Hiya!
Just got some word from a source..
Open spoiler
READ ARTICLE FROM: Arctic Startup
"Elisa, the Finnish telecommunications and ICT services company, has acquired Sulake, the makers of Habbo. Sulake will continue as an independent company and will continue under the Habbo brand. Elisa previously owned 24% of the company, and has now increased its share to 85 percent.
Sulake has had a dynamic six months, to say the least. This summer they were covered on the UK's Chanel 4 for the company's failure to police the platform for sexual content, and were labeled by the press as a "paedophile haven." This caused Balderton Capital to exit their 13% share, and 3i to later leave their 16% stake.
The main shareholders in Sulake were then Taivas Group, Elisa Group, and the company’s founders Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä.
In October, Sulake then began talks to reduce their workforce by up to 2/3, laying off a maximum of 60 people. Sulake's CEO Paul Lafontaine then stepped down as CEO at the beginning of this year.
Despite these ups and downs more than four million young people visit Habo every month. The net revenue of Sulake in 2012 was approximately 22 million euro and the result was negative.
"Elisa has had an ownership in Sulake from the beginning and has supported the international expansion of the Habbo Hotel service. The global client base, brand, community platform and solid business competence of Sulake, combined with Elisa's expertise, provide new future opportunities," says Mikael Rönnblad, Vice President of Consumer Services Business of Elisa in a press release."
This can't be all that bad though, right? Since Elisa has had shares in the company for years, all will be the same? (Hopefully).. only time will tell what the future of Sulake holds.
However, what does this mean for Habbo? New owners, new direction of what Habbo will go into? Tell us your thoughts below.
6 replies on “Elisa acquires Sulake - What does this mean for Habbo?”
New ownership should be good, hopefuly it can't get much worse than what we've seen recently. I certainly hope they will steer Habbo in a different direction.
different owner..but with same purpose..to gain more profit from teenagers!
Elisa is already in from the beginning and if they look at the past how Habbo worked and attracted their users than this would only be a good thing. Now that they got more to say about the company, I think this will be a good direction for Habbo. But if they're doing the same and only look at the "how are we able to gain more and more money out of Habbo" than it's just bye Habbo.
[quote=N16694] I agree with you on this, Bring the old credit system back when they wear cheap ect... But then again they have to thing off a way to get money from habbo as that is their income and wages.
Pretty sure 'Elisa' used to show in the client loading screen anyway :)
They need to expand the habbo again if they re-create hotels per country they would make more money since they lost people when the merge happened and the rare values vanished.
They need to look after fansites, because they know, without the fansite's they will loose customers. Clubhabbo is gone, HabboTitles is gone, Great.La is gone, HFFM died and is coming back, every fansite is struggling.