Sulake is taking serious action against retro and scam site owners
Monday, Apr 14, 2008 / Writer: Taina Kämäräinen, Legal Counsel
Habbo Hotel is known among youngsters worldwide. But who has heard of Gabbo Hotel? Or Hobba Hotel? How about Habbi Hotel? These are not names of upcoming Sulake products but names of so called Habbo retros or retro hotels. Retro hotels are fake, illegal Habbo Hotel copies running on emulated servers. They violate trademarks as well as copyright protected images and software of Sulake and might be harmful to play.
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Sulake takes such illegal activity very seriously. There are several aspects that also make the situation potentially dangerous for Habbo players: some retro hotels operate as scam or phishing sites as well, recording Habbo names and passwords and then stealing the virtual items, such as furniture from the users on the legit hotel. Not to mention viruses and Trojans, which are found on many of these fake sites.
Most of the retro sites function very poorly and a typical retro hotel has only a couple of simultaneous users. To protect its IP-rights and the users of Habbo, Sulake has now decided to take action.
During January and February Sulake has approached retro hotel site owners with cease and desist letters with the objective of informing the site owners about the illegality of the activity and after that stopping these services. In these letters Sulake offered amicable solutions to solve the situations. Also ISPs and hosting service providers of retro hotel site owners were contacted. Some of the people contacted were cooperative, some not.
At the moment Sulake Legal Department is preparing court proceedings against a number of retro hotel site owners. Further legal actions were already taken against certain scammers in Holland at the end of last year, see e.g.
this article.
Short facts:
Retro site: A site that illegally runs a non-authorized, emulated Habbo server which is able to communicate with the Habbo client. The name “retro hotel” comes from the fact that the servers normally run older versions of Habbo.
Retro distributor: A website that distributes server software that can be used to set up a retro hotel.
Scam site: A site that asks for the visitors’ Habbo name and password, or tries to trick the visitor to disclose them in another way. The site owner will then collect the usernames and passwords and steal the furni of the tricked person in the official Habbo Hotel.
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Tags:
Sulake Habbo Retro
