Habbo 2011: €44 million. Habbo 2013: €10 million.

[Michael]

Rewritten article from Mangetoica (a French fansite): http://mangetoica.com/archives/72629

Habbo has been around for nearly 15 years, and over that time it has became the largest community for teenagers across the world with over 250 million accounts created and more than a billion views on the homepages of each hotel each month. However not everything is pitch perfect, and us users have known that for a few years now.

Kauppalehti, a Finnish business newspaper has recently released figures on the catastrophic financial health of Sulake, the company that operates Habbo.
In 2011, Sulake made EUR 44.8 million - a record performance, and saw Sulake preparing to sell off its IRC-Galleria website.
In 2012, Sulake made EUR 22.6 million - a rigid divide in Sulakes revenues, some could blame this upon the mute, whereby Sulake having to throw a lot of resources into improving their moderation and satisfying their shareholders (?).
In 2013, Sulake made EUR 10.5 million - again the turnover had been halved, this could be down to user decline, the rise in pirate hotels & illegal credit trading taking off.

It is also recorded by Kauppalehti that Sulake itself only has 43 staff members working for them in 2013. This excludes outsourced moderation and probably staff who are hired under Elisa (for example, the Stories team)

But, alas - one man struggles while another relaxes, the Elisa company released their 2013 figures at the begininng of this year showing where the pot of money is at, with a turnover of a billion pounds.

It's now or never Sulake, you must keep moving with the time, transform Habbo into something special - add new features, a new client, mini games & reasons for people to continue to play, or else it won't look pretty in the near future.

Links:
http://www.kauppalehti.fi/yritykset/...on+oy/16036286
http://mangetoica.com/archives/72629
http://vuosikertomus.elisa.fi/en/

[jorsian]

It's now or never Sulake, you must keep moving with the time, transform Habbo into something special - add new features, a new client, mini games & reasons for people to continue to play, or else it won't look pretty in the near future.

Aren't those some of the exact reasons why people are losing interest? They transformed Habbo into something unrecognizable with all the cluttered features. As a new player I would be extremely confused with all of the stuff there is to learn.

I believe the best thing they could do is organize the site and put emphasis on old features that already saw massive popularity with the community (Battleball, classic rares, public rooms, the old "look" of the hotel, simpler graphics). Sometimes less really is more.

[Aiden]

I've stopped using Habbo so I understand why many others have. The entire Habbo thing just seems a little old now anyway so I wouldn't care if it died. Good luck I guess though?

[Michael]

Aren't those some of the exact reasons why people are losing interest? They transformed Habbo into something unrecognizable with all the cluttered features. As a new player I would be extremely confused with all of the stuff there is to learn.

I believe the best thing they could do is organize the site and put emphasis on old features that already saw massive popularity with the community (Battleball, classic rares, public rooms). Sometimes less really is more.

The times have changed though, people ask themselves why should they spend time on Habbo when they could be playing the next fast-paced game. Personally I believe what was great in 2006, won't be the same in 2014.

[jorsian]

The times have changed though, people ask themselves why should they spend time on Habbo when they could be playing the next fast-paced game. Personally I believe what was great in 2006, won't be the same in 2014.

People move on for different reasons, I'll grant you, but it's no doubt been a request of MANY users that Old Habbo be brought back. I believe if we had the same client and staff from 2006 the population would be on a steady rise.

[auffant1]

Habbo cannot live forever like any game cannot live forever. Who knows maybe a new game similar to Habbo will come along and woops there goes Habbo

[Storking]

Yeah it's seemed like things were tough since the channel 4 exposé but for turnover to being halving year on year is worrying. Especially if it's continued to drop for 2014, what's the future of Habbo?

Although over the past 6 months i've felt like things client-side have finally plateaued out/improved and I hope things are improving financially too.

[Kyle]

they're right. habbo needs to rely less on user generated content and more on developing a sturdy minigame platform that doesn't stagnate after a few levels. moshi monsters is bigger than ever because of it.

also lol at paul lafontaine effectively losing the company 30 million!

[Lewis]

oh god

this is worrying, i hope 2014's is better

[-Nick]

It all started to die when they stopped gambling, tax credit etc...