Habbo caught up in child sex scandal / Habbo Mute

[PiippBB]

Well like you say, the CEOs job is to keep the investors happy and seeing as they've all pulled the chord due to a poor response from the management team I think it's fair to say he's a shocking CEO. I'm by no means saying he's the worst CEO in history like others but it is pretty much a categoric fact that he has failed as CEO to keep his investors happy. He has lost two enormous shareholders who are multi-million pound investment firms with incomes of around £500m. 3i has invested £35million in Sulake in the past few years alone and together they make up 26% of Sulake, I believe the rest of Sulake is owned by its founders, current staff and PaulLaFo even has shares in it (quite typical for a CEO). All this information is readily available on economic news websites btw.

The first investor to pull pulled out as soon as they were given the information about the C4 news report; a week before it went public. They pulled out there and then, before Sulake had even had a chance to respond. Their leaving had nothing to do with a slow reaction from Sulake, they never gave Sulake a chance to respond.

I also wouldn't say this is Paul's fault. These problems have been building for years now and were well set in by the time Paul took over as CEO a few months ago. Yes, he should have recognised them and sorted them when he came in, and for all we know there were plans in place, but as it stands you can't really blame Paul for the contents of the C4 news report; these were problems the site had been suffering with for years. I actually think he's handled the situation very well. He took the action to mute the hotel, not only giving Sulake time to work on these problems but also preventing the media finding anything else incriminating. He's took time out from his personal time (he's been tweeting well after work hours) to keep us up to date via Twitter (albeit slowly to start with, but at least he's made an effort and kept us somewhat in the loop) and interact with us directly. I can't imagine the CEO of many other companies doing the same thing. To be honest I think he's done quite well. In less capable hands (maybe a CEO who hadn't reacted in such a timely and firm manner) I could imagine this scandal would have nailed the coffin and buried Habbo, but as it stands Habbo's gonna be unmuted this week with great improvements and we're gonna have a much bigger say in what happens in the future. I really get the feeling that Paul actually cares about the users and I think that's important here.

[GommeInc]

Well like you say, the CEOs job is to keep the investors happy and seeing as they've all pulled the chord due to a poor response from the management team I think it's fair to say he's a shocking CEO. I'm by no means saying he's the worst CEO in history like others but it is pretty much a categoric fact that he has failed as CEO to keep his investors happy. He has lost two enormous shareholders who are multi-million pound investment firms with incomes of around £500m. 3i has invested £35million in Sulake in the past few years alone and together they make up 26% of Sulake, I believe the rest of Sulake is owned by its founders, current staff and PaulLaFo even has shares in it (quite typical for a CEO). All this information is readily available on economic news websites btw.

To conclude at the end of the week, Habbo are almost pulling it back. Sulake deserved the criticism and hounding by the media. It was an incredibly successful piece of investigative journalism by Channel 4, it interested an awful lot of people and their investigative journalism rarely reaches other newspapers in the UK nevermind across the world and the BBC. As well as this it has also trended on Twitter for all the wrong reasons and like I have already pointed out, 2 important investors have pulled out and 3 retailers have stopped their support of Habbo. So yes Channel 4 has done very well here.

Sulake responded slowly and for that PaulLafo deserves blame, they were informed a week ago of what was going to happen but then waited until the report itself before doing anything. This slow response is entirely Paul's fault as the face of Sulake in the media and on the board he could of implemented measures beforehand and calmed investors as a result. He deserves all the criticism he gets for this. The bitterness on his Twitter account has also been very juvenile and questionable at times.

However he should not be blamed for the issues at hand, he has indeed only been in the job around 10 months and most the decline in Habbo's standards occurred a year or two before his time. A great CEO would of course know everything going on within his company but I think it's fair to say the problems at hand were caused by his predecessors who cut savagely without thinking. None of them could of ever expected this backlash from the media as Habbo has rarely been in the news in the past 11 years.

The mute was a good move I think it's fair to say. Of course it's not popular but it's not permanent and it shows Sulake are determined to get it right for the future of Habbo and to protect its users which is vital. The mute was the best possible response, it's better than shutting the Hotel entirely and it wasn't really feasible to allow people to keep chatting. The media could build up a bigger case against them, the bad behaviour of users could continue and it would show complete ignorance to the bad press they received.

All in all Sulake deserved the mess they got in, they were slow to respond but once they eventually did, the mute was definitely the right move and it looks like the gradual method of reintroducing an "unmute" with safer precautions than before is the right way to sort this issue once and for all and receive positive press.

I want your entirely legal e-babies. Such a great post and hits the nail sharply on the head.

Sulake have been living in ignorant bliss, and the report has finally kicked some life in the business. Unfortunately, they have a completely hopeless child for a CEO who can't take criticism of any kind, and will go out of his way to offend and then remove any comments like his tweets and then claim ignorance.

It's shocking he hasn't been given the sack. He's the embodiment of a bad CEO. He's unattractive to investors, didn't recognise the problems until it was too late, was given the chance to change the business but refused to and above all treats his customers with very little respect. The only thing he's got going for him is that he does tell his customers what's happening as some amount of reassurance. He must really be spinning some absolute crap to still have that position :/

[lawrawrrr]

The first investor to pull pulled out as soon as they were given the information about the C4 news report; a week before it went public. They pulled out there and then, before Sulake had even had a chance to respond. Their leaving had nothing to do with a slow reaction from Sulake, they never gave Sulake a chance to respond.

I also wouldn't say this is Paul's fault. These problems have been building for years now and were well set in by the time Paul took over as CEO a few months ago. Yes, he should have recognised them and sorted them when he came in, and for all we know there were plans in place, but as it stands you can't really blame Paul for the contents of the C4 news report; these were problems the site had been suffering with for years. I actually think he's handled the situation very well. He took the action to mute the hotel, not only giving Sulake time to work on these problems but also preventing the media finding anything else incriminating. He's took time out from his personal time (he's been tweeting well after work hours) to keep us up to date via Twitter (albeit slowly to start with, but at least he's made an effort and kept us somewhat in the loop) and interact with us directly. I can't imagine the CEO of many other companies doing the same thing. To be honest I think he's done quite well. In less capable hands (maybe a CEO who hadn't reacted in such a timely and firm manner) I could imagine this scandal would have nailed the coffin and buried Habbo, but as it stands Habbo's gonna be unmuted this week with great improvements and we're gonna have a much bigger say in what happens in the future. I really get the feeling that Paul actually cares about the users and I think that's important here.

The first investor pulled out surely because they didn't want to be associated with the bad press? Which is fair enough. But they did say Sulake didn't bother to respond to the early preview of the report, they could have made it much better for themselves imo...

Paul as a CEO has generally been good. OK, he's not helped a few things, but he's hardly made them worse. The poll in the Welcome Lounge an the fact he's atm seems to give users a chance to get suggestions across, and he is actually listening to a few, which I think is really good.

[PiippBB]

The first investor pulled out surely because they didn't want to be associated with the bad press? Which is fair enough. But they did say Sulake didn't bother to respond to the early preview of the report, they could have made it much better for themselves imo...

Paul as a CEO has generally been good. OK, he's not helped a few things, but he's hardly made them worse. The poll in the Welcome Lounge an the fact he's atm seems to give users a chance to get suggestions across, and he is actually listening to a few, which I think is really good.

Yes, I would imagine the first investor would have pulled out no matter what Sulake did to be honest; it's one of those situations; no one wants to be associated with this sort of thing and some companies will just pull no matter the response from those accused. They don't want the bad press rubbing off on them, and lets be honest, who can blame them? I do think Sulake have managed to turn this around though, and if they take their time with this unmute (as much as I want to be able to use chat in the client again, I understand why they've done this and respect that it will take as long as it has to to ensure the younger users of the site are safe) and ensure at each stage that the new safety implementations are working thoroughly then I don't think this will count as a huge disaster. I shouldn't think they're too worried about losing money right now, I think if they were the mute would have ended by now. I think they're more bothered about the way their reputation has been tarnished and will work on trying to rebuild it; if they manage this the money will come along with it anyway, and lets face it, they've got enough gimmicks to make a shed load right now, especially if they start rolling out more LTD Rares. I do think they'll probably rush out some of the features which we would have had slowly trickle in over the summer, such as the new clothes, to entice users to come back and to stick with them despite the mute and to take the spotlight off the mute (I'm not expecting these features to appear until the mute has ended however). New furni and clothes will give users something positive to look at, and, if they're good enough, will probably mostly make people forgive them for the mute.

[Zak]

He's told his staff members what to do and they are doing it.. Your saying just because he's a CEO he can't take one day off to spend it with his father on fathers day..

Considering he is one man and that it is the weekend, why do you expect him to work every single day? Sulake have other staff members who would actually be putting these changes into Habbo and not Paul himself. He would at most just be telling them what to do.

Just saying if I was on 100k a year I'd work everyday Its probably the most important thing that has happened to Habbo, he's in charge, so he should be putting the most effort in!

[Jordy]

The first investor to pull pulled out as soon as they were given the information about the C4 news report; a week before it went public. They pulled out there and then, before Sulake had even had a chance to respond. Their leaving had nothing to do with a slow reaction from Sulake, they never gave Sulake a chance to respond.

I also wouldn't say this is Paul's fault. These problems have been building for years now and were well set in by the time Paul took over as CEO a few months ago. Yes, he should have recognised them and sorted them when he came in, and for all we know there were plans in place, but as it stands you can't really blame Paul for the contents of the C4 news report; these were problems the site had been suffering with for years. I actually think he's handled the situation very well. He took the action to mute the hotel, not only giving Sulake time to work on these problems but also preventing the media finding anything else incriminating. He's took time out from his personal time (he's been tweeting well after work hours) to keep us up to date via Twitter (albeit slowly to start with, but at least he's made an effort and kept us somewhat in the loop) and interact with us directly. I can't imagine the CEO of many other companies doing the same thing. To be honest I think he's done quite well. In less capable hands (maybe a CEO who hadn't reacted in such a timely and firm manner) I could imagine this scandal would have nailed the coffin and buried Habbo, but as it stands Habbo's gonna be unmuted this week with great improvements and we're gonna have a much bigger say in what happens in the future. I really get the feeling that Paul actually cares about the users and I think that's important here.

If you'd read my post I think you'd understand that we agree on most issues. For instance Paul being blamed for the issues on Channel 4 is unfair. His handling of the situation started off disastrously but now seems quite good. Whether he recovers or not remains to be seen? Of course we don't know what measures he's going to introduce and whether Habbo will bounce back (personally I don't think it will, parents won't trust it again, it lacks investors and whenever it's Googled, people will see its reputation is in tatters) but at least it looks like Habbo users will be safe once again which is the most important thing.

The investors could both have remained if Habbo managed to prevent the Channel 4 report getting out of control by countering it early and proving to investors they were going to tackle it by taking initiative. The report itself wouldn't have attracted as much attention if that happened. Plus investors are pretty faceless organisations so they tend to be not concerned with image (that's not to say some of them aren't ethical though).

[PiippBB]

If you'd read my post I think you'd understand that we agree on most issues. For instance Paul being blamed for the issues on Channel 4 is unfair. His handling of the situation started off disastrously but now seems quite good. Whether he recovers or not remains to be seen? Of course we don't know what measures he's going to introduce and whether Habbo will bounce back (personally I don't think it will, parents won't trust it again, it lacks investors and whenever it's Googled, people will see its reputation is in tatters) but at least it looks like Habbo users will be safe once again which is the most important thing.

The investors could both have remained if Habbo managed to prevent the Channel 4 report getting out of control by countering it early and proving to investors they were going to tackle it by taking initiative. The report itself wouldn't have attracted as much attention if that happened. Plus investors are pretty faceless organisations so they tend to be not concerned with image (that's not to say some of them aren't ethical though).

I did read your post, I was just reiterating the parts I agree with. And I agree Paul's initial reaction was disastrous, muting the hotel with no prior warning, explanation, or reason was ridiculous. Posting the Tweets about Becs etc which he swiftly deleted was also a pretty stupid move. But he's certainly pulled it all back over the past few days and I think that now he's doing a good job. We know why he muted the hotel, the plan for reactivating chat, and most importantly, that they were actually working on things as soon as the hotel was muted. At first it seemed like we'd been muted and they were just sat around panicking, now we know they were putting plans together immediately.

[Jordy]

I did read your post, I was just reiterating the parts I agree with. And I agree Paul's initial reaction was disastrous, muting the hotel with no prior warning, explanation, or reason was ridiculous. Posting the Tweets about Becs etc which he swiftly deleted was also a pretty stupid move. But he's certainly pulled it all back over the past few days and I think that now he's doing a good job. We know why he muted the hotel, the plan for reactivating chat, and most importantly, that they were actually working on things as soon as the hotel was muted. At first it seemed like we'd been muted and they were just sat around panicking, now we know they were putting plans together immediately.

Ahh fair enough I agree with everything there too which is good

The muting does seem a very shrewd move, like everyone else I wasn't convinced by it initially but it's won me over. It's just wait and see now to see what the measures are, at least the media are reporting about forthcoming changes with the unmuting, presumably they'll be more articles about it in the forthcoming week and possibly in a positive manner this time. I suspect what Habbo implement in the forthcoming days will be quite complex though, if they've had a week to put all the best minds at Sulake together and mute the hotel in the mean time, I doubt they're going to come up with anything petty.

[PiippBB]

I expect a lot of the stuff introduced won't be obvious and will be beneath the surface, bar things like the quiz to activate the chat function. I would imagine most of it is better filters which catch out keywords and phrases much faster and better than the previous. Things like that won't be evident to the ordinary user but will be very different for the mods; my guess is they've spent the last week putting these complex systems together and retraining the mods on how better to police the game and that the gap between each release is more for their benefit to ensure the systems are working correctly and the mods don't just know how to use the new system but they can handle it too. I can't honestly see us actually knowing what all ten of these new features are unless we're actually told by Sulake. A few of the changes are already evident however, such as the removal of the dating category and the change to the kissing booth furni. I would assume they've put an outright ban on rooms such as 'sexy singles' and 'kissing booths' which encourage the type of behaviour which often leads to the incidents highlighted by C4. I'm totally in favour of this to be honest, it's all well and good when these things are intended as a role play to be kept in game (as I think was the intention from Habbo when they started to allow these rooms) but it seems apparent from C4's reports that all too often users try to take this further. I just hope we're gonna see more of a mod presence in the hotel and some changes to teach the younger players about the possible effects of taking your Habbo change elsewhere.

[e5]

Yes they do already know it but if they made an account then other newspapers or channels would see it and there would be more reports = more scandals, they would get more shocking stories and there would be even more complaints etc

Habbo have even said themselves, on their homepage Habbo have said: "Due to the challenging behaviour of a few users, the hotel as been muted, we will update you when we have more information to share".

Also, lots of us will be getting 7 days of being a Habbo Helper, without helping as we cant!