Rumors of Sulake cost-cutting

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Rumors have been rife over cost-cutting measures that Sulake intends to do to its business. It is expected that a whopping 25% of the whole workforce within the company will be laid off as part of the measures. The jobs are said to be terminated on March 16 and may be accompanied with the closure of 11 country offices- a major scale back.

According to CEO Paul LeFontaine, “Fuse [the projected in which Habbo is under] will cut its losses by letting people go and potentially close the offices [internationally]. The reductions do not apply to the company located in Finland in the product and technology center.” The apparent plan is to not to rely on as much manpower but allow teenagers to make their own content and link it up via third parties. However, LaFontaine denied any knowledge of the statistics being rumored by media site Dome.fi that it will be a 25% cutback.

Furthermore, on top of this Sulake’s CTO Osma Ahvenlampi resigned from the company yesterday. However, he emphasized that his resignation had nothing to do with the latest rumors of staff cost-cutting. Though, according to one of his tweets he did state that he was not too happy what he was hearing of his former colleagues and that his thoughts were with them. Ahvenlampi served Sulake since 2003. He also hasn’t decided what would be the next step of his career.

Such a move will definitely effect how Sulake is run and will in turn have a visible knock-on effect with some of the already fragmented staffing on various hotels. Let us know what you think about the potential staff cuts and Osma’s resignation by clicking ‘read more’ and commenting!

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Taken from Habbox.com thanks to Grig: https://habbox.com/#!/News/article/1096

So what are peoples views on even more cost-cutting at Sulake, if it all comes out true?

Update @ 20:04:

Taken from the Habbo facebook page:

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Nothing will happen tomorrow, we're just collecting questions we see around on forums and fansites, creating an FAQ so that we can answer as many questions as possible.. but for now, we wanted to make sure you all know that no one is being merged or closed down.

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The article will be up tomorrow after everyone involved has had a chance to look it over and add their comments - at the moment, because of the time zones, we are not able to get everyone's input. But please rest assured that we are not being merged.

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Staff from all over were affected, but no Hotels will be merged or closed, regardless of who are now gone.

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You can write your questions here: http://www.habbo.com/groups/296747/i...0953/id/page/1 -- we will be looking through it tomorrow morning.

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Wow - even more cost-cutting from them? As if the Merge wasn't enough :S

Quite shocked at the measures Sulake are going to, to save money and actually make a decent profit - I would have thought they got a decent amount of revenue for last year even though 2010 wasn't their best year. 25% has kinda shocked me a lot though :L

Goodness, next thing you know, the .com hotel will have opening and closing times like .se, .fi, .it etc.

Before all the rumours start. Habbo won't quit over this. But It'll probably feel a lot less community based with competitions and more auto-mated things such as the quests.

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Originally Posted by iBlueBox

Before all the rumours start. Habbo won't quit over this. But It'll probably feel a lot less community based with competitions and more auto-mated things such as the quests.

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I agree, I doubt its the end of habbo just yet lol

I miss the great times of winning badges and competitions created by localized staff. This is a scary piece of news to read. Do you think they'll start merging more Hotels with the closure of international offices?

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Originally Posted by mdna

I miss the great times of winning badges and competitions created by localized staff. This is a scary piece of news to read. Do you think they'll start merging more Hotels with the closure of international offices?

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I was just thinking about this actually. I don't think they could merge more hotels together cause of a language barrier - trying to introduce an online translation system is incredibly hard, and the amount of text speech people use wouldn't do much good in a translator, it would be incredibly confusing. The hotels we have left wouldn't work when merged - they already merged .ch, .de and another 1 last year as well as the English speaking hotels. Although people say "Dutch and German are practically the same language - why can't they be merged", that is not the case.

I reckon they'll look at limiting "opening hours" - like they do on .fi, .se , .it etc. and if that still doesn't prove to be enough in terms of cost-cutting, then they'll most likely close small hotels. I mean Swedish Habbo barely manages over 1000 users on at 1 time - atm, there's 910 on the Swedish Hotel.

So yes, they'll definitely consider restricting hours before closing IMO. And I certainly don't think they'll find a way to merge anymore.

They best not put closing hours onto the .com site. :P

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Originally Posted by Inexorably

I was just thinking about this actually. I don't think they could merge more hotels together cause of a language barrier - trying to introduce an online translation system is incredibly hard, and the amount of text speech people use wouldn't do much good in a translator, it would be incredibly confusing. The hotels we have left wouldn't work when merged - they already merged .ch, .de and another 1 last year as well as the English speaking hotels. Although people say "Dutch and German are practically the same language - why can't they be merged", that is not the case.

I reckon they'll look at limiting "opening hours" - like they do on .fi, .se , .it etc. and if that still doesn't prove to be enough in terms of cost-cutting, then they'll most likely close small hotels. I mean Swedish Habbo barely manages over 1000 users on at 1 time - atm, there's 910 on the Swedish Hotel.

So yes, they'll definitely consider restricting hours before closing IMO. And I certainly don't think they'll find a way to merge anymore.

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They can merge hotels and still be multilingual. I remember when the Swiss Hotel (.ch) operated in a few languages around the time when there was just a British, Finnish and Swiss Hotel. The Chinese Hotel, while it was still around, operated in two languages - Mandarin and Cantonese. I will be upset if they start 'closing' Hotels because I am usually on late at night after most of the preteens have gone to bed. Gah, this is a big change for Habbo. Thank you Grig for the article!

Dont we already have closing hours from the maintence breaks we have every night it seems?!!?!??!

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Originally Posted by mdna

They can merge hotels and still be multilingual. I remember when the Swiss Hotel (.ch) operated in a few languages around the time when there was just a British, Finnish and Swiss Hotel. The Chinese Hotel, while it was still around, operated in two languages - Mandarin and Cantonese. I will be upset if they start 'closing' Hotels because I am usually on late at night after most of the preteens have gone to bed. Gah, this is a big change for Habbo. Thank you Grig for the article!

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They can attempt to, but I'm sure many users would be annoyed :P - If it was originally liked that, fine but people don't like change (roll eyes). I've spoken to a few dutch people in the past and they got annoyed when I said their language was German - because it's not identical. People on .com get annoyed when a spanish person starts typing in spanish in a room - a hotel could try to be multilingual but I'm sure many users would fight against it.

Switzerland is a tricky issue lmfao - in Switzerland they have about 4 main languages I think. Swiss French, Swiss German, and 2 other Swiss stuff.

I'm on quite late at night as well :P - I'd get incredible bored lmao

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Originally Posted by FiftyCal

Dont we already have closing hours from the maintence breaks we have every night it seems?!!?!??!

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LMAO Kerby. 15 mins .. meh ;] - But it'd be much worse if the hotel was only open 9-9.

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Originally Posted by Inexorably

They can attempt to, but I'm sure many users would be annoyed :P - If it was originally liked that, fine but people don't like change (roll eyes). I've spoken to a few dutch people in the past and they got annoyed when I said their language was German - because it's not identical. People on .com get annoyed when a spanish person starts typing in spanish in a room - a hotel could try to be multilingual but I'm sure many users would fight against it.

Switzerland is a tricky issue lmfao - in Switzerland they have about 4 main languages I think. Swiss French, Swiss German, and 2 other Swiss stuff.

I'm on quite late at night as well :P - I'd get incredible bored lmao

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Dutch and German aren't really the same at all - they're both Germanic languages, yes, but they are also very different. In Switzerland they speak local dialects of German, French, Italian and to a much lesser degree, Romansh. Anyways, I would much rather they merge Hotels as opposed to closing them outright for periods each night. I play the French Hotel, for example, and I would prefer to be merged with Habbo Italy than be denied access to the Hotel when I want to play. Annoyed users are going to come with any change - they will get used to it over time.

Habbo: We see that a lot of rumours are going around today, but rest assured: we are NOT merging, and NOT closing down! More info to come tomorrow.

https://twitter.com/#!/Habbo/status/170203188241235968

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Originally Posted by mdna

Dutch and German aren't really the same at all - they're both Germanic languages, yes, but they are also very different. In Switzerland they speak local dialects of German, French, Italian and to a much lesser degree, Romansh. Anyways, I would much rather they merge Hotels as opposed to closing them outright for periods each night. I play the French Hotel, for example, and I would prefer to be merged with Habbo Italy than be denied access to the Hotel when I want to play. Annoyed users are going to come with any change - they will get used to it over time.

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Some German users are already panicking that they're going to be merged with .nl xL - or 'fused' as they're calling it. Apparently they're saying only going to be left with 1 German staff - the rest would be Dutch... we'll have to see what happens.

As for whether I'd prefer a merge or restrictions... mm, I think I'm fine on each 1 I suppose. I would get used to a merge - considering I've already dealt with 1 -_- . And restrictions I suppose I'd get used to, I'd just end up on this forum after "closing hours" lmfao. But I think I would probably hate Restrictions more like you said.

Agree with your last sentence.

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Read Matt's post about merging as well :P - Doesn't look like it'll be happening as we've argued over lmfao.

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Originally Posted by xxMATTGxx

Habbo: We see that a lot of rumours are going around today, but rest assured: we are NOT merging, and NOT closing down! More info to come tomorrow.

https://twitter.com/#!/Habbo/status/170203188241235968

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Whew, what a relief! Thank you for keeping us updated.

It's now simply a shame that we'll have to wait a while before we find out more ;[.

But yes, cause I didn't say it before: ty [@]@xxMattGxx[/@] for the update ^.^

Restricted hours aint gonna work unless they unmerge us though is it, like cause there's a practically constant stream of people on, though admitadly peak times is uk ones cause of the majority being uk, there's still a good few thousand on in uk late nights [midnight to like 4am] :L

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Originally Posted by Pipette

Restricted hours aint gonna work unless they unmerge us though is it, like cause there's a practically constant stream of people on, though admitadly peak times is uk ones cause of the majority being uk, there's still a good few thousand on in uk late nights [midnight to like 4am]:L

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Dead ends on restriction and merging it seems to be lmao. If they're desperate for money I reckon they'll have to increase advertising they use personally and adverts on their sites (if they still continue to lose money) - or potentially raise the prices of credits. I don't think it'll get that serious though, with the recession so many businesses came close to going into administration and then bankruptcy - but most of them pulled through it. I expect sulake will pull through all this as well.

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Originally Posted by Aaron

They best not put closing hours onto the .com site. :P

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I don't think they can introduce closing times for .com as we have different time zones and therefore are on at different times. So some people will be on in the middle of the night.. somewhere...

They can't really put opening times on the .com hotel because after the merge of the EN-speaking hotels, there's now users online near enough 24/7 because of the different time zones. I don't see how a hotel with multiple languages would work either, seeing as our .com hotel still fails to provide the ability for us to select our time zone, instead of being stuck on what ever one .com was on before the merge.

Having reading a number of things I think we may find that the .com hotel is pretty much in safe hands and the other hotels are the ones who will be having changes which may also include closure. Not just of the local office of the hotel but the actual hotel itself, who knows. We will find out soon though!

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Originally Posted by xxMATTGxx

Having reading a number of things I think we may find that the .com hotel is pretty much in safe hands and the other hotels are the ones who will be having changes which may also include closure. Not just of the local office of the hotel but the actual hotel itself, who knows. We will find out soon though!

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I play Habbo France and I am worried about the future. We are one of the bigger Hotels, though. I think they'll close the smaller European Hotels first. We reach about 10,000 users online at the daily peak on Habbo France which is about the same as English Habbo if I remember correctly. I know there are bigger Euro Hotels, though, like Habbo Spain.

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Originally Posted by mdna

I play Habbo France and I am worried about the future. We are one of the bigger Hotels, though. I think they'll close the smaller European Hotels first. We reach about 10,000 users online at the daily peak on Habbo France which is about the same as English Habbo if I remember correctly. I know there are bigger Euro Hotels, though, like Habbo Spain.

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Yesss, you are about the same as .com :P - The top 4 hotels are .pt (Portugese), .es (Spanish), .com (English) and .fr (France). I'm quite surprised there are a lot of French Habbo users tbqh.

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Originally Posted by Inexorably

Yesss, you are about the same as .com :P - The top 4 hotels are .pt (Portugese), .es (Spanish), .com (English) and .fr (France). I'm quite surprised there are a lot of French Habbo users tbqh.

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It's a flourishing community. It makes me very proud to be one of the bigger Hotels.

Taken from the Habbo facebook page:

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Nothing will happen tomorrow, we're just collecting questions we see around on forums and fansites, creating an FAQ so that we can answer as many questions as possible.. but for now, we wanted to make sure you all know that no one is being merged or closed down.

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The article will be up tomorrow after everyone involved has had a chance to look it over and add their comments - at the moment, because of the time zones, we are not able to get everyone's input. But please rest assured that we are not being merged.

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Staff from all over were affected, but no Hotels will be merged or closed, regardless of who are now gone.

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You can write your questions here: http://www.habbo.com/groups/296747/i...0953/id/page/1 -- we will be looking through it tomorrow morning.

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You guys do realize, that the shutdown hours at hotels like .fi stem from laws and PR, not moderation costs? As an example back in the day in Finland there was a storm in a teacup kinda situation where Habbo (being the first service like this targeted for teens) was blamed for causing children to be wake through the night which lead to the PR decision of closing the service down for the night to make nice with the accusing parents.

Merging the rest of the hotels makes no sense. They are already paying the server costs and those don't go away with merging.. unless the hotels run out of users because of it. They wouldn't save anything with merging now especially since the local offices are already going to be closed. They still need to do moderation for those languages, so merging gives no savings at all. Merging .COM and .DE made sense because they were the only languages that were served in multiple hotels and they could actually save in staff and moderation costs.

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Originally Posted by Sublayer

I don't think they can introduce closing times for .com as we have different time zones and therefore are on at different times. So some people will be on in the middle of the night.. somewhere...

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Oh yes, good point. I guess that's useful to us then.

As if Sulake don't make enough money as it is. Greedy heartless corporation, yet people still play their game. At least Jagex care for their users hence why I *got rid of* a lot of my spare furni...

Same with where I work though too, always looking to cut costs, they offer my manager £20,000 a year before deductions, that's a ******* insult if you ask me.

25% reduction in staff? 99% reduction in competent moderators (H)

They've been cost cutting for years, ever since they tried to monopolise but have failed in the process. Personally, I wouldn't feel sad if they shut up shop - their dreadful decision making skills, lack of community support and lack of drive to run the business has condemned Sulake and Habbo to death. The Golden Age of Habbo was when it opened up until 2004/06.

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Originally Posted by GommeInc

They've been cost cutting for years, ever since they tried to monopolise but have failed in the process. Personally, I wouldn't feel sad if they shut up shop - their dreadful decision making skills, lack of community support and lack of drive to run the business has condemned Sulake and Habbo to death. The Golden Age of Habbo was when it opened up until 2004/06.

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I would be inconsolable if they closed the site but I would like to see them make a major, major update. A huge update that changes everything wrong.

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Originally Posted by mdna

I would be inconsolable if they closed the site but I would like to see them make a major, major update. A huge update that changes everything wrong.

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Shooting those at the top of the food chain, their marketing division and their localised managers would be quite an impressive update, it's the only way to save the franchise now :P

:P - Just thought I'd say that something similar has happened before. They layed/laid w.e off 20% of their workforce back in 2009;

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The company that created the popular Habbo virtual world plans to lay off 20 percent of its employees, according to published reports.

Sulake is laying off dozens of its 300 employees, mostly at its worldwide headquarters in Helsinki, Finland. The company’s main business is Habbo, a teen-focused cartoon world where users can create their own avatar characters, decorate their rooms and socialize.

All seems good in that world. In September, the company said that more than 144 million Habbo characters have been created and that the world gets 13 million unique visitors each month. If the user base is still growing like weeds, the question is, why are they making cuts now?

October 9th, 2009

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Originally Posted by Inexorably

:P - Just thought I'd say that something similar has happened before. They layed/laid w.e off 20% of their workforce back in 2009;

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That's Finland headquarters, which is different. This is effecting international offices.

Sulake CEO LaFonatine also released a statement confirming today's announcement was about letting go of some of the manual functions of the company that do not fit into the new strategy.

Do you think Habbo would have everyone's homepage as habbo.com for all languages, you log in but you can choose a server to play on. Like runescape has it.

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Originally Posted by Michaeel

Do you think Habbo would have everyone's homepage as habbo.com for all languages, you log in but you can choose a server to play on. Like runescape has it.

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There's literally no point in that except load balancing.

I reckon they are going to majorly push advertising. That is a way that almost guarantees extra cash.


If Habbo did close down, I would not actually be that sad. I almost never play nowadays and only really ever did because of habbox.
However if Habbo did close down, that would be the end for fansites, and that would be a ginormous shame.

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Thank you for your tweets, blog posts and messages about the recent changes in staff at Habbo. I would very much like to respond to each tweet, but I think to share here is more efficient. I read all of your tweets. [@]@MOCZHabbo[/@] tweeted and said I should explain the changes. That is a good idea.

We are not closing any Hotels. If anything, we are going to make them bigger. We’re not closing all the offices. We’re moving people around so we can communicate better together and build things faster. We’re not going to stop awarding badges and creating fun quests and offering ways to achieve status in Habbo. We are going to do more of it.

What is happening is very straightforward. We look at where you go in the Hotel and what you like to do. What you like to do, we are going to make more of. That means more games, more ways to make friends, and more tools to communicate with them. We’re going to stop doing the things you don’t like as much. That means less of what you weren’t using anyway. If we try something and you don’t use it, we’re going to take it down and not have people work on it.

We had some great people working on things that were not as popular in the service. So it did not make sense to keep people working on that. We don’t have enough people making the things you like, so we transferred some people over to work on those things, and we’re going to bring in some new people as well.

Keep the tweets coming. We’re listening.

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It seems to me that the staff feel more free now, there must of been someone holding them back from being like this before. I'm looking forward to them 'taking down' things we don't like!

http://www.sulake.com/blog/entries/2...f_Changes.html

Threads merged by Jordan (Forum Super Moderator): As discussing the same topic

hmm weird lol. . . hope they listen to us about the crappy mods =/

Well, I hope this doesn't corrupt Habbo as such.

Fansites should hopefully have a better relationship, I was actually talking to the Paul (Ceo of Sulake) on twitter a few days before this was even announced/rumoured and he read one or two articles on Habbox that I linked to him in regards of changes between the relationship of fansites and Habbo and of course the fairness of certain fansite rules.

I'm pleased that other members of Sulake staff have actually started following Habbox on twitter ever since I started talking to him. Another member of staff at Sulake have already said there has been interesting developments and discussions on how they can work better with fansites, I haven't got a load of details on that yet but there is more to follow.

So I do hope these changes do improve Habbo altogether and also the link between fansites and them.