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North American Facebook users had already lost access to the Scrabble clone last month, following similar action by Hasbro, which has the US and Canadian rights.

The decision to remove the application has been taken in advance of a decision by a court in India, where the brothers Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla co-founded the game in 2005.

“It surprises us that Mattel chose to direct Facebook to take down Scrabulous without waiting for the [Indian court’s] decision,” Jayant Agarwalla told AP. “Mattel’s action speaks volumes about their business practices and respect for the judiciary.”

Mattel has yet to comment. Like Hasbro, it has its own official version of Scrabble for to Facebook users — neither has yet managed to match the popularity of Scrabulous.

The Agarwalla brothers responded to the US closure of their application by encouraging Scrabulous fans to turn to their new game Wordscraper, a variant on Scrabble that allows users to create their own board layouts and letter values.