Habbo


Habbo is a virtual world and massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It is owned and operated by Sulake. Founded in 2000, Habbo has expanded to nine online communities, with users from more than 150 countries., 316 million avatars have been registered in the game.
The website is divided into three clients, Habbo, Habbo X, and Habbo Hotel: Origins. The Habbo client is aimed at teenagers and young adults, while Habbo X and Habbo Hotel: Origins cater for adult players.
Users on the game can create a virtual avatar, converse and interact with other users, play games, build and design virtual rooms, take care of virtual pets, and complete quests.

History

Habbo stemmed from a 1999 hobby project by creative designer Sampo Karjalainen and technologist Aapo Kyrölä entitled Mobiles Disco, for a Finnish band. It was a virtual chat room running on Kyrölä's Fuse technology. After having been contracted to design a virtual game and chat called Lumisota for a Finnish internet service provider, they were contracted for another project. They developed Hotelli Kultakala with a small team of developers. It launched in August 2000 on the ISP's web portal.
Kyrölä, Karjalainen and Dee Edwards, an entrepreneur from the UK, wanted to create an international business based on the virtual hotel concept, drafting a plan in autumn 2000, and raised finance. By the end of January 2001, Habbo Hotel had been launched in beta mode. The new hotel exited beta a few weeks afterwards, aimed at the teenage market, with marketing and payment partners in place, run from a HQ in London. It featured a new credits system with community and safety features. The next community was launched in Switzerland a few months later, in four languages. It has since been expanded to over 31 countries in five continents, with Hotelli Kultakala being rebranded as a local Habbo hotel, and has been invested in by venture capitalists.
In May 2006, the service its domain names were changed from www.habbohotel.com to www.habbo.com.
In August 2007, Habbo's Chinese hotel closed down temporarily. The challenging Chinese market and high operational costs led to the decision of closing the service. Customers in China were redirected to other Habbo communities.
In December 2008, the Russian hotel announced it was closing in February 2009 as a result of low numbers. Those on the site with "furni" received credit codes for use on the U.S. hotel.
In January 2010, it was announced that the U.S. and Canadian hotels would undergo a merger, to be finalized in April 2010. However, in April 2010, it was announced that all English-speaking hotels would be merged into one. On 5 May, the merger for Habbo U.S.and Habbo Canada was complete. On 2 June the Australian hotel merge was completed. The Singaporean hotel was officially merged on 4 June. On 10 June, the final hotel, Habbo UK, was merged and that completed the set, making Habbo.com the international, English-speaking game. Accounts were migrated to the final English-speaking hotel with varying degrees of automation until March 2011 – after that date any accounts not migrated from the initial Habbo Canada, Singapore, UK and Australia hotels were deleted.
On 12 June 2012, concerns about the game were raised by Channel 4 News. A two-month investigation found users posting pornographic and violent messages – despite the fact that Habbo is intended for children and young adults. A reporter posing as an 11-year-old girl claimed that explicit sex chats were common within minutes of logging on to the game, which she described as "very sexual, perverse, violent, pornographic." As a result of the allegations, Sulake immediately suspended all chat on the game. Speaking in a blog post, chief executive of Sulake, Paul LaFontaine, said that the firm "was reviewing the long-term plans for the Habbo community". The chat services were reinstated in June 2012. Two leading investors, Balderton Capital and 3i, withdrew their funding from Sulake, and some UK retailers stopped selling Habbo gift cards.
In August 2012, Sulake announced a new hotel, Habbo Turkey, fully localised for Turkish-speakers. The then CEO of Sulake, Paul LaFontaine commented, "We're thrilled to announce we have launched in Turkey. This is a very important market for us and we expect Habbo Hotel to be a big success there, with many teenagers joining to converse with friends, meet people with similar interests and enjoy access to the global Habbo Hotel network. Our launch in Turkey is the next big step on our global roadmap."
In May 2014, Sulake released a Habbo application for the iPad in the App Store worldwide.
In December 2020, Sulake released their new beta-version of Habbo. The game has moved to the Unity platform, since Adobe Flash marks its end in 2020. In February 2021, Sulake released the Adobe AIR client alongside the Unity client, with the plan to continue work on the Unity client and improve the user experience. In the official statement from the product owner, he acknowledged that the Unity client was lacking key features and did not reflect the needs of the community. The AIR client is a temporary solution to many of the concerns the community had initially about the Unity client and will eventually be retired when the new client is at an acceptable level and contains key features that the Habbo community rely on.
In 2021, Azerion reached an agreement with fellow Sulake shareholder Elisa Oyj to acquire the company fully. Azerion had a majority stake in Sulake until it secured a deal with Elisa for the remaining 49 per cent of shares. Azerion, which is a pan-European firm specialising in gaming and adtech, first purchased a controlling stake of 51% in Sulake back in 2018. It has since been helping to grow revenues, which have risen 46% between January 2019 and December 2020. Habbo joined a block within Azerion’s gaming content business which consists of products including Woozworld and Governor of Poker.
In April 2021, Habbo brought back the mini game SnowStorm.
In September 2021, an NFT collection was introduced. The collection consists of Habbo avatars that can also be used in the community. In addition, a new NFT Habbo Hotel server named "Habbo X" entered Alpha access in December 2022. This new Hotel only allows access to those who own NFTs from certain collections.
In December 2022, Sulake released Habbo X. Currently in an alpha test phase, Habbo X is a game that focuses on community building, interoperability, and play-and-earn mechanics.
In June 2024, Sulake released Habbo Hotel: Origins, which is a version of the 2005 Habbo client software with a more community-led approach. It is targeted at adults only.

Gameplay

Habbo's main feature is the "hotel", and consists of a client made using the Unity platform. The hotel can be accessed by logged-in users via the Habbo Homepage. When a user accesses the Hotel they are brought to a screen colloquially known as Hotel View/Landing View. From this screen, members can navigate to virtual rooms via the Navigator and browse the rooms of the hotel, look for items to buy in the catalogue, private message friends on their friends list or enter their preset Home room.

Public rooms & games

Public Rooms are rooms which are available to all members. They often depict scenes such as restaurants, cinemas, and dance clubs. Most Public Rooms contain automated bots that shout pre-recorded messages and tips, and can give avatars drinks and food items. Public Rooms are designed by Sulake and are not customizable by users. Rooms in the Habbo Hotel: Origins client contain games such as Wobble Squabble, Lido Diving, Battle Ball and the Cunning Fox Gamehall with games such as Noughts and Crosses, Battleships, Chess and Poker.
In June 2011, most Public Rooms were removed from the Habbo client. Games such as Battle Ball, and Snow Storm were replaced with Freeze and Battle Banzai due to coding issues when they upgraded from Shockwave to Flash.
In June 2024, in the Habbo Hotel: Origins client, users can access classic games with the purchase of in game tickets such as Wobble Squabble, Lido Diving and Battle Ball. Players also have access to free games in the Cunning Fox Gamehall with games such as Noughts and Crosses, Battleships, Chess and Poker.

Guest rooms

Guest Rooms are special rooms which users can customize with furniture, wallpaper, and floor patterns; these can be purchased with credits. Users can choose from pre-made room blueprints or create their own with builders club. Guest rooms can be created by any member and can be locked to allow access only to specific users or password holder. Many users create their own games in their guest rooms, which give furniture or coins as a prize. These rooms are categorized on the navigator in many categories such as "Trading", "Parties", and "Role Playing". Virtual pets and bots can be bought and kept in Guest rooms. Users can interact with the pets and program bots, which will obey certain commands the player throws at them.

User created games

Users can create and host their own games in Habbo by buying and using furniture from the shop. Games such as Falling Furni, Cozzie Change, The Fridge Game, Mazes or by "buying game bundles" in the shop such as Battle Banzai, Freeze, Football and Ice Tag. Users can check out the hotel's Navigator and select the Games & Mazes category under the Rooms tab to play in other people's user-created rooms hosting games.

Role-play elements

Habbo users often create guest rooms which emulate real world businesses, police departments and other establishments. As the game's platform facilitates the creation of groups some users choose to design their groups based on a role-playing theme and go on to participate in activities which promote their groups to other users in the game.