mentioning that an inside source told him that the next target might be Zynga, which copies the games Risk!, Boogle and Battleship. If for the first two they at least tried to change the name, Battleship's name was kept.

Zynga is pretty successful as well, as it claims on its website to have 1.4 million players of Attack! (Risk), almost 300,000 of Battleship and a little over 250,000 players of Scramble (Boogle). Soon, very soon, they'll be gone too if Scrabulous doesn't get some sort of reprieve that would give it a chance in the fight Hasbro has brought to it. Best of luck with that!