Habbo caught up in child sex scandal / Habbo Mute

[GommeInc]

It's amusing seeing so many distraught people attacking C4 News. They're coming out with complete rubbish and show a clear lack of understanding. They keep using Facebook as an example of a site that has paedophilia problems, yet completely forget that the two work completely differently to each other and that moderation on Habbo needs to be more stricter and powerful than that of Facebook, because Facebook already has strong safeguards in place and isn't directed at pre-teens and teens who chat in real time to each other with no restrictions.

Someone should just tell them they've wasted money on virtual furniture and laugh at them, that should shut them up. In a few years time they'll be looking back and laughing at the money and time they have wasted - I know I do

[Mark]

'Don't believe eveything you read in the papers' should be kept in mind. I can't see them closing down, Sulake make far too much money out of Habbo and they wouldnt mute the hotel to look through the chatlogs for nothing.

[Storking]

I think the reports are damaging but not something that would force Habbo to close, what I find more damaging is the crap management from Paul by allowing this global mute! Sulake has changed big time, and for the worse.

I doubt they could close it down... there would be several unhappy people who have paid for stuff. Anyway, this only affects the UK so the most action they could take is blocking it from UK servers unless other countries wanted it blocked too.

The T&Cs state they're allowed to take the items and not give refunds.

[MKR&*42]

It won't close, Habbo Hotel is such a unique community (because it's a virtual game with a social networking twist to it) and hundreds/thousands of people would complain. Sure, there's a massive problem with people going onto MSN/Sype and cybering (do you have to be a certain age to go on these sites?) and other sites such as TinyChat should require users to create accounts and confirm they are of a certain age before signing up (yes ik it's easy to fake your age).

Something interesting happened on a site I tried to sign up to once. I accidently inputed the wrong year, so it thought I was born in 1997 and then it said "I needed to be 16+ to enter". So I tried to redo the year but I wouldn't let me 'cause it knew I had already input my "correct age" (it thought). Why don't Sulake adopt this? Sure there'd be issues with people accidently inputting the wrong year but it would mean people who are like 9 can't fake their age by refreshing the page :S.

[Jssy]

Hmm I dunno. I didn't think everything would go as far as this but it has

[Storking]

It's amusing seeing so many distraught people attacking C4 News. They're coming out with complete rubbish and show a clear lack of understanding. They keep using Facebook as an example of a site that has paedophilia problems, yet completely forget that the two work completely differently to each other and that moderation on Habbo needs to be more stricter and powerful than that of Facebook, because Facebook already has strong safeguards in place and isn't directed at pre-teens and teens who chat in real time to each other with no restrictions.

Someone should just tell them they've wasted money on virtual furniture and laugh at them, that should shut them up. In a few years time they'll be looking back and laughing at the money and time they have wasted - I know I do

The kids insulting channel 4 on their Facebook page are an embarrassment.

Their reasoning also includes "what do you expect if you go into a room called strip club", what idiocy! The fact is these rooms shouldn't exist in the first place, let alone be the top rooms in the navigator. :rolleyes:

[lTraditional]

My mum saw this and because she knows I play Habbo, I thought she would be like "YOU CANNOT GO ON IT AGAIN!" but I must agree with her when she actually said "it happens everywhere anyway, on Facebook, on MSN, on Club Penguin" and Channel 4 just decided to pick on Habbo Hotel.

[Aaron]

Sulake wouldn't close the site, they make far to much profit from having Habbo. Although if they don't take action, I'd assume the Children Protection people would get involved ect. I'm sure Habbo will dig themselves out of this rough patch, but I wonder how.

[orientalframe?]

i don't think they will close down with the amount of money sulake make out of it

[MKR&*42]

ludus:



"As a former Sulake employee, great talent spent years building the Habbo brand. Absolute morons destroying it in days! So appalled."

"the response inc. muting all chat is just sheer lunacy. Absolute insane. I can't think of a person inside who would sanction that."

"There should be no mute. Whoever sanctioned that needs to put down the bottle of vodka. It's outrageous, not the Sulake way."

Off topic, but wasn't ludus fired from Sulake? Nevertheless, it's nice to see he's actually made a comment about this and actually cares lol.
@GommeInc; Completely agree about spending money on virtual furniture. I haven't done it for quite a while now because it just doesn't give me any interest nor does it greatly benefit me in reality. I'd rather go shove money in a bank account than buy Credits now tbh. I haven't actually look at C4s Twitter feed or whatever so I don't know how bad the attacks are? I'll admit it is very biased but Sulake still are to blame for a large portion of it.