Bring Casino's Back Petition

[steamyxo]

pple need to let this go lol

[Empired]

Firstly the primary and as far as I'm concerned ONLY reason habbo closed casino's (also been told by staff) was because of credit card fraud, an issue which had been going on for a long time and was dealt with for a long time. I'm not a legal expert but I imagine little legal responsibility could be attributed to them with all the right disclaimers in place and therefore I assume it was the attributing dedication of resources in proportion to what casinos brought back to the game (e.g. profits for sulake).

There is very little legal precedence to suggest that casinos or any dice-related game on habbo for that matter can be called legally as "gambling". I point you in the direction of Puzzle Pirates which has an even younger demographic, is on the app store and features many casino based games such as poker etc.

The whole "The ban was because of the migration to the app store and apple devices" I assure you is just urban myth.

Your point a) is more accurate which is why I wanted to create this page as it is external and habbo wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

I believe that if I got a big enough audience then through means of negative publicity, we could convince habbo it was in their best interest to reverse the dice-ban.

By negative publicity I mean things like:

- Further exposing of the channel 4 investigation
- Writing to current and potential shareholders
- Exposing potentially illegal ad-placements and suspending an important source of revenue
- Convincing users not to buy credits over a duration

etc.

Hey, it's great to see you're so passionate about Habbo and its economy. Seriously, Habbo needs more people who are willing to stand up and say what they think. However, I think you may have been slightly misinformed about a couple of things.

First of all, credit card fraud really doesn't have much to do with why gambling and casinos were banned. Credit card fraud will continue to happen as long as credits are still available to buy. Removing gambling may have slightly decreased the number of cases, but Sulake wasn't really interested in this.
They decided to ban gambling because Apple would never let them have an app for Habbo if they were encouraging people as young as thirteen to "gamble". As other people have said, casinos on Habbo ARE gambling as you buy credits which you then use to gamble (much like buying chips to gamble with in a real life casino).
I don't know much about Puzzle Pirates, but I assume there was a reason for Apple to let gambling be a part of the game. Is it multiplayer or single player? If you're gambling against a machine and not another person, the rules may be different.

Habbo obviously had to put quite a bit of thought into whether or not to ban gambling. It would lose them a lot of users AND a lot of money (as gamblers would no longer need credits to fund their gambling). So they clearly think that getting Habbo an app will make them more money than the gamblers were.

I'd also just like to point out that it's possible your negative publicity ideas may not have the effect you want. Exposing the Channel 4 investigation may just lead to Habbo having another month(ish) long mute. Or worse, they may end up having to shut Habbo down entirely!
Convincing users not to buy credits for a while is also a bit of a dodgy one. I doubt you'd be able to convince the majority of users not to buy credits (either because they don't hear about it or because they don't support your idea) so Habbo wouldn't really be losing out. Plus, "over a duration" means that eventually people would go back to buying credits and everything would go back to exactly how it was.

I like the idea of writing to shareholders, though. I'd be interested to see how that one turns out if you were to go ahead with it

So yeah, I'm not going to support the petition. Partly because I never went to casinos so that doesn't affect me, and partly because I don't think it's okay for underage people to gamble under ANY circumstances.

Anyway, like I said, it's brilliant to see you so interested in Habbo. Even if this doesn't work out, keep it up

[IWishIWasCool]

Again, Go play Zynga Poker you morons.

Stop trying to bring them back so you can scam kids again.

[Benz]

@Empired I appreciate your thoughts on the subject and I agree 100% about what you said about the fraud situation which is what infuriates me so much as from what I understand (habbo staff have told) it was the only reason why the dice-ban came into effect, but I suppose with so many stories out there it's almost impossible to confirm.

I also agree with a-lot of what you said about the methods I referenced and just to clarify if this idea even does get enough support I doubt we would attempt such aggressive strategies.

For the record Puzzle Pirates is a multiplayer game with similar in-game credit purchases and even more prominent casino games like in-built poker tables. Furthermore I am 90% sure that the apple store was not, at-least a significant reason for the dice-ban but again I suppose this is up for debate.

For everyone else insisting that the casino based activities that took place on habbo were and can be considered 'gambling' legally I challenge you to find me any legal precedence of a similar case, because I highly doubt you will find one. The legal definition explicitly states that it must be for items of value, habbo coins do not constitute this directly. I don't know how many times I have to repeat myself.

@Viba you told me this:

"Underage people buy coins
they use these coins to gamble in casinos with the possibility to lose them & the money they spent, therefore it is gambling.

Oxford dictionary definition of gambling in case you're unaware:


Definition of gamble in English:

gamble

VERB
Play games of chance for money;


Casinos won't be unbanned. please move on."

I don't mean to be rude but are you dumb? You quoted me a definition that just proves my point.. that gambling is to "play games of chance for money"

Habbo credits are considered virtual and not a commodity, currency or anything of value.

The same goes to @Zak who said:

"You buy credits with money in real-life then gamble the credits in casino rooms? It is illegal. "

Please just read my posts as that is not the definition of gambling. People clearly have some misconceived conception of this.

To everyone who is happy that casinos are gone, fair enough I know we weren't exactly the most likely bunch.

[Kyle]

buy in= not gambling
potential to cash out = gambling

as habbo->irl trading was rife in casinos it makes it gambling.

[Benz]

buy in= not gambling
potential to cash out = gambling

as habbo->irl trading was rife in casinos it makes it gambling.

Finally a sensible argument.

The problem with this is firstly that habbo covers itself legally in part through its disclaimers that prohibit the sale of credits by users.

Secondly, similarly and more importantly because it is an indirect trade habbo has no control over it therefore it is not legally their responsibility. In order to prosecute habbo for under-age gambling it would require a whole new legal precedent which would set the bar for pretty much any game of chance where there is a multiplayer trading aspect which would affect the entire industry and is also highly unlikely to ever be passed in the first place due to the lack of control game-developers have over it.

So again currently it is not considered gambling and is very unlikely to ever be considered that.

[James]

Are you done? Good.

Back to the original point of this thread, clearly 80% of the people who have posted disagree with casinos and know they won't be coming back, therefore the petition is a waste of time and effort. Nobody wants to help you get casinos back just so you can continue selling things you get from underage people on a black market.
Good luck though.

[Zak]

Going back to my original post Benz.

If a 14 year old child walked into a casino and managed to exchange their money for casino chips and then went on to play games in the casino using those chips, do you think that would be classed as gambling? Of course it would.

That is in no way different to exchanging your money for Habbo credits then betting in various games of chance. This is what I think anyway.

Besides loads of people sold their casino earnings on line. Isn't that right @Soy; haha

[Daltron]

the petition has 2 likes ..

[Michael]

They won't come back, and I'm glad they won't - full of scammers, black market traders & a hangout for the dark side.