When GlitterKat, a former Sulake employee in the United Kingdom, left the company in November 2006, he took with him a rare real-world Habbo item: a copy of the book "Just Another Day: The Story of Habbo Hotel", which features exclusive interviews, stories, images and data about Habbo. It's estimated that no more than 10 copies of this book exist, making it a very rare item and highly desired by Habbo's loyal audience.
GlitterKat kept the book with her for almost 10 years, until in May 2015 she caught the community's attention to try to sell it for hundreds of dollars, allegedly in an attempt to raise money to buy a Porsche.
The book was sold, the amount paid is unknown and it's also unknown whether GlitterKat bought his desired Porsche, but this case is evidence that there is a community willing to pay arbitrary amounts for an item in the game.
It doesn't matter if it's real, virtual or digital.
Let's get down to business
More than a game, Habbo is the main product of a company specialized in developing virtual communities. Like any company that cares for the sustainability of its business, Sulake must adapt its products and services to the main market trends - even if it eventually upsets part of its loyal audience. It's either that or be destroyed by the market.
While the active user base reduces year after year, the Habbo NFT project is a valid strategy for Sulake to tap into an audience that is willing to spend a lot of money, taking advantage of the prestige of its main product.
However, when Sulake decided to treat Habbo and NFTs as a single product, it converted Habbo into a business game instead of a pastime for his community, as it has been until now. More than that, Sulake stopped being transparent and clear with its audience, who no longer understand the company's intentions.
In the case of an emerging technology, such as NFT, great caution must be exercised. The benefits of a new technology (or concept, such as Web3) can be lost when applied abruptly.
In my opinion, the Habbo NFT project is not a mistake, but rather the way it has presented itself to the community. There are three reasons that I highlight below: user insecurity, exclusive community and loss of focus.
User insecurity
On the one hand, Habbo presents itself as a community for young people, free for those over 14 years old. On the other hand, NFTs, which are an intrinsic part of Habbo, were restricted to people under 18. On many occasions, this resource for people over 18 was the featured news on the front page of the community that allows people under 18. Likewise, It is also dubious about Discord and other external platforms, which are permissive when it comes to NFTs, but the restrictions remain the same for any other Habbo issue. In short, parallel communities were created within a single one.
These contradictions leave the user highly confused and in a situation of extreme insecurity, who is not able to understand what they can or cannot do, as well as any consequences.
Habbo as an exclusive community
Historically, Habbo's largest user base has been in Latin America, which for cultural, social and economic reasons does not always keep up with trends in Europe, where Sulake is based. This fact contributed to Habbo arriving in Brazil, in 2006, as an elitist community, predominantly young people from high-end neighborhoods in São Paulo (characterized by being white people with high purchasing power), where the few physical points of sale of credits was based. Thanks to Sulake Brasil, 4Queijos and Disco-Lee managed to change Habbo's image to a community for everyone. Consequently, they became one of the best-known personalities among young audiences in Brazil, while the Brazilian community became the largest in the world.
That effort is now being destroyed. As beneficial as Web3 is, this digital culture is still very unpopular with most young people, especially in the global South. When Sulake imposes its culture on Habbo instead of engaging with that of its community, it only alienates its loyal audience due to the feeling of not belonging.
Loss of focus
When the Habbo NFT project was launched, Web3 was the talk of the town. In this context, Facebook promised to launch its own "metaverse", and renamed its controlling company's name to Meta, aiming at the future of the web. Sulake then rivaled Habbo as the "original metaverse." However, in this competition there were no winners, because today it is barely talked about, as the corporate world has changed its focus to artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, it's been three years since the end of support for Adobe Flash Player in browsers and Sulake still hasn't presented a stable hotel solution to the community, which should theoretically always be the priority. Instead, with NFTs, it changed its product focus and even announced a new hotel. Now, in addition to not having a stable hotel, we have added another unstable hotel and we no longer understand what Habbo's focus is.
Obviously, Web3 is still the future, but the leap forward has its cost.
What now?
NFTs are being sold, the amount raised by Sulake is unknown, nor is it known whether the company will achieve its goals. Worse than that: we don't even know if there is any objective. But I hope Sulake is measuring the consequences of her decisions so that we have a lot of stories to tell in other books.