Sulake closes all local offices [IMAGES IN SULAKE BRAZIL]

Dome.fi: Sulake To Lay Off 25% Of Workforce, Shuts All Country Offices

According to Finnish publication Dome.fi, Sulake the creator of Habbo Hotel, will be laying off some 40-60 people from their workforce. In total, they have about 210 people working for the company so this is effectively 25% of their workforce. We also heard this from a different source, so the chatter is definitely picking up. Sulake.com was down as of just now and there is no official announcement on this so far.

In showing the door to 25% of their workforce, Sulake will also close all of their 11 country offices according to the article on Dome.fi.

The jobs will terminate as of March 16th, even those who have been permanently employed. The company won\'t have to go through the negotiation process large companies are required to follow in Finland as the employees are placed in a separate company that will be completely terminated.

The news on this are really scarce at the moment and naturally we\'ll try to bring you more as things emerge. If you have any information on the situation, feel free to get in touch with us at editor (at) arcticstartup.com

Source: arcticstartup.com

Sulake wrote on her official website:

Sulake has today begun the work to consolidate some of its manual processes and local operations. Habbo Hotel will continue to be available everywhere it is today. In doing this, the Habbo Hotel product will place more emphasis on being a platform for teens, and its priority will be to enable User Generated Content. Teens will be able to socialize, create social spaces, and form groups in a free form, content rich environment. The near future introduction of more social features and a gaming channel will continue to reinforce Habbo Hotel\'s position as a leading social platform for teens.

http://www.sulake.com/blog/entries/2012-02-16-Sulake_Consolidation.html

Sulake wrote on her official Facebook:
We see that a lot of rumours are going around today, but rest assured: we are NOT merging, and we are NOT closing down! We will be back with more info and an FAQ tomorrow!

Lafontaine publishes clarification requests for Habbo in a blog of Sulake

We are not closing any Hotels. If anything, we are going to make them bigger. We’re not closing all the offices. We’re moving people around so we can communicate better together and build things faster. We’re not going to stop awarding badges and creating fun quests and offering ways to achieve status in Habbo. We are going to do more of it.

What is happening is very straightforward. We look at where you go in the Hotel and what you like to do. What you like to do, we are going to make more of. That means more games, more ways to make friends, and more tools to communicate with them. We’re going to stop doing the things you don’t like as much. That means less of what you weren’t using anyway. If we try something and you don’t use it, we’re going to take it down and not have people work on it.

We had some great people working on things that were not as popular in the service. So it did not make sense to keep people working on that. We don’t have enough people making the things you like, so we transferred some people over to work on those things, and we’re going to bring in some new people as well.
http://www.sulake.com/blog/entries/2012-2-17-Our_Thoughts_on_Staff_Changes.html

Images in sulake Brazil: