Sulake is taking serious action against retro and scam site owners
Habbo Hotel is known among youngsters worldwide. But who has heard of Gabbo Hotel? Or Hobba Hotel?
How about Habbi Hotel? These are not names of upcoming Sulake products but names of so called Habbo
retros or retro hotels. Retro hotels are fake, illegal Habbo Hotel copies running on emulated
servers. They violate trademarks as well as copyright protected images and software of Sulake and
might be harmful to play.
Sulake takes such illegal activity very seriously. There are several aspects that also make
the situation potentially dangerous for Habbo players: some retro hotels operate as scam or
phishing sites as well, recording Habbo names and passwords and then stealing the virtual items,
such as furniture from the users on the legit hotel. Not to mention viruses and Trojans, which are
found on many of these fake sites.
Most of the retro sites function very poorly and a typical retro hotel has only a couple of
simultaneous users. To protect its IP-rights and the users of Habbo, Sulake has now decided
to take action.
During January and February Sulake has approached retro hotel site owners with cease
and desist letters with the objective of informing the site owners about the illegality of the
activity and after that stopping these services. In these letters Sulake offered amicable solutions
to solve the situations. Also ISPs and hosting service providers of retro hotel site owners were
contacted. Some of the people contacted were cooperative, some not.
At the moment Sulake Legal Department is preparing court proceedings against a number of
retro hotel site owners. Further legal actions were already taken against certain scammers in
Holland at the end of last year, see e.g.
this
article.
Short facts:
Retro site: A site that illegally runs a non-authorized, emulated Habbo server which is
able to communicate with the Habbo client. The name “retro hotel” comes from the fact that the
servers normally run older versions of Habbo.
Retro distributor: A website that distributes server software that can be used to set up a
retro hotel.
Scam site: A site that asks for the visitors’ Habbo name and password, or tries to trick
the visitor to disclose them in another way. The site owner will then collect the usernames and
passwords and steal the furni of the tricked person in the official Habbo Hotel.
