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Habbo Hotel developed by Sulake set out to be a haven for teenagers to meet and socialize with each other in a safe and moderated environment through using virtual avatars known as Habbos and to keep the “Hotel” environment, were able to decorate their own hotel room(s) with almost endless creativity. I myself was an active member on there for several years while in middle school and eventually left – primarily because most of my friends were moving onto other online games like World of Warcraft and I felt there was a bit more elitism going on that I just lost interest.
While there was always going to be some form of misbehavior with users, these issues were usually quashed pretty quickly with the Hobba and Moderator systems, which while being only a small number of them (Back at that time however it was an Australian-exclusive “Hotel” with only a thousand or two members on at one time) were pretty efficient in dealing with all these issues quite quickly. But given recent reports of abusive behavior going around through a small minority of the habbo community, the decision has been made to keep the hotel open but at least temporarily mute all conversations between users done through the website while they sort things out.
The following was posted on the official Habbo Hotel website by CEO Paul LaFontaine
I am greatly saddened that following reports of abusive behaviors amongst a very small part of the Habbo community we have taken the decision to mute all conversations across the site. We are still reviewing our long-term plans for the Habbo community, and would like to thank our millions of loyal users for their support at this challenging time. This decision has not been taken lightly and underlines the company’s continuing commitment to ensure that all our site users remain safeguarded from inappropriate behavior and conversations.
Our internal investigation is currently on-going, but we will be sure to inform all users of further developments in the coming days and weeks.
In the meantime, my thanks for your patience and understanding.
Having not really been on Habbo Hotel for a while now, I cant really say much on what the state of things are like, however as someone who used the service after school and during weekends to keep up with friends (and showing off some limited design skills) throughout Middle School it would be disappointing to see the service be shut down when I assume a majority of users do follow the correct Habbo Way and use the service for fun (I mean… a moderated online community is safer than a Skype conversation right?).
The following are a few other posts made by Mr. LaFontaine which may be of interest to parents or regular users of the service:
To take an excerpt from these posts, here are some of the measures Habbo Hotel uses to protect the safety of its users:
Habbo’s moderation and safeguarding procedures:
- Habbo employs more than 225 moderators, tracking some 70 million lines of conversation globally every day on a 24/7 basis. These moderators cover all time zones and the multiple languages in which Habbo users converse
- Habbo filters links to black-listed sites
- Habbo’s automated monitoring technology detects inappropriate language and sends automatic calls for help
- Habbo collaborates closely with law enforcement bodies around the world to report threatening and inappropriate user behaviours
- Habbo discusses user security measures with external bodies and governmental organisations involved in youth safety
Facilities to ensure site users are able to protect themselves:
- Users have access to privacy settings that can limit other users accessing their profile or seeing when they are online.
- Users can prevent others from sending friend requests, or prevent others from following them inside Habbo
- Users have access to education on the limits of appropriate behaviour
- Users can mute other players’ chats and remove players from their private rooms
- Users can immediately to report inappropriate discussion to moderators, using the site’s rapid response function
Edit: Users of the site seem to be holding a silent protest
