![]() ![]() We do not accept screenshot as evidence as they can be altered. They emailed me back with the response ‘Please remove the Habbo from your friends list to avoid getting messages from him. “I then emailed the company with evidence and a screenshot proving my statement. “When I reported this to Habbo I was abusing the ‘help’ tool. Last year I sent Habbo an email with evidence of a male asking if I want to see his private parts… Sophie emailed us and said: “I am 18-years-old and I started playing Habbo about five years ago. Some of the messages strongly criticised our news story but some people backed the findings and said they had had similar experiences. We were flooded with emails and tweets as well as messages to the Channel 4 News Facebook page. Subsequent to our report, Sulake “muted” the site, meaning users (known as Habbos) could not chat with each other and some Habbos even staged an online protest. These moderators cover all time-zones and the multiple languages in which Habbo users converse.” Sulake’s Chief Executive Paul LaFontaine told us: “Habbo’s moderation and safeguarding procedures includes employing more than 225 moderators, tracking some 70m lines of conversation globally every day on a 24/7 basis. We found there to be little or no moderation despite the fact that Sulake, the company which runs the site, told us that user safety is its top priority.There was also evidence that paedophiles could be using the site to “groom” victims. We found the site to contain pornographic sexual chat, despite being aimed at children as young as 13-years-old. I’m glad I checked out.Back in June, Channel 4 News revealed shocking details of a significant lack of moderation in the online game, Habbo (formerly known as Habbo Hotel). Its pool and restaurant frequented with unthinking daily ritual by a handful of dying patrons who never left. The paint peeling off the ceiling, the corridors filled with piles of unused collapsible seats. I like to think that old hotel is still there, however, in a forgotten and rarely visited corner of the Habbo continent. But it is still free-to-play (and, it turns out, vulnerable to scammers). The suggestion is that this is now a whole world, not a single building. The realm of the Habbos still exists, but the “hotel” has been dropped from the name of the website. I was compelled simply by virtue of colour and affordability to check in to this cyber-labyrinth. Ultimately, I know not why the Habbos hotel. And to show those invisible friends my sweet new cool digital t-shirt. Maybe I wanted to make friends nobody else could see. ![]() You made a character, walked into the lobby, and explored the rooms and suites of other disgusting teenagers and kids. I live with the shame of being one of the Hotel’s previous guests. And as such, the perfect game for the unwell years of the 2000s. A game of dressing up in cool clothes and having shinier toys than your cyber-neighbour. It was a mostly innocent sorta-MMO about being a tiny lego-like person in a cartoon chatroom. I would like to say Habbo Hotel spread from school child to school child like a Flash-powered lice infection, until it nested in my own home computer, because that is a colourful metaphor that expresses my distrust of the sickly internet games that plagued my early teens. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives.
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