Now, Habbo is a shell of its former self. Plagued by bullying, a long reliance on the outdated Adobe Flash, and a user base that grew up without being replaced, the hotel rooms of Habbo are mostly full of tumbleweeds.
Let’s explore why exactly Habbo Hotel, once an innovative and incredible social hangout spot, fell from grace.
1. Scams and Hacking
With a platform full of naive kids, it didn’t take long for them to be taken advantage of.
Especially in earlier years, Habbo suffered from an abundance of scams and hacks. Unscrupulous users would claim they could give you free furniture or in-game money—you just had to transfer your most valuable item to them, or download this special program, or type your password backwards in the chat, and so on.
These would always lead to unsuspecting kids losing their accounts. In the worst cases, they would infect their computers with keyloggers, leading to other security issues.
To an adult, these scams seem obvious. But in Habbo, status was everything. If you had a room full of fancy furniture, people came to visit. To children simply wanting to fit in and collect cool items, they fell into these traps all too easily.
While some thieves did face real-world consequences (as reported by the BBC), in most cases the Habbo’s support team shrugged its shoulders and said any lost items or accounts couldn’t be recovered.
Though the platform adapted over time to try to weed out these scams (blocking mentions of URLs or adding warnings to the trading system), it came too slow.
2. Bullying and Harassment
A horrible fact about the internet is that bullying and harassment happens far too often, in communities of all shapes and sizes. This is equally true for Habbo.
In Habbo’s early years, primary moderation came from volunteers called Hobbas (active members of the community who applied for the position), but they could only police so much. There was also a relatively basic swear filter, which replaced rude words or sensitive information with “bobba”.
Unfortunately, it was far too common for players on Habbo to be insulted, bullied, and harassed.
In 2005, Habbo’s parent company Sulake suspended the Hobba program, eventually bringing on a team of full-time, professional moderators.
It clearly wasn’t enough. In 2012, Channel 4 published a report exposing the inadequacy of Habbo’s moderation, with a prevalence of sexual predators on the platform. As a result, some investors pulled out and Habbo muted all chat for around a month while it worked on resolving the website’s safety issues, but the damage was done.
3. Reliance on Flash
There was a time when everything exciting on the web used Shockwave or Flash—Habbo was one such platform. Both were browser plugins developed by Macromedia, later acquired by Adobe.
In July 2017, Adobe announced it would stop supporting Flash in December 2020.
This seemed to take Habbo by surprise. Though it launched its new Unity client when Flash died, it was “open beta” and lacked many important features.
In February 2021, Habbo admitted its Unity client wasn’t up to scratch and re-released the old Flash client packaged as an AIR app.
4. Users Grew Up
Habbo is targeted at children. In the early 2000s, this was a captive audience. The internet was in relative infancy and there were no smartphones; though there were forums and chat rooms, Habbo was an innovation.
Over time, technology and online gaming evolved, as did social media. The children who grew up playing Habbo had outgrown the platform. Those young enough to be the target audience had an abundance of more exciting choices.
Much of the remaining small Habbo user base are older players coming to reminisce about their youth.
5. Slow to Adapt to Mobile
It took Habbo until 2013 to release an iOS app, and a year later for Android. Mobile gaming had already boomed years before, leaving Habbo rushing to catch up, with an app that only worked on powerful phones that many of the young players didn’t have.
While the apps still exist, they are rarely updated and there are endless pages of negative reviews complaining about the bugs, fiddly interface, and poor customer support.
6. Crashed the In-Game Economy
In January 2021, Habbo introduced controversial changes to the in-game economy that crashed the value of items and coins.
As reported by Wired, one-to-one trading was removed in favor of a central marketplace that taxed expensive items and hid sales statistics. Additionally, players are now taxed for withdrawing in-game money from their wallet.
This led to a crash of the in-game economy, with players flooding the market with their furniture in order to cash out quickly.
7. Habbo NFTs
In a poor attempt to stay relevant, September 2021 saw Habbo announce an NFT project called Habbo Avatars.
These avatars can be purchased with Ethereum. In Habbo’s announcement post, “owning one or more of the Habbo Avatars as a collector’s item will be cool”. It’s hardly the most thrilling reason to introduce NFTs based on a children’s game, especially when NFTs come with plenty of risks.
Many saw this for what it was: a way to make more money for Sulake without improving the core user experience of Habbo.
Keep Your Kids Safe Online
It’s remarkable that Habbo Hotel still exists two decades later, even if its popularity has plummeted. One day it’ll close down, perhaps some time soon, and many will bid a fond farewell to a game where they spent much of their childhood.
If you have children of your own, you should ensure you educate them about the importance of being cyber smart; the online world is a wonderful place, but also a dangerous one.
