Redwood City, Calif. - Electronic Arts (NASD: ERTS) claims that malicious hackers were behind the inability to access its official "Scrabble" online game on the Facebook social network, which was downed yesterday and still unavailable on Wednesday morning, according to reports.

"EA's Scrabble Facebook game experienced a malicious attack this morning, resulting in the disabling of Scrabble on Facebook," the company said in a statement posted by the Los Angeles Times.

"We're working with our partners to resolve this issue and have Scrabble back online and ready to play as soon as possible."

It's unclear whether the hack was related to the lawsuit that Scrabble rights owner Hasbro (NYSE: HAS) recently filed against the makers of "Scrabulous," a knock-off version of the game that was massively popular on Facebook.

Scrabulous was removed from Facebook earlier this week in light of the lawsuit.

Before Scrabble became unavailable on Facebook, it had racked up 11,608 daily active users on the site, compared to the more than 500,000 "Scrabulous" counted before it was taken down.

In addition to the hack, EA has received criticism on the animation-heavy design of its official version of the game on the Scrabble page on Facebook.

Related Links:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/scrabulous-scra.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10002363-36.html

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=7730584433&ref=s