How Social MMO Habbo Has Thrived and Survived for Over 25 Years

You can’t really overstate just how impressive it is for a single online game to still be going strong after over two and a half decades. We live in a world where many modern live service and MMO games are canceled after years of work before ever getting a proper reveal and, in some cases, shut down before even leaving the launch window. Sulake’s Habbo isn’t one of those games, as it’s celebrating 25 years this month.

I have a lot of fond memories from playing Habbo (specifically, Habbo Hotel, back in the early and mid-2000s) back in high school. I’d log into the game from school computers during downtime or in my computer lab class, when I was supposed to be working on other projects or reviewing lessons. It was like an interactive, pixel art chatroom come to life on a computer screen. Suddenly, people were more than just screen names. Everything came to life with an iconic retro aesthetic.

Habbo: Staying Alive for Over 25 Years

You don’t get to 25 years without making some changes and evolving over time, though. Now, Habbo is split up into three separate experiences: Habbo, the main core modern experience, Habbo Collectibles, an experience focused on collecting and earning rewards, and Habbo Hotel: Origins, a revitalized version of the original.

To learn more about Habbo, what makes it tick, and what has allowed it to stay alive for so long despite the odds, I conducted an email Q&A interview with the game’s Product Director, Mika Timonen.

The Origins of Habbo

“Habbo is a pixel-art virtual world where you can build rooms, run events, make friends, and just be yourself—it’s been that way since 2000,” Timonen said in an email. “More than anything, it’s a community game. We’ve got fansites, builders, artists, and volunteers all over the world keeping the Hotel alive. A lot of them have been around for decades, know every bit of the game’s history, and give Habbo its own unique personality.”

First founded in 2000, Habbo has reached an extraordinary amount of people around the world with users from more than 150 countries. According to Timonen, in total, there are “hundreds of thousands of monthly active users” and “over 300 million” total registered users.

“Our tagline is, ‘A strange place with awesome people,’ and it’s true,” Timonen said. “Whether you want to host a rave, design a haunted mansion, or start a roleplay agency, you can. And if you’re new? You’ll find a community that’s all-knowing, creative, and surprisingly kind. There’s nothing else like it.”

Hitting the quarter century milestone for an online social world is pretty remarkable. The list of games that have achieved that and are still running is quite small.

“It feels incredibly humbling,” Timonen said. “Looking at the past twenty-five years, the world has changed a lot. Especially the technology and games with it. For Habbo to not only exist but to still be a vibrant home for a global community is a testament to something deeper than just a game. By this I mean that Habbo is more than a game, it is a community—one of the first ever online communities, actually. It is a place for millions of people to chat, meet friends and throughout the years for some even to make extremely close and long-lasting friendships. It’s difficult to grasp how many lives Habbo has touched, and for how many it remains the warm, happy place from their youth. And even after 25 years for many it still remains the place they come to have fun and chat with their friends.”

Habbo—Lessons in Community and Innovation

“A lot of people remember Habbo as their first online world, and that nostalgia is something we deeply value,” Timonen said. “What has kept Habbo alive and growing is that we’ve always embraced change while staying true to what made it special: freedom, creativity, and social connection. We have modernized the experience to include mobile devices, we introduce fresh content weekly and keep our community at the heart of every decision.”

Leveraging the infectious power of nostalgic curiosity and balancing that against a constant need to innovate and iterate is not easy. Certainly not with an audience that shifts and moves on as quickly as fickle gamers.

“With a game as old as Habbo, change is constant,” Timonen said. “Over the years we’ve added, evolved, and occasionally removed features to keep things fresh. But most importantly, we listen to our community. When something doesn’t land well, we’re not afraid to roll it back, and some of our most successful updates have come directly from player feedback.

“New players show up for the vibe—the pixel-art’s timeless and there’s nothing else out there with the same look and personality. Long-time players come back because their rooms, friends, and items are still here waiting. It’s rare to find a virtual space that feels both familiar and fresh, but that’s exactly what makes Habbo stand out! In the 25 years we have never stopped building. This long history gives players lots of things to explore. So whether you’re logging in for the first time or the first time in years, there’s always something new to experience and someone new to meet.”