Many of you will recall that last night was a pretty hectic, worrying and chaotic night for nearly all Habbo users – especially keen followers of Fansites, Twitter and Facebook. Rumours concerning ‘the fate of Habbo and Sulake’ spread around the globe like a wildfire, thus leaving many users in a panicked state of mind. The staff from Sulake have provided us with some FAQ’s which should hopefully solve all the issues people are concerned about, such as merging and closures.
 
The one message that really needs to be enforced is that “No hotels are merging, No hotels are closing.” We feel that you all need to read that quote carefully before any more rumours arise!
 
Here are the FAQs:
 
* Will some Hotels be closing down? 
No. No Hotels are closing.

* What will happen to my Habbo / my Stuff? 
Nothing at all. You will still have your Habbo(s) and your stuff isn’t going anywhere! 

We’re not quite sure why this question emerged but I suppose it is a fair question to ask.

* What happens to Staff? 
Some Staff will stay, some are gone, and those that stay will likely be changing roles in some way. Part of this change is for us to take a step back and to put the focus on YOU guys, not on us. We know that some of you will miss the Staff characters dearly, but it’s important that you know that there have always been, and still are many talented folks working behind the scenes to create everything you see in Habbo, people that you normally don’t hear about because they don’t necessarily have a known Staff character. However, whether you know us or not, we are all here, and we are all passionate about Habbo! 

Note: Once a staff member has been made redundant, their account is banned. If their homepage is still visible (excluding moderators) then the staff member has not been fired.

* Will there still be campaigns and competitions? 
We want to turn the tables around, giving you the power to do more in Habbo. This means refocusing our resources to make sure that you guys have the tools you need to run better events, games and competitions, developing features that make it easier to interact and find friends in the Hotel, creating new and better games, and also, ways for you to get fame for the things you do in a way that is fair and fun!
 
Plus, we will obviously continue to develop and improve on our existing Games, Quests and Achievements, ensuring you immediate rewards and recognition for your skills.
 
Of course, the competitions and campaigns haven’t been that bad in the recent months. A celebrity visit was held today and another is scheduled for next week. Along with that, many users were also rather impressed with the return of snowstorm in December, so it doesn’t seem to be all doom and gloom for competitions.
 
* What will happen to the Habbo articles and forums? 
Although Habbo Hotel will stay as it is, some changes will come to the website. Simply because we want to be focusing on creating everything you need inside the Hotel. This is not an exact science, and we will be needing your input on this. Our researchers have already been putting their heads together and we will start asking for your opinions next week already.
 
Ooh, this sounds like a fairly interesting hint at some updates! We could be looking at a rather new design for news articles and the forum pages on Habbo in the near future and the best part is… they’ll be constructed with the help of the community.
 
* Will we be getting the Habbo.SE website? 
You will be getting an improved version of the Swedish Habbo website. We have been testing it for some time now, while gathering comments and ideas from Habbos. The site will be improved and developed based on this feedback, and once we’re at a point where we feel that the majority of you are happy with it, we will be making the change to other Hotel sites, as well.
 
For anyone who is unaware, the Swedish version of Habbo Hotel received a completely different webpage layout in the past few months. The community page was removed, the news articles are a lot more brief and the personal ‘habbo.com/me’ page is a lot smaller (in terms of height.) There have already been many comments on HabboxForum about the .se layout. Some people have stated that it looks “boring” and “ugly”, some consider it to be “okay” but others seem to enjoy the layout and feel that it’s “about time we had a change!”.
 
* Why did you do this? 
We have been continuously looking at what it is that you like to do in Habbo, by measuring traffic, asking you questions, looking at number of submissions for competitions, finding out how much time you spend playing games, chatting etc. What we found is that we don’t have nearly enough resources allocated to develop and improve on the things you like to do the most. We have been spending a lot of unnecessary time and resources on stuff that most of you didn’t really bother with. So a decision was made to refocus and put more people into developing Habbo in a way that’s more fun for you!
 
The above is in response to Sulake cutting 25% of their entire (international) workforce.
 
* Will you do more to support the Fansites? 
The topic of Fansites has been an item on our agenda for a while, and we are really eager to get a good dialogue going with our many fantastic Fansites. The process is ongoing, and we still need to discuss it further, but if you have some good ideas, we’d love to hear them! You can leave a comment in our Research Lab Forum ››
 
I am and many others are very impressed with this piece of news. Fansites have been in a “battle” for months to gain more recognition from Sulake and the hotel staff and it is inevitably improving. Many of the hotel staff often check out fansites (such as Yurre) and some even have accounts on some Fansite forums (such as Gandalfthegrey & ex-staff 0rca) and hotel staff have made a real effort to advertise Fansite events through news articles. I think all of us from Habbox can safely say that we’re proud to be gaining more recognition from Sulake and that it’d be a great pleasure to collaborate with them even more. Of course, we will need reinforcements (which means you better leave some comments in that forum!)
 
* Some Hotels close at night, will that happen to our Hotel? 
The opening and closing hours of our Hotels will not change at all. For .COM, this means that we will continue to stay open 24 hours as always. 

For those of you who were unaware, some of the smaller hotel communities (such as .fi and .se) have opening and closing hours (I know, it shocked me when I found out as well.)
 
* Will more sites be in English now, other than .COM? 
No. Every site will keep to the language it’s currently in. We would like to preface that when we test something new, you might find that English words sneak in here and there, but we are aiming to keep every site in its local language!

I definitely think that’s reduced the worry from people concerned that they’d have to speak in another language to continue using Habbo.
 
If you’d like to remain updated with the latest “happenings” from Sulake, then why not check out their Twitter, their Facebook and their official site:

• www.facebook.com/Habbo
• www.twitter.com/#!/Habbo
• www.sulake.com

Finally, if you need reminding on what the names of the official Fansites are, visit here:

• http://www.habbo.com/groups/Fansites

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