O Bizarro Iceberg de Habbo Hotel

THE HABBO HOTEL ICEBERG Hello, living beings! The internet as a whole has been marked by several iconic moments in its history that largely bring back some of the greatest nostalgia we have today. The emergence of memes, old aesthetics and the construction of the internet as a whole is something that left memories in the most diverse fields that perpetuate to this day. And something that was perhaps one of the most emblematic factors of that time were the classic virtual world games that marked with the most varied styles and different concepts that most internet users today remember very well, and Habbo Hotel was one of them. And well, despite being a seemingly innocent game that doesn’t seem to show anything too bad, at least not at first glance, it is a fact that Habbo Hotel was a game that was marked by very bizarre events, some curious and others even disturbing. This is not difficult to imagine, after all, we are talking about a virtual environment where real people exist. And to talk about these topics, in today’s video I bring you an iceberg dedicated to exploring some of these themes related to the game, and this will certainly be an interesting thing to do since it was a game that left a big impression on me and certainly on many others who are watching as well. Before I do, I want to add that this iceberg is mainly based on an iceberg published on reddit by Semydeus a few years ago, but I modified it by adding some topics and discarding others that weren’t so relevant to comment on. So here’s the credit to Semydeus for the original iceberg, and if you want to check it out, I’ll leave a link in the pinned comment for you to look at later. So, without taking too long, grab a coffee and let’s get to the video because the story is long. Surface Sulake Oy, or simply Sulake, is the name of the company behind the creation of Habbo Hotel. It was founded in 2000 by two people named Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyölä, whose name I very likely mispronounced, and is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, with separate offices in London, Madrid, Los Angeles, and São Paulo. In 1999, the founders of Sulake were having some free time at college, and they came up with a game that was later developed called Mobiles Disco, which was designed to be a virtual meeting place for fans of a Finnish rap band called Mobiles. The game, despite having a simple concept, attracted the attention of a very broad young audience, including companies such as advertising agencies, who were responsible for being the first investors in the project, which would later become what was called Hotelli Kultakala, which means Golden Fish Hotel, later becoming what we know as the classic Habbo Hotel. This is a topic that actually expands into two aspects. The first refers to minigames that exist because of the users themselves, such as Battle Banzai and Freeze, for example, which are games with pre-established strategic concepts that the players themselves develop in their rooms with personalized arenas. The second are the official minigames developed by the game itself and that cannot be replicated in private rooms. There have been many examples of games like this throughout the game’s history, such as SnowStorm, Fast Food, Habbo Speedway, Lido Diving and Battleball, for example, which was the previous version of Battle Banzai. Each of these minigames had unique concepts and expanded the game into alternative forms of entertainment, making it very fun. I remember playing these minigames countless times, especially Fast Food and SnowStorm. But I spent a considerable part of my journey in the game in rooms dedicated to the Battle Banzai minigame so I could level up my emblems, but I was lazy so I went to rooms made just to level up emblems, so it was basically my character standing still jumping on a square on the floor for countless hours until I got where I wanted. Emblems Emblems were a very characteristic part of the game’s gameplay. There are literally thousands of badges in the game, with a total of over 12 thousand different badges. Badges act as achievements within the game and are awarded for completing a wide range of tasks and challenges, as well as being related to specific events that often make some of them quite rare, and there are also exclusive badges for servers. And once achieved, they can be added to the player’s profile to be displayed to other users. Challenges can range from very simple tasks such as simply staying in the game until you reach a certain score in minigames or purchasing furniture for your room. The existence of badges, in addition to being a way to create challenges for the player, also serves to keep them inside the hotel for longer. And for me in particular, badges were one of the things I was most obsessed with when I played Habbo Hotel, and I always did my best not to miss any new events and also to level up the ones I already had, as was evident in what I said in the topic about minigames. The word “Bobba” is a well-known term in the game that is used as a filter for inappropriate words such as swear words, meaning that when a player types something derogatory, the word in question is replaced with “Bobba”. Despite being quite popular, during the mid-2010s this term was momentarily replaced by the use of asterisks as a filter for inappropriate words, but this was reverted in September 2012. Interestingly, in Hotelli Kultakala, the original version of Habbo Hotel, the word used was “Höpö”, which would be Finnish for the word “absurd”. Big Hand, or the Big Hand, was a feature present in the old version of the game in the part of the taskbar that allowed the player to access their furniture. It was later removed in 2009 when the beta version of the game was introduced. To bid farewell to the iconic feature, a competition was held among users who were tasked with making farewell videos for Big Hand. In addition, the game also created a hand-shaped chair furniture representing a memorial to the feature that would be removed from the game. Roleplay is a notable feature within Habbo Hotel. This was not exactly observed in all rooms, but a good part of the game’s experiences were conducted in a roleplay format, for example with jobs, weddings, parties and even more bizarre and weird things. Like, really weird. But in general, it was an interesting aspect of the game that made you feel more immersed in the experience, highlighting the idea of ​​a second life that you had with your character in the hotel. Pixels were the name of an old type of credit in the game that could be obtained for free by players through specific tasks. Because it was free, this currency obviously allowed access to a very limited and generic catalog of content. They could be exchanged for some furniture from lines called Hello, Kuurna, some pet accessories, floor and wall patterns, among other minor things. Pixels were removed from the game in 2012 and replaced by the current free currency system called Duckets. Pixels were not an isolated case in fact, there were two other models of in-game currency that existed for a while and were also discarded, such as Loyalty Points and the Super Economy Subscription. Both allowed access to exclusive items in the game, but unlike Pixels, they were obtained through purchases. Habbid was the name of the largest fan site of the Brazilian Habbo Hotel community. It started in 2006 and remained in existence for 12 years, and it functioned as a portal dedicated to bringing news and updates about the game in general terms and also a radio station where players could listen to music and interact with other listeners, in addition to also promoting exclusive events and competitions offering rare prizes within the game. And it was due to the large audience it gained throughout its existence that Habbid became one of the biggest references in the Brazilian Habbo Hotel community. Shallow Waters This was the name of an event that gained a lot of notoriety, both internally and externally to the game. NOTMYHABBO was a protest led by the players of Habbo Hotel started with a hashtag of the same name raised on Twitter in 2021. This protest was being led by a streamer named Quackity who led it along with his community against the changes announced by Sulake that would be implemented in the game, mainly in response to the removal of the classic system of item exchanges between players that were one of the biggest pillars of the economy and social interaction in the game. Using the hashtag #NOTMYHABBO, along with others such as #SAVEHABBO and #WEARETHEGAME, players organized massive invasions within the game with mostly identical avatars filling several popular rooms in the hotel as a way to express their dissatisfaction with the announced changes. Since these changes would end up culminating in the game losing its essence that it had carried for so many years. But despite being a particularly striking and curious event in the history of the game, it can be said that the players’ cry in the end was not heard, since Sulake, even after criticism, decided to implement the changes anyway. This is the name of an unlisted public room created by the game itself. It is hidden behind the stage curtain of the theater room, and this room was designed to be a sort of backstage area for the main theater room. There is nothing special there, it is just a kind of easter egg. Alt Codes were and still are widely used by Habbo Hotel players. They consist of diverse written symbols that can be written from specific combinations of numbers typed together with the ALT key being pressed. These symbols are very commonly found mainly in the names of hotel rooms. Pools Closed was the name of another protest that took place within the game, but this one happened back in its origins, in 2006. This event started after rumors began to surface that moderators were abusing their status in the game to ban people with dark-skinned avatars and keep them out of the hotel without any reason. Given this controversy, on July 6, 2006, a group of 4chan users decided to invade the game with dark-skinned avatars, suits, and black power haircuts, forming blockades at the entrances to public rooms and especially at the hotel pool, preventing users from entering, claiming that the pool was contaminated with the AIDS and HIV viruses. That’s right. The protest spread and was not limited to just 4chan users, but several users from another site also joined the cause, populating the demonstration with more and more people. This quickly escalated to an absurd number of users, culminating in the game having its server taken offline on July 12 due to the excess of players. This protest had such an impact that it ended up gaining a cult status on the internet referencing Habbo Hotel, and even the game itself incorporated tributes to the event with furniture related to the incident. Habbo X is the name of a project based on an NFT version of Habbo Hotel. This would be an attempt by Sulake to reinvent itself by surfing the not-so-recent wave of NFTs, establishing a market with sales of rooms, avatars, among other things for values ​​in Ethereum. As it is not difficult to see, the concept of NFT has practically died on the internet, which leads to the conclusion that this game will most likely never actually be finished. Despite this, it is worth mentioning that Habbo Hotel still has an NFT store for selling products related to the game. The Great Mute was an event that occurred on June 13, 2012, when all Habbo Hotel players were completely silenced, being prevented from writing through the chat or even through the game’s minimail. This event was caused by allegations and accusations of sexually explicit behavior and mainly pedophilia, and a protest was led by a British TV channel called Channel 4. The event mobilized a huge number of players who joined Sulake in a general demonstration between the game rooms holding torches and filling rooms in protest against the accusations, mainly in the Welcome Room, since despite having been prevented from speaking in the game, the decision of the Sulake was seen by players as a forced action, since otherwise the game’s servers could end up being taken down due to the accusations. The incident lasted for about a month until the silencing was lifted and the chat system returned to normal after the devs implemented changes to the game’s chat system. Although it was resolved, many point out that this incident was one of the main reasons for Habbo Hotel’s popularity to fall , since the game saw a significant drop in players after that. Over the years, there have been several retro versions of Habbo Hotel. These hotels were versions that offered all the game’s options for free to players, so you didn’t have to pay for basically any services or currency, having access to unlimited credits that allowed you to do whatever you wanted at no cost. There were all kinds of servers of this type, each with a different name, and most likely, if you’ve played the game, you’ve already ventured into at least one of them. I remember playing on a lot of these servers because when I was little I couldn’t put credits on my original account a lot of the time, so I would play these alternative versions of the game to get access to things I wouldn’t have in the original game. I have to say that it was also a really fun thing to do, although maybe a little morally wrong. The Game Center was a kind of portal within the game that allowed access to all the other non- Habbo Hotel games, like the minigames I mentioned earlier like SnowStorm and Fast Food. The Game Center was an initiative centered around the idea of ​​relaunching Habbo Hotel as a gaming platform instead of a simple chat site. Initially, the addition of the Game Center made players unsure as it could transform the game experience into something completely different from what it had always been, but it ended up becoming more accepted over time. Despite this, it did not take long for a sharp decline in user interest in Game Center to emerge, which later led to it being removed along with its associated games in 2014. Middle Waters This is the name of a lost media release for a canceled Habbo Hotel mobile game that had been announced in 2005. Habbo Islands was planned for the Nokia N-Gage and was announced at E3 2006, and featured the game’s characters interacting on an island completing challenges and adventures. However, due to hardware limitations and the failure of sales of the Nokia N-Gage, the game ended up being quietly canceled at an unknown date. A YouTuber named Reiju managed to acquire a copy of the 2006 E3 version of the game on eBay and made the game available online, and in 2020 a user named Michael Fitzmayer managed to break the file’s copy protection , making it playable, marking the game’s recovery on November 17, 2020. Lumisota is the name of the second project developed by Sulake, being the successor to the first called Mobiles Disco. The game was a predecessor of the SnowStorm and Freeze minigames later attributed to Habbo Hotel, but its gameplay is mainly similar to that of SnowStorm. Lumisota was released in the year 2000, and together with Mobiles Disco they were the basis for the creation of the first version of Habbo Hotel. Monitorimatti is the name of an account on the Brazilian Habbo Hotel server whose existence is shrouded in some mystery. The main one is related to the date on which this account was created, being July 19, 2004. However, this date does not make sense, since the Brazilian Habbo Hotel website only came into existence 2 years later, in 2006, which makes it impossible for any account to have been created at any time before that. Several theories have emerged over time regarding the existence of this account, but in fact this account was a bot created by the game itself. This bot was removed from the game in 2009, and in its place was added monitorimatti-02, which, like its predecessor, also raised many doubts and theories, since this account had, and in fact still has to this day, a very particular behavior of logging into the game every 127 seconds. And you can even open the game to check that it is really true. It turns out that, as well as the one previously mentioned, this account is also a bot programmed by the game to monitor the loading time to enter the rooms and the hotel, serving as a data collector to improve the game’s services. Closed Hotels There were some different versions of the game’s hotel that ended up being closed due to unpopularity among players. This was the case, for example, of the Japanese version of Habbo Hotel, which opened in 2003, but later closed in April 2009 due to lack of interest from the Japanese community. The same was also repeated in cases such as the Swedish Habbo Hotel, which was actually the third hotel to be opened publicly, the Chinese hotel, the Russian hotel, the Norwegian hotel, among others. Room 545 is the name of an old creepypasta in the game that tells the story of a player who found a mysterious room of the same name at 3 am, where strange things began to happen when he entered it. It’s a very generic creepypasta with a story that’s pretty standardized to the classic creepypastas of the old internet, which at the time were actually quite scary, but today they’re usually just silly. Free Credit Hacks Hacks for free credits were something extremely common to find on the internet in the past. Many of them came from dedicated websites that promised credits from specific commands or simply by adding your account name and the amount of credits you wanted, others were clearly dubious programs that promised the same thing. And obviously none of them ever worked. Despite this, it’s also important to point out that even if they didn’t work, many of these websites or programs were simply malicious and made with the intention of stealing accounts or simply installing viruses on the victim’s computer. Especially in the early days of the game, it was very common to find casino rooms created by players in their rooms. They were structured to support games of the most diverse types, ranging from 21 to poker, betting, among many others. Felca would certainly go crazy with that. Despite being quite common, there were many controversies in these casino rooms. The first and most obvious of these is the fact that Habbo Hotel is a game where most of the players are minors, which makes it problematic to introduce the concept of casinos to children who can get addicted to it at such a young age. But in addition to this, another controversial thing about these casinos is that many of them were fraudulent schemes with cheating. The owners of a casino room had the freedom to manipulate the games in any way they wanted, for example by manipulating the player’s chances of winning to be practically zero in a few rounds, or simply refusing to pay very large prizes from a round that the player won. Unused Domains This refers to two cases of hotels that were never opened to the public and had their domains abandoned. One of them was habbo.at, which refers to the domain that was planned for the Austrian version of Habbo Hotel, and the other was habbo.pl, referring to the Polish version of Habbo Hotel. There is not much information about these versions of the game, but it is believed that the reason they were never released was due to financial difficulties. Between 2005 and 2007, Sulake released five games based on Habbo Hotel for J2ME-compatible cell phones, such as Nokia phones. Among them were the games Habbo Dreams, Puzzle Pipes, Duck-Up, Space Pool and Habbo Creatures. Not much material remains of these games other than a few recorded gameplays and related images. However, the game Habbo Dreams was the only game among them to be found and made available later. Scams One of the most controversial points in the history of Habbo Hotel is certainly the illicit activities commonly committed among players. This is because the game’s economy moves credits that can in fact be exchanged for money in real life through other websites dedicated to sales, which consequently gives a real value to the currency. of the game, which in turn becomes the motivation for scams. Over the years, there have been all sorts of schemes for carrying out thefts, both internally and externally to the game, such as the supposed free credit programs I mentioned earlier. But this is mainly attributed to actions carried out within the hotel itself by malicious players who used different means to appropriate other players’ properties, such as through the organization of fraudulent events, forged negotiations, casinos as I mentioned earlier, among several other models. An example of a very common scam is when a player advertises a specific piece of furniture for a price much lower than it is actually worth, but when negotiating with the victim, he puts another item similar to what the buyer wanted in the negotiation, which is worth much less than what was being paid. People usually fall for this type of scam when they do not pay much attention to what is being exchanged. To tell the truth, scams are something that has become so common that it has practically become a legacy of the game. Well, basically this is the name of another creepypasta that can be summarized as a version inspired by room 545 that I mentioned before. The only difference is that this version is much more generic and poorly written than the original. Bottom of the Iceberg “Adult” RP Rooms Given the relatively great freedom offered in Habbo Hotel, it is to be imagined that there were many obscure practices conducted between players within the game, and this is probably one of the most bizarre. Role Play rooms, as seen before, have always been very common. However, a concept that is somewhat disturbing that existed in some rooms was the concept of “adult” RP, if you know what I mean. In this type of room, role plays occurred as in most others, but with the difference that they were completely focused on totally perverted and inappropriate themes for certain ages, and to tell the truth… I think it is inappropriate for any age. In a way, it’s a bit scary to know that it exists in the darkest parts of the game. Ped0 Well, this is a subject that has already been highlighted in a few topics ago, but let’s go. The concept involved in children’s games in general is something that inevitably becomes a focus for bad and ill-intentioned people, something that obviously isn’t limited to Habbo Hotel, but all games aimed at minors. However, when it comes to Habbo Hotel, there have been many disturbing cases over the years related to practices like this. One example of this is a man named Alex Nicholson, a 24-year-old resident of the United Kingdom who was sentenced to two years in prison after admitting to carrying out sexual practices while video calling two minors he had met in Habbo Hotel. Unfortunately, as terrible as it is, this is not an isolated case, and over the years this has been a dark reality present in the game. Private Cults Online games are places where all sorts of things can happen, and this particular topic is something that is associated with several virtual world games, with perhaps the most remembered example being the Worlds.com cult led by the user Nexialist. And a similar case has even been publicly manifested in Habbo Hotel. This case occurred in 2001 when members of a 4chan forum called Something Awful began to invade the game claiming to be members of a cult called Geno. All the followers had a very particular look that was highlighted by the use of gray as the predominant color in their avatars, no hair and with names that somehow derived from the word Geno. All this while they surrounded the different rooms of the hotel, preventing people from passing through the rooms that could not pass over the cultists, who remained standing there spreading the word about the path of Geno, which they referred to as the “gray path”. This particular case is so bizarre that when you dig deeper you end up falling into a dark rabbit hole that leads to things even stranger. Even though it was a case that was in some way publicly exposed in the game, this only leads to the idea that even more obscure things have already occurred in private places that only those who participated were aware of. Which would not be surprising when you consider the fact that many things have already happened in this game in a confidential manner. And well, we have reached the end of another video. Habbo Hotel was a game that marked a good part of my life, and it was very satisfying to bring a video dedicated to talking about it, since it certainly wasn’t just me that it marked, but also more than one generation of players. It is very curious to know how this game is surrounded by interesting things, but it is still undeniably strange to know that there are many bizarre and obscure things associated with a game that is mainly aimed at a more childish audience. I hope you enjoyed this video and had a good experience with it, and if that is the case I kindly ask that you leave a like and comment what you thought of the video, it will certainly help me a lot. And that’s it, I hope to see you all in the next video. See you later.