Client History
Mobiles Disco, and the start of Habbo:
Mobiles Disco, and the start of Habbo:
Habbo started in 2000, the earliest version being known as Mobiles Disco. Aapo, Sampo and Daisy Edwards were the original designers of Habbo, and had the initial idea to create a virtual hotel. It was at the end of January 2001 it entered Beta mode, and was released publically a few weeks later. It was simple, having only a simple features, a credit system and safety features. It was made for a band, and was quickly closed as it grew so popular.
Not many people know about Lumisota, but it came just a little bit before Project Goldfish. Lumisota was a snowball fight game, and the inspiration for Snowstorm. It was a simple game, with simple graphics. Lumisota means Snowball Fight in Finnish.
Lumisota Screenshot
Project Goldfish:
This came not far after Lumisota, and used a unusual design, when compared to Mobiles Disco or Lumisota. The characters were larger, and slightly more human like, and the furniture was more life like. A few things from the screenshot below, can be seen in Habbo today, including the males hair, the stickies and even the window. Of course with the trademark clouds ;]
Project Goldfish Screenshot
This was the last version of pre-Habbo, before the beta was released. It includes the final elements that have shaped Habbo itself. Kultakala is Goldfish in Finnish, showing that Project Goldfish is way past a project.
It featured real sized Habbo's, many of the public rooms that were taken out of the hotel recently, and even some of the modern Habbo minigames. It even had the famous Hotel View and navigator.
Who can forget Big hand?
Screenshots of Kultakala
This was the final version before it was released officially to the public. Not much has changed since Kultakala, and you still had to login from the client itself, this posed many security problems. The hotel featured in the Hotel View was used on .com for a while, up until the merge. many rooms were also kept, along with the console.
Many events have occurred in Habbo, mainly in the infobus. The infobus was a "Bus" that would house counselling events and some other events, on selected dates. It was situated in the infobus park. The infobus had changed from yellow, the original design to white. That was before it was removed.
The Infobus Park
The interior of the Infobus
A full list of Visits can be found here.
The merge was an event that occurred on the 2nd of June 2010. It put all English speaking hotels into one, therefore making it easier on Sulake, in money, and staff. It also meant that members would be able to meet members of other countries.
The merging hotels were as follows:
- United States
- United Kingdom
- Canada
- Australia
- Singapore
- Malaysia
The merge was not taken kindly, it resulted in loss of credit value, which was later made up with Compensation furni. Bullying and username clashes.
The Homepage/Client Change of 2012:
In 2012 the Habbo Homepage and the client went through a redesign. They changed from what is shown above, to what is shown below. The old homepage featured a news feed to the left, and minimail below your characters [Not in the picture], along with Hotel picks and some other minor things.
This was changed to having only advertisements featuring games etc, and a Habbo twitter feed.
The client, which featured a view of the hotel was abolished, and Sulake opted for a client start-up page containing news and other information.
It also added a large "H", which took you to the 'Hotel View'.
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Sources: Habbo Wikia, HabboxWiki and @Zaww_
The Homepage/Client Change of 2012:
This was changed to having only advertisements featuring games etc, and a Habbo twitter feed.
The client, which featured a view of the hotel was abolished, and Sulake opted for a client start-up page containing news and other information.
It also added a large "H", which took you to the 'Hotel View'.
New Habbo, or Habbo Beta was a new version of the Habbo client that was released in late May 2009, that was built using Flash. The main change was that the Client no longer ran of off Shockwave, and instead used Flash.
It brought many improvements to the hotel, including a updated User Interface, a updated Catalogue and new features.
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On the 13th June, 2012 Channel 4 [UK] released a report about Habbo, outlining the sexual behaviour that occurred. This report was however biased, as it was preformed in only the clubs.
Subsequently, after the report, Sulake muted all hotels, to stop the behaviour.
On the 19th June, Paul announced that Sulake was updating their moderating system, and the chat systems.
A badge and trophy were handed out to anyone that went online during the mute.
Habbo Helpers and Guardians were released in July and August 2012 respectively, they are a new generation of Hobbas and Experts, being able to deal with bullying cases and questions. You level up using the talent track, of which contains many levels.
