Comments about Pricing and Greed

[xxMATTGxx]

Thought I would share this:

Comments about pricing and "greed" show a lack of understanding about how the business of Habbo works. Here is the way we make money.

Habbo is a place that you can pursue many paths to making friends, getting status and becoming well known. You can be party maker, trader, badge earner, Helper, game creator or a designer and you gain status by meeting people and becoming more expert at that type of activity. As you spend time in the site you can earn credits. Credits are not real money.

Habbo is a "freemium" game where you are able to participate, get status, progress and earn credits without every paying real money. Over 25% of our active users are very senior Habbos with thousands of credits they have earned, and who have never spent a single actual Euro/Real/Pound/Dollar in the site.

Under 10% of Habbos spend real money in the site. That means 1 in 10 people want to accelerate their progression so they buy credits. They spend money so they don't have to take as much time to earn credits. This is precisely how any freemium service works (though the % who spend varies). And the amount of Habbos who spend, and the amount they spend over their time in the service is a amount that is very consistent.

So when we put a premium item in the site like the black rabbit, it is a prestige item like an expensive car or a designer handbag that you use CREDITS to buy. 90% people still can buy it with credits they have earned by participating in ways that do not involve money. If a prestige item like that is not valuable enough to you to use your credits - don't exchange your credits for it!

We at Sulake want to succeed. That means we want to run a growing business with profits. So we take actions to grow Habbo every day. But when we think about how to grow our business we think not about more actual money per user, rather we want more users. The way we do that is to increase your enjoyment of the service. So we are aligned with you in wanting Habbo to be great.

So everything we do (User Care, Offers, New Habbo Way, Helpers, Nuts campaign, etc) is to make the site interesting and keep current Habbos engaged and get new Habbos in the site.

It really is that simple! Hope that clarifies the way we think about Habbo as a business.

http://tweetmore.net/tweets/8504413b5967a97a

[Mathew]

That's interesting, but there is a large step between releasing a premium black rabbit and expecting the number of active players to increase. There is more to it than he's letting on - he doesn't explain why some LTD pieces of furniture cost 200c whereas others cost 50c. Habbo need to remove credits from the Habbo "economy" so people continue to buy them directly from the site. He creates the impression that it's all about Habbo giving us things and this suddenly increases site traffic, when that probably isn't the case at all.

It's a nice insight, but sadly not the full picture.

[Lewis]

Totally agree with sulake.