We all might like and enjoy playing Habbo from a time to another, however, most of us don’t know the real history and story of Habbo. So, today, we’re going to find out a little more.

What is Habbo?

Habbo is an online community-based game aimed at teenagers from 12-17 years old. The whole community is owned by Sulake: a Finnish enterprise. It came out for the first time in 2000 and in 2012 more than 270 million Habbo avatars had been created. This unique game allows players to create their own avatars, chat with friends, build rooms, play games and many more features.

The Story

Habbo originated from a project began by two Finnish gentlemen – Sampo Karjalainen, who was the designed and Aapo Kyrola who programmed. This project was called “Mobile Disco” where players were able to chat inside a specific room. The two creators were ordered to make a virtual game called “Lumisota” for a Finnish company. After their work becoming a great success, they came up with the idea of growing their own business from making virtual games. In 2001, and after a lot of beginnings and abrupt endings, the developers were able to launch their project which was called “Habbo Hotel” in beta mode. After a couple of weeks, the full original version of the game was ready. Shortly after, to add to the user experience, the new credits system was released and the game was launched in four different languages. In 2006, the domain was changed from www.habbohotel.com to www.habbo.com.

Between 2006 and 2009, the company got some problems that led to closing the Chinese and the Russian hotels due to several various challenges that faced it, including privacy in both countries and the strict laws that resonate from them. In 2010, all the hotels that used to speak English merged to avoid dwindling company profits and a more universal community. 2012 came along and the whole company faced a new problem of the sharing and misuse of addresses, images and personal information, to name a few. Sulake then decided to alter the way they allowed users to communicate and introduced tightly censorship in speech and instant messaging systems within the client. The iOS app was released in 2014 to keep up with the ever changing millennial market.

So that was just a quick look at Habbo’s lengthly history. What’s one of your favourite memories of Habbo?

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