Scrabulous, a Scrabble knockoff that gained widespread popularity as a Facebook program, has been suspended on the social networking site after Scrabble’s parent company sued the online game’s creators.

But on Thursday, the game was back under a different name. Under the name of Wordscraper, the game has new rules and circular tiles that could help its makers skirt skirt legal claims from the owners of Scrabble.

Hasbro Inc., the company that owns the North American rights to the word game, sued creators Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla. Separately, Hasbro asked Facebook to block the program, something the site resisted despite risks of losing immunity protection from copyright lawsuits.

In a statement, creators said they agreed to block Scrabulous in the United States and Canada in deference to Facebook’s concerns, while continuing to pursue their legal defense. Rajat Agarwalla, describing the measures as “unfortunate,” declined further comment.

Facebook said the Agarwalla brothers, not the company, made the decision. Facebook users who tried to access Scrabulous were simply told the game was disabled “until further notice,” and many Facebook users updated their one-line status messages on the site to mourn the suspension.

With more than a 500,000 daily active users, Scrabulous was one of Facebook’s top applications. In response to the suit, many Scrabulous players have started a boycott of Hasbro and are asking other players to return Hasbro games.

In an e-mail to angry Scrabulous players, Hasbro wrote: “Scrabulous was an infringement, it was unlawful, and we took the necessary action, similar to what the recording industry did when kids were posting music to illegal sites and allowing their friends to copy the music for free.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.