Habbo Hotel is an online multiplayer game
aimed primarily at teenagers. The game allows you to explore rooms, chat with other players,
and make your own creations. But most importantly, it allows you to trade.
As Habbo’s monetisation model relies on the purchase of virtual coins, it is in Habbo’s
interest to generate demand for their currency. And over the past 20 years, Habbo has meticulously
crafted an ultra-consumerist environment to facilitate this demand. This was what I explored
in my previous Habbo video. But what happens if people don’t want to
pay for coins. What happens when people get fed up of waiting in privatised bread queues,
working in drab corporate jobs, or selling their personal details away in dodgy survey
sites. Well, they turn to crime. Over the past six months, I’ve talked to
dozens of players to explore the topic of financial crime, logging over 200 pages of
interview transcripts, reading the relevant academic literature on the topic, and even
catching people in the act. In this video essay, I will explore how financial
crime has evolved over time, how Habbo chooses to respond to financial crime, and finally,
give you a personal note. I hope you enjoy.
Back in the early 2000s, the internet was the new frontier of technology, and being
new and unfamiliar, it was basically the Wild West.
Habbo Hotel was a game birthed during this era. And being an innovative new game, a pioneer
of its time, it was rather broken. Scripters were players who basically hacked
the game using exploits. They manipulated code within the game.
While some scripters did it merely for fun, such as allowing themselves to decorate their
rooms better, others decided to give themselves endless amounts of coins and rare items.
This was also a time when internet security wasn’t much of a thing.
For example, it has been alleged that one of the richest players in UK Habbo obtained
their wealth through one of the largest hacking conspiracies in the games’ history. I would
like to point out that I was unable to cross-reference this claim. I’d like to tell you this story
anyways as it helps illustrate a point. Back in 2002, ione, who was serving as the
UK hotel’s manager, gave each player who logged in during her birthday a special gift.
Each gift contained one of three items: a Throne, a Russian Samovar, or a Holoboy.
Collectively, these items would be known as the Ione gifts and they would end up being
highly sought after. The Throne in particular would continue to
dominate the market for generations and its contemporary value sits at around 600 coins,
or around $48 USD at black market rates. Now, let’s move forward to 2006. The player
made a realisation. Most of the recipients of the Ione gifts, the players of 2001 and
2002, were most likely to have moved on from Habbo and would’ve left their accounts abandoned
four years later. And so, allegedly, they began to conduct brute
force attacks against vast swathes of abandoned accounts, helpfully aided by Habbo itself
which decides to publicly display when users have last logged in.
These brute forcing attempts were also helped by the fact that back in the day, there were
no password requirements. As such, someone could literally set their password as “123456”
or “password”. And in the age where internet security wasn’t as prevalent, you can guess
what people set their password as. By spamming thousands of username and password
combinations, they were able to crack account after account, taking both the account and
the Ione gift that came with it. And being the enterprising hacker that they
were, they didn’t let the hacked accounts go to waste. Some of these accounts had so-called
“rare names”, usernames which were highly sought after. And players were willing to
pay a high price for them. It was claimed that the operation was so profitable
that they had to subcontract their work to others to hack the accounts for them.
Habbo eventually caught on to these brute force attacks and soon required users to log
in with their emails as opposed to their usernames, and it also started implementing password
requirements. Old fashioned hacking was being clamped down
and scripting was pushed more and more into obscurity.
Enterprising criminals for the most part couldn’t rely on exploiting Habbo’s instability or
flaws to get rich anymore. There were clearly successful attempts, such as in 2017, when
two players exploited a hole which allowed them to generate millions of coins. But these
hacks against Habbo itself became rarer. So criminals had to find another way. But don’t
underestimate bored teenagers and their desire to obtain virtual currency.
Scams have been ubiquitous in the world of Habbo.
Being scammed is such an ingrained experience of Habbo that it acts almost like a rites
of passage. Unlike the hacker, which utilises technical
expertise, the scammer utilises confidence and charisma.
Habbo has an entire page cataloguing many common scams on their website but this video
would be a lot longer if we tried to cover every single scam.
Back when people still logged in with their usernames, password scams were fairly common.
For example, a scammer might say, “oh look, Habbo censors your password *********”.
The victim would then proceed to type their password and the scammer would then log into
the victim’s account and change their login details.
If the scammer was more daring, they could tell the victim to type their password and
press Ctrl+M instead. In the past, Ctrl+M acted the same way as
the enter button. Habbo has now since patched this.
Another low effort scam involved the scammer claiming that they had special hacking tools
to duplicate furniture or coins. All the victim had to do was hand over their
coins to the scammer. Then the scammer runs away with the money.
This scam happened so often, a counter-scam was developed where someone would pretend
to be a sceptical yet naive victim. The victim would claim that they are going
to give one coin to the scammer as a test to see whether the scammer is legit. If the
scammer could double the victim’s money, they would hand over a larger sum of coins.
Sensing blood in the water, the scammer would pretend to double the victim’s money and
hand over two coins. The victim would then run away.
As time moved on, players generally became more clued up to these rudimentary low-effort
scams. The decline of these low effort scams were
also due in part to the efforts by moderators, when they existed back then, who would ban
anyone who tried to claim they can duplicate furniture or coins.
And so scams became more sophisticated. Falling Furniture (FF) is a game hosted on
Habbo and it’s sort of like musical chairs. The host would place down chairs in a room,
and people would rush to sit on them. The last remaining person to not get a seat
gets eliminated from the round, and the cycle repeats until a winner is produced.
In the past, hosts would ask the loser whether they wish to “pay to stay”, pay for “revenge”,
or leave the game. This choice is commonly referred to as “p2s, rev, or kick”.
Pay to stay allows the player to stay on the game, effectively doing a rerun of that round.
Usually the cost of pay to stay is 1 coin or its furniture equivalent.
Revenge, on the other hand, allows the player to pick someone else to lose that round. This
bizarre mechanic essentially meant that any player could effectively pay to kick a player
they did not like. Because it was a much more powerful option, the price of revenge is usually
higher, around 2-3 coins. Now here’s the catch. When someone is a
victim of revenge, they don’t immediately get kicked out. Instead, they’re given the
choice to pay to stay, pay for revenge, or to leave the game
This has led to the phenomenon of rev wars, which is when two people battle it out by
revving each other, and by revving each other, I mean one person pays the host coins, and
then the other pays the host coins, and then they- you’re starting to see how profitable
rev wars can be. Scammers, however, began exploiting this business
model. And here’s how you do it: Step 1: Hire a scamming buddy. This person
will be your partner in crime. If you were proficient enough to play with two accounts
at once, you could also use an alt account. Step 2: Advertise a lavish game. If you want
to pull people in, you want to make sure that you have a large prize. The larger the prize,
the more willing people will be to spend money on p2s and revs for a chance to win the prize.
Step 3: Make your partner the winner. If your partner is the winner, you can pretend to
give them a prize without actually giving anything. It would give the illusion that
you are a trustworthy host, and you’re able to bag any p2s and rev money as profits. But
how do you reach this stage? Well, if your partner ends up losing a round, they can just
rev someone. They don’t actually have to pay you anything, they only pretend to pay
you something. If they choose a particularly wealthy victim, they could even start a rev
war - a rev war that your partner can’t possibly lose.
At the end of the day, you count up your profits, and split half to your partner in crime. Or
you could just ban them and keep all of the profits.
Pay to stay scams in their day were one of the most lucrative scams on Habbo, and arguably
the key to its success was the fact that it was much more sophisticated. Unlike the “I
can double your money” or “give me your password” scams, p2s scams themselves were
not automatically incriminating. You had to prove that they were working in concert with
someone else and you have to check transaction logs to see whether the trades actually happened,
which altogether led to many of the p2s scammers not being dealt with.
In the end, p2s as a concept phased out. It is commonly believed that p2s is now a banned
practice in Habbo, something that also followed the gambling ban back in 2014, but I was unable
to verify that this was true. On the contrary, according to the official Habbo help page,
p2s and rev is still seemingly allowed. Whatever the case, its longstanding connotation of
being an outright scam makes it no longer a widespread practice.
Another sophisticated scam is the fake buyer scam.
To give some context, Habbo’s economy is very reliant on merchanting, which is the
practice of buying furniture at a low price, and selling that furniture at a higher price
for a profit. Habbos could literally spend hours on end
at their shops waiting for customers to buy their goods. And then spend more hours, scouring
other shops owned by other Habbos, to buy more items. Then they would sell those newly
acquired items at a markup to get more money to buy more items to sell.
What was I even doing with life?- The fake buyer scam specifically targeted
merchants. And this is how it’s done: Step 1: Obtain furniture. These pieces of
furniture must be disposable. Preferably, you want a piece of furniture that most people
will not have, and one that is cheap for you to buy. An example furniture that you could
use for this scam are these red pixel furnitures. Most new players haven’t seen it before,
and if you know where to look for it, you could easily buy 10 for 1 coin.
Step 2: Get yourself an alt account. You could also employ a scamming partner, but it’s
completely unnecessary, and also you banned them.
Step 3: Enter the shop with your alt account. This is the fake buyer. Pretend to browse
around with your alt account, maybe make some small talk with the shop owner. If you’re
feeling daring, you could even try to buy something to establish a relationship.
Step 4: Plant the seed. “Ah yes, I was wondering if you had any red pixel furniture by any
chance?” Chances are, if the owner did not display the red pixel furniture in their shop,
they probably wouldn’t. “Ah I see”, you reply, “well if you do find any red
furniture, please contact me as soon as possible”. You add them to your friend list and then
mention something along the lines of: “I’m willing to pay twenty coins for every piece
of red furniture that you have”. Now that you’ve planted the seed in their head, they
will be actively on the lookout for this mysterious red furniture.
Step 5: Enter the second account. You don’t want to attract or arouse suspicion, so you
arrive some time later. Your second account is the account that has your disposable furniture.
Again, you browse the shop, establishing a relationship with the shop owner. Then you
enquire, “do you buy furniture by any chance?”. If they don’t, ask whether they want to
trade. Chances are, a shop owner would be somewhat interested by your proposition and
so… Step 6: Make the hard sell. Tell the owner
that you’re selling rare items like, oh I don’t know, this red pixel furniture that
you just so happen to have. By offering to sell it at a much lower price than what your
fake buyer is offering, like 10 coins, you create an almost irresistible opportunity
for the shop owner. And then, you do the trade, and that’s how you just earnt 10 coins on
a piece of furniture that was only worth a hundredth of that.
The emergence of these more sophisticated and complex scams show an evolution of the
art of scamming and an evolution of financial crime as a whole. As the players of Habbo
get progressively smarter and more informed about scams, scam artists find themselves
having to resort to greater lengths to part you from your money.
But scams aren’t the only forms of financial crime on Habbo Hotel. With corporations playing
an increasingly larger role in Habbo over the past few years, some players have spotted
a new opportunity on the horizon. In November 2017, -Cess, also known as Mai,
ascended to the highest office of the Habbo White House, the presidency. Her election
was a landmark in the organisation’s history as she became the White House’s first female
president. Meanwhile Infernum, also known as Craig, was
packing his bags. Having served his two month term, he was now the outgoing president. Following
the footsteps of 14 previous presidents, he now bore responsibility to pass the keys of
the presidency to his successor. This democratic transition of power is the
cornerstone of the Habbo White House - rarely do agencies or corporations hold elections
for their highest office. And so as the keys of power were being handed
over, a fact transpired. The treasury account was empty.
Most corporations had a special treasury account. Any donations or profits earnt from sales
would be stored in this account. Treasury accounts meant that multiple trusted people
could do transactions on the organisation’s behalf and it also made accounting a lot more
easier. It has also led to the problem of $400 worth
of coins being embezzled from the treasury with no obvious culprit.
An inquiry was quickly held and soon fingers were pointed at both -Cess and Infernum. The
heist was done in perfect timing - the transition period between presidencies meant that both
-Cess and Infernum had access to the treasury account at the same time. The inquiry went
cold and the culprit was never found. The rise in corporate crime is a more recent
phenomenon. As corporations play a much more significant role in the day to day lives of
players, they present greater and more audacious opportunities for any would be criminals to
exploit. As for our story, the Habbo White House learnt
its lesson and reformed the treasury to prevent future presidents from embezzling funds. One
of these reforms was to put the hands of the treasury account to one single trustee chosen
from an elected board. That way, only one person could access the account. If anything
went missing, it was clear who the culprit was.
With these reforms in place, the White House had to start over and through donation drives
and sales, they managed to rebuild the treasury. All in all, they managed to reaccumulate $450
worth of coins and rares. And these treasury reforms ended up working
… for one year, when in 2018, a trustee called Jess emptied out the entire treasury
account after the White House tried to impeach her for allegedly working for the Habbo mafia.
Of course, embezzlement and corruption doesn’t just happen in the Habbo White House. But
with so many careers, livelihoods, and money on the line, many people who I approached
simply did not want to talk about this topic. A high ranking official of one of Habbo’s
largest corporations eventually decided to talk to me under the strict condition of anonymity.
In our interview, they made explosive allegations against their corporate founder.
They claimed the founder would regularly use the treasury as their personal bank account,
withdrawing thousands of coins at a time to sell in the black market, to quote unquote
“fuel their clubbing habit”. In fact, the embezzlement of corporate funds was done
so frequently, the board of directors actively fabricate numbers in their spreadsheet and
underreport the revenue earnt to their founder to prevent them from literally sinking the
company into debt. In another claim, one of the founder’s deputies
managed to achieve their high rank by regularly sending “gifts” to the founder. Over the
course of a few years, an estimated total of $3000 worth of “gifts” were given by
this deputy. This deputy is the second highest ranking official of the corporation.
And in order to dominate the market further, the founder was even alleged to have tried
to create a second corporation. Pouring thousands of coins worth of investment into it, their
intention was to monopolise the entire agency industry by falsifying the illusion of choice.
Workers of said corporation would think that they were working for a rival company, when
in actual fact it was staffed by the same administration, just with alt accounts. If
successful, the founder would operate two profitable corporations, doubling their intake.
10 people showed up to its opening ceremony and the project was scrapped 3 weeks later.
When I asked another high ranking official of the same corporation to comment on these
allegations, they disputed the claims. “The founder does not take money from us unless
necessary”, said the official. They insisted that revenue earnt was reinvested back into
the corporation. A dig into the company’s finances revealed
that in 2019, the company’s annual turnover was approximately 300,000 credits. That is
equivalent to $20,000 USD if the coins were sold at black market rates.
A vast majority of the corporation’s revenue came from rank sales, which is where an employee
would pay to get a higher rank. Other streams of revenue include selling VIP and Special
Visitor passes which give privileges to rich people that can afford them.
Of that revenue, approximately 70% was spent on wages, totalling up to $16,800 worth of
coins. The high ranking officials that I was talking
to also get a slice in the form of commission when they successfully make a sale. On average,
each of these officials make 2,000 credits annually or $160.
The last 20% is the founder’s profit, also known as a reinvestment fund, which totals
up to 60,000 credits, or $4,800. With corporations presenting such lucrative
pay for those at the top, it is no longer a mystery why so few would want to blow the
whistle. -angelic is no stranger to scams. Having been
twice a victim, she lost all of her furniture and coins. In total, she bought over $130
worth of virtual goods legitimately on Habbo Hotel. But when she tried to contact Habbo
to help, Habbo simply told her that she couldn’t recover her stolen items that she paid for.
This is in line with Habbo’s policy and Terms of Service. Habbo defines their virtual
currency and goods not as property, but as part of the gameplay experience.
Or, as Habbo puts it, “you have no interest, including no property, proprietary, intellectual
property, ownership, or monetary interest, in your Virtual Currency and Virtual Goods,
which remain our Content and property”. This effectively means that you don’t enjoy
the same protections with virtual property as you do with real property, because under
the Habbo Terms of Service, your coins and your furniture aren’t even your property
- they belong to Habbo and Habbo could theoretically do whatever it wants with it.
The question of whether these Terms of Service are legally enforceable is a rather murky
question and depends where you live, but internationally there is a trend where countries are beginning
to recognise that virtual property deserves the same protection.
In one notable case in 2003, hackers gained access to a player’s account and stole $1200
worth of virtual items. A Beijing court found Arctic Ice, the developers of the game, liable
for the loss suffered by the player and was forced to reimburse the lost property.
In that case, the game publishers argued that virtual items are merely a “pile of data”
and could not constitute a “thing” that could be stolen under Chinese law.
The rejection of this interpretation led China to become one of the first countries to recognise
that virtual property is entitled to the same legal protections as other forms of property.
Furthermore, Arctic Ice also argued that the player agreed to the Terms of Service which
stated that the security of a player’s account is their own responsibility, and by extension,
the player is responsible if their stuff gets stolen.
This echoes Habbo policy which describes being a victim of a scam as “user-error”, and
Habbo states that it does not allow for reimbursement for quote enquote “user-error”.
Arctic Ice argued that the company had no obligation to reimburse the lost items but
the court also rejected this argument. If other countries adopt a similar legal interpretation,
Habbo’s policy may not actually be legally enforceable.
In a more recent case in 2012, the Dutch Supreme Court followed suit and held that virtual
objects can be considered “goods” which can be stolen. The argument that virtual goods
were mere “bits and bytes” was rejected. Putting legality aside however, Habbo is entirely
within their power to reimburse victims of financial crime. In the Terms of Service,
Habbo writes that they “reserve the absolute right, at any time and in our sole discretion,
to manage, regulate, control, modify or eliminate Virtual Currency and/or Virtual Goods”.
Habbo actively refuses to do this, instead choosing to blame the victim of a crime by
calling it “user-error”. When I tried to contact Sulake, the company
that owns Habbo, on why they operate such a policy, they did not respond to my requests
for comment. I’m not the first person to have highlighted
the issues of Habbo’s opaque policies. Seven years ago, in 2013, two professors wrote that
the players of Habbo are “learning to be diligent consumers, buying virtual products
that will help to construct their identities and relationships [...] in a context where
everything they produce and everything they appear to possess is in fact owned by a company
that remains largely unaccountable for its business practices”.
The professors claimed that children are the primary consumers of Habbo. According to a
survey done in 2004, 75% of players on Habbo Hotel were between 10-14 years old. Unlike
adult consumers, however, children tend to have less resources to defend themselves against
unfair business practices. “In many cases, this sense of disempowerment
leads to anger and to forms of activism” wrote the professors, “Some users respond
to what they regard as injustice by insulting or threatening either the company or the individual
moderators. [...] Others develop plans to bankrupt Habbo Hotel [by creating illegal
replicas]”. Some Hispanic players felt so shafted by Habbo’s
business practices, they even formed the “Habbo Revolutionary Union”.
Depressingly, these issues were highlighted seven years ago. And in the past seven years,
nothing has changed. -angelic’s tale isn’t just one tragic story of someone getting their
virtual goods stolen. It is a tale repeated over and over again, a tale Habbo has been
accustomed to, and one where Habbo, in every case, chooses to not to act.
In fairness, there is a case to be made in Habbo’s defence. The policy of not reimbursing
victims of crime is a standard in MMOs. Runescape, for example, does not reimburse victims of
scams. In their lost items policy, Runescape claims that their focus is on the prevention
of crime, as opposed to what they call, “dealing with the fall out and chasing after the harm
has been done”. The question should therefore be whether virtual goods should be treated
differently by the industry as a whole, as opposed to Habbo itself.
Habbo, like Runescape, also claims that their focus is on warning players about scams and
educating players, and to their credit, there is some evidence of this.
As mentioned before, Habbo has a comprehensive list of scams in their help pages. The issue
is, you have to dig quite a bit to actually find it.
There is also a pinned news article from 2018 warning people of phishing sites.
Habbo also hires Ambassadors, specially selected volunteers whose role is to help welcome new
players into the community and help moderate public rooms. They also host events called
“Infobus Sessions” where they raise awareness of certain issues. One of these issues was
on scams and fraud. To find out whether these sessions actually
worked, I decided to attend one and was immediately greeted by a queue. Each session takes around
15-25 minutes and the bus has limited capacity. These restrictions created a massive line
and I begrudgingly waited for my turn. After some time, the old batch exited the bus and
a new batch of people were allowed in. Only then, did I learn that I was person 25. The
maximum capacity of the bus was 24. Needless to say, I very much wasn’t amused.
I was finally allowed to enter the bus and Josh, my Ambassador, immediately begins laying
down the ground rules. Josh then proceeds to tell players not to
visit random URLs given by complete strangers, a good tip.
They also recommended the use of Habbo’s “safety lock” feature where Habbo would
ask users security questions before they can fully access their account, another good tip.
Josh also gives password advice such as changing your password regularly and using lots of
numbers, symbols, and capital letters, which is actually outdated advice.
What should’ve been emphasised instead is the fact that you should use different passwords
for different platforms, in case one of your passwords gets compromised in a data breach.
And one way in which you can manage your passwords is with Dash- any password manager. That could’ve
been a perfect segway. No one offered to sponsor me so.
Anyways, the session ends and then we are thrown in the deep end to complete a quiz
before we receive a special badge which we can pin on our user profile.
When asked to comment, a different Ambassador who wished to stay anonymous, said that they
and their fellow colleagues genuinely believe that their sessions are helpful in educating
users. However, they also privately expressed doubts.
One of these doubts revolved around giving away free badges. While free stuff works great
as an incentive for people to attend these sessions, they end up mostly attracting veteran
and seasoned players, the people least likely to fall for basic scams. These players end
up taking up space which would otherwise be more useful to newer players.
But apart from writing a few articles and asking volunteer players to run education
sessions, Habbo doesn’t actually seem to be doing that much.
Which begs the question, why? Why doesn’t Habbo do more in tackling financial crime?
As Habbo hasn’t replied to my inquiry, we can only speculate.
One reason could be that some scams are just really sophisticated.
For example, during my visit, someone hosted a fake giveaway. In this giveaway, the scammer
asked people to visit this website to comment on their photo. This website is a phishing
website. It’s a fake website that looks just like Habbo and it is designed to steal
people’s personal information. Once the scammers obtains this information, they log
in to the victims account, steal their items, and change their password so that they can
no longer access their own account. What makes this scam so effective, however,
is account hopping. This is when the scammer uses one of these stolen accounts to set up
shop. They advertise the fake giveaway under this stolen account. Once they’ve run the
scam using that account for a few days, they move on to a new stolen account. This is what
happened to -angelic. She found that not only was her account hacked, but it was used to
set up one of these fake giveaways. As for Wiktoria., the person pictured running
the scam, her account was stolen too. But not only did she learn that her coins and
furniture were stolen, she learnt that her account was being hijacked to run the fraudulent
giveaway. Players, none the wiser, began to spread the message through word of mouth that
Wiktoria. is a scammer, completely ruining her reputation in the process.
When she tried to contact Habbo to recover her account, she received no response. Instead,
Habbo decided to ban her hacked account permanently for scamming. The scammers were undeterred
and simply moved on to a different account. But this explanation is not satisfying. Firstly,
not all scams are this sophisticated. There are still many rudimentary and basic scams
that are being done without any consequence for the scammer. Secondly, it would put the
competence and effectiveness of moderation in question, if it exists at all.
This brings us to our second possible explanation - the lack of moderation.
The Ambassador I spoke to gave harsh and scathing criticism against the state of moderation
on Habbo, decrying it “next to non-existent”. While in my previous video, I claimed there
were no moderators on Habbo, the Ambassador informed me that they were told by staff that
there were off-client moderators, mods who would review flagged content from outside
of the game. These moderators don’t actually log into the game and therefore don’t have
a clear picture of what actually is happening. “If they do exist, they are doing a terrible
job”, they remarked. But if this is true, this also brings with
it a troubling thought. The last time that Habbo lacked moderation, this happened:
Good evening, it is every parent’s terror. That their internet literate child will arrive
in a make-believe children’s web world that is so unsafe that he or she can be propositioned
for sex by a paedophile within 4 minutes. And finally, there is a third and much more
cynical explanation on why Habbo doesn’t do much - there simply is no financial incentive.
In theory, a business would promote customer service because good customer service would
overall lead to more customers. That’s why businesses tolerate even the most obnoxious
of Karens. However, Habbo runs differently from other
businesses. Their monetisation model revolves around the sale of virtual currency, currency
that would only be worth something to players that actually play the game. If you’re going
to buy coins from Habbo, chances are, you’re already deep in it.
Going back to the paper written by the two professors, they observed that as users spend
more time on Habbo, they create what is known as “social capital”, which basically means
friendships act as their own currency. When someone stops playing Habbo, either by quitting
or by being banned, they lose this social capital, in other words, their friendships.
As Habbo prohibits, or tries to prohibit, people from sharing links to external communication
websites, like Discord, they effectively monopolise the social capital generated by their players.
Or to put it in another way, the only way to meet your friends is through Habbo.
What this means is that the cards are effectively stacked in Habbo’s favour. You can quit
if you want. But if you quit, all of your possessions are gone. All your creative labour
is gone. And all of your social capital, your friends, are also gone.
As one player remarked, “believe me, i know whats its like to get ***** up by these mods,
you spend money and they dont even think for a second about your friends, money spent,
etc.” When there is such a large disparity of power
between a company and its customers, a company no longer needs to entertain the idea of customer
satisfaction. You’re going to play Habbo anyways and Habbo knows you’re going to
spend more money. So why bother. If you’re not convinced by this explanation,
or believe it is unduly cynical, just note that when something directly threatens Habbo’s
financial interests, the lack of moderation becomes a non-issue.
In 2017, two hackers made use of an exploit to generate millions of coins into their accounts.
Soon, they went on a full on shopping spree buying tons of rare items.
Their shopping spree generated a surge in demand, and soon the rares market entered
into a frenzy. People bought thrones for 500 coins, and resold them at 700. In one instance,
two players even bought rare items with their real life money and sold them to the hackers
at marked up prices. The hackers didn’t mind, after all, they could just generate
more coins. Habbo caught on and the admins quickly suspended
all trade and market activity on the platform. The hackers were banned, along with millions
of coins totalling up to hundreds of thousands of US dollars.
If Habbo really wants to intervene, it most certainly has the capacity to do so. With
Habbo currently riding the nostalgia wave after people have nothing more to do due to
the current situation, hiding behind excuses of lack of funding for moderation is no longer
acceptable; although, it never was to begin with when you’re making a game targeted
at teenagers and children. When Habbo fails to act or appropriately respond, it is a deliberate
choice made by its top management. Just to clarify, I don’t blame the staff
members working at Habbo. Over the course of this year, I’ve seen staff take a more
proactive and visible approach, especially in regards to community engagement. But what
they can do and what they can spend time on is ultimately decided upon by Habbo itself,
and its Habbo’s failings to allocate adequate resources into tackling financial crime that
have led Habbo to become complicit in it. Now your first question might be: Trolligarch,
have you been scammed before? And my response is: No, I actually haven’t.
Not that people haven’t tried to scam me before, I’ve seen it all, but the fact I
haven’t fallen victim to one is probably due to vigilance and awareness.
Now, the keen eyed of you would have noticed that I’ve dedicated an entire part of this
video to a personal note, and so in response to your second question, yes. Yes I have.
I have pulled off some falling furniture and fake buyer scams in the past. But, that didn’t
satisfy me. 15 year old me wanted to do something more adventurous. So, I began brainstorming
for ideas. Although, if you thought this was going to be some amateurish affair, you are
sorely mistaken. After doing a painstaking amount of planning,
I eventually came up with a master plan. The Arrow Giveaway.
If you watched my previous video on capitalism on Habbo, you would know that I spent an entire
section dedicated to dodgy giveaways. The reason why I know so much about them was because
I ran one myself. And this is how it worked:
Firstly, a user would queue up. Once it’s their go, they will pull this switch. This
switch can do one of two things. The first thing it can do is move the arrow to the right.
And the second thing it can do is teleport you to the exit, which means you have lost
the game. There is a 50/50 chance of either event happening. If you’re wondering why
I couldn’t just rig the odds, I deliberately placed the Wired, the mechanism to run this
game, in plain sight. It was right there and those who could understand Wired could see
it. If the user is lucky enough, they will reach
a point where the arrow is pointing to a prize. If this happens, the user is offered two choices:
Risk or keep. If they say “keep”, they get the prize indicated on the arrow. If they
say “risk “, they pull the switch again with a 50% chance to win a greater prize,
and a 50% chance of losing everything. Now that I have a game made, next I needed
to figure out a monetisation model. The predominant way of monetising games like these is with
fastpass. This is when a user pays the owner a membership fee, something like 20 coins,
to get instant or near instant access to the game. There can be other benefits such as
a chance to obtain a greater prize not available to the peasants.
I didn’t go for this route. While it was certainly legal, albeit ethically dubious,
it most certainly wasn’t a sustainable route. When someone purchases fastpass, they do it
only once. You can charge someone as high of a price as you want, 20 coins, 50 coins,
100 coins, but the goal of a fastpass purchaser is to get their money back and profit. If
you give them unlimited and unfettered access to your game, they will eventually make their
money back and you will begin operating at a loss.
Fastpass operators deal with this with a variety of solutions.
One way to deal with this issue is to simply host less. If you host the game less, your
fastpass customers simply have less time to win prizes, which reduces their chance of
making their money back. But if you host less, you sell less fastpass. It’s just that simple.
The second solution is to pack up your bags and leave. Once you sell enough fastpasses,
you stop hosting, close down the giveaway, and open it under a new name, where people
have to buy a new fastpass. The issue with this, however, is that this will inevitably
trash your reputation. You could try and avoid this problem by moving everything to a new
account and hosting your new giveaway with that account but this is way too much work
for my liking. And the third solution is to make fastpasses
time limited. You put an expiration date when you remove someone’s fastpass. This seems
like the most sustainable option, but it still falls into the pit trap where people are unlikely
to pay for fastpass a second time. If your fastpass purchasers are unable to recoup their
losses for the first time, they’re not going to renew their membership.
Then one day, I visited someone else’s giveaway and saw a novel innovation. Rather than charge
for fastpass, they had two queues. One was the peasant queue and the other was the “donator’s
queue”. How it worked was people who wanted to “donate”
lined up in the donator’s queue. When they reach the front of the donator’s queue,
they pay a coin or an item to the host. The host will then give them access to the game.
The peasant and donator queues are run concurrently, but as more people are lined up in the peasant
queue, the donator’s queue is inevitably quicker. To sweeten the deal, however, donors
got a chance to win higher prizes. This was a much better monetisation model.
Every time someone wanted to use the donator’s queue, they had to “donate” something.
This meant the scheme was sustainable. It was effectively a pay as you go model.
It was also much more open to others. Fastpass schemes tend to target Habbo’s middle class,
players who are desperate to earn any coins they can, but are also in a position to splash
50 coins for a fastpass in the first place. With this system, even a person with 1 coin
could join the donator’s queue. And also, being rather bold, it allowed me
to claim that I’m not running a fastpass system.
So, I just nicked the idea. For further profit, I planned to sell host
licences. For the price of 20 coins, you could host my game in my absence. Any payments you
received you could profit from. This also was a further positive for my scheme because
it helped promote my brand name. When I opened my Arrow Giveaway, I did not
expect it to become an instant hit. It was so successful that in the span of two months,
I was able to afford an entire renovation of my room. It cost 200 coins and was entirely
unnecessary, but it was so successful that I decided to do it, just because I can.
And if you’re about to comment that 200 coins is nothing, wealth is relative.
But why was it so successful? I don’t actually know, but I speculate that it’s because
it’s almost like legalised gambling. With fastpass giveaways, the goal of the fastpass
purchaser is to make their money back and earn a profit. With my giveaway, you’re
paying for a premium go at a game that is pure random chance. Many of my frequent donors
actually pointed that they get the same buzz from my giveaway as they would get from casinos
and grabbers. The difference is the latter is banned.
I ensured I covered my tracks. I was pretty explicit in telling people that my random
chance game was not gambling, because unlike gambling where you must pay for a go, you
could just line up in the peasant queue for a free go and win free prizes.
And I ended up being right, because WaltzMatilda, an admin of Habbo, once visited my room, and
had a go at my game. They complimented me and my staff for running the giveaway, and
then just left us alone. So, you might be wondering, I ran an ethically
dubious, borderline casino giveaway, but that’s not illegal. So where’s the criminal aspect
of it? And the answer is, well, it was rigged. I
told you earlier that I placed the Wired in plain sight and so it was not possible for
it to be rigged. But I still managed to find a way to do it anyways. To explain specifically
how I did it, I’m going to need to give you some background.
Wired is the Redstone of Habbo. What it allows people to do is to make functions.
Each Wired function requires an input and an output. You can tell which is which because
inputs are brown boxes and outputs are silver boxes. To make a function, you stack the two
boxes together. For example, this input box checks to see
whether you have double clicked an item, like a switch. This output box meanwhile allows
you to change the state of an item. If a door is locked, it will open, and vice versa. By
stacking these two boxes together, we have created a Wired function that allows us to
control this door using this switch. There is also a third type of Wired, conditions.
If you add a condition box to your stack, your Wired will only perform a function if
that condition is met. For example, this condition box checks an item’s state. I can set it
up so that you can only open a door with the switch if this light is turned on. If the
light is turned off, the switch does nothing. Now, let’s analyse the piece of Wired I
showed you earlier. This input box takes an input from this switch.
This box is called Random Effect. When it is placed in a Wired stack, it makes it so
that only one randomly chosen effect is triggered at a time.
Finally, there are my two effect boxes. One is a teleport effect that will teleport you
to the exit, which means you lose. The other is a move effect, which moves the arrow towards
the right. As we have the Random Effect box, instead of having both effects happen simultaneously,
only one will be randomly selected. This set up on its own is not rigged. You
genuinely have a 50/50 chance on whether you move the arrow or teleport to the exit.
There is one important rule in Wired, however, and that is each stack of Wired is its own
function. But, the stack does not have to be continuous. You can have an input and an
output box separated by air and the function still works.
So if we look up, you will notice an additional piece of Wired I didn’t talk about. That
box is a condition box. It will only allow this function to activate if this light is
on. I also have a second Wired function. In this
function, the input is the same switch. The output box is teleporting to the exit. And
the function only operates when the light is off.
With this set up, I can make it so that if the light is on, the game works as normal.
But if the light is off, you are 100% guaranteed to teleport to the exit. I can flick the light
to set the game so that it is either in normal mode or rigged mode.
Now, if you noticed something, you will realise that when the game is in a normal unrigged
state, the Wired boxes activate and play a small animation. When the game is in a rigged
state, those Wired boxes are not activated, and so they don’t play this animation. So
to create the illusion that the Wired boxes are activated, I simply created another Wired
function. The input is the switch, and the output is this, which allows me to change
the state of the item. I showed you previously that it can open doors, but it can also turn
on lights, do this, and most importantly, trigger the animation effect.
Only the owner, and those with rights given by the owner, can look inside of these Wired
boxes. So the only way that people could verify something is legit is if it looks legit. I
deliberately placed my Wired set up, or some of it, in the public view to give the perception
that I was fully transparent. I went through all of that trouble just to
make my game look authentic - more real than the other games that were actually legit,
as placing Wired in public view is not standard practice. People could see the Wired churning
away every time a user clicked the switch. No one would’ve suspected that there was
a piece of Wired up in the sky. But just in case, I put a present up there to obscure
the view. Now, I didn’t have to do this. I could’ve
made my giveaway completely legit. The way I set up the game meant the odds were in my
favour to begin with. Statistically, over time, this was a profitable business venture.
But this still didn’t give me enough control of the game. I wanted to be able to control
specifically what prizes I was going to be giving out. Even if you made a jackpot harder
to obtain, there will still always be a chance that someone actually wins it. And that means
you’ll always have to be prepared to pay for a jackpot. And I wasn’t willing to do
that. I decided to tell my story because I wanted
to show that the ultra-consumerist environment, where your social standing is defined by the
coins in your wallet, the furniture and rares in your possession, and your membership of
a premium club, creates an extraordinary and insatiable demand for coins. And teenagers
being the perfect demographic to psychologically manipulate, they are the ones that are willing
to do extraordinary things to get virtual currency.
I personally ran my criminal enterprise with no nefarious intent to make real life money.
I just wanted furniture so I could furnish my rooms and make cool things, something that
Habbo has decided to lock behind a paywall because it’s their monetisation model. But
the environment that Habbo crafted led 15 year old me to become obsessed with these
virtual coins and I ended up concocting a ridiculously over the top conspiracy to obtain
it. I spent way too long planning meticulously every detail, from monetisation, to how I
was going to rig it without getting caught, to how I would present myself as the real
deal. What I did was not some large scale hacking
operation, or setting up a phishing site, but at the end of the day, what I did was
still wrong, even if it was comparatively minor. And it’s something I genuinely regret
doing and something I’ve never done since. Every MMO with an economy will have financial
crime. This is a simple truth. What Habbo has shown is that players will find new and
innovative ways of defrauding others, no matter how the game progresses.
However, the current industry of MMOs do not respect the rights of virtual property that
people possess, despite the fact that they are materially worth something. Maybe this
is for the better. After all, if every MMO had to legally reimburse victims of financial
crime, they would be inundated with a flood of requests, including by those willing to
exploit that very system. But maybe there should be a re-evaluation.
Players spend real life money on obtaining these virtual currencies and goods and these
items end up having lots of sentimental value attached to them. If we believe that virtual
items should be afforded the same rights and protections as ordinary property, we should
expect to reform the law as opposed to waiting for the entrenched industry to regulate itself.
As for Habbo more specifically, more needs to be urgently done. If Habbo insists that
that prevention is better than cure, it needs to make sure that its preventive measures
are actually working. Hiring a bunch of volunteers to run occasional bus sessions is not enough.
Pinning a news article warning about phishing scams is also not enough. Because at the end
of the day, if people can still flagrantly host fake giveaways advertising dangerous
external links, people are going to fall for it. There needs to be in-game moderation shutting
down these blatant scams and there needs to be a more concerted effort into rooting out
these scammers. Having a visible and vigorous approach to tackling financial crime will
go some way to deterring future attempts by enterprising players.
As for my own story, I still have regrets. Some of the coins and furniture that I have
in my possession were illicitly gained. Certainly not all of them though. But I decided that
the only way to repent for my sins was to give it all away.
I will admit, it was extremely difficult to do. I was attached to my coins and my furniture
which I’ve earnt over the past few years. My Wired collection and my prized furniture
of the Queen has sentimental value to me. But I decided to do it anyway and there was
no turning back. It was certainly gratifying, however, to make someone’s day.
Anyways, thank you so much for watching. And I hope you have a nice day.
Pool’s closed
I miss running falling furni scams with my buddies, those were the days.
TL;DW: Habbo Hotel is an ultra-capitalist wild-west no man's land of an MMO. Beginning with minor scams, the section of the player base who has been willing to commit financial crimes against the other players has had to adapt and find new ways to do so over the years as a result of the moderator's half-assed attempts to curtail such activity. This has lead to a a virtual cornucopia of scams, hacks and frauds being enacted upon the players by other players, ranging from minor tricks for mere cents, to in-game corporate conspiracy tallying up to the thousands of IRL dollars.
However, in the end, the owners of Habbo Hotel have claimed that virtual possessions and currency do not count as a player's own property and are inherently owned by the game makers. This allows them to continue to turn a blind eye to theft of accounts and scamming, seeing as their profits do not suffer by doing so. The video editor then details how he himself ran a lucrative scam within the game to paint a picture of just how easy it is for players to do so.
Man it's nostalgic watching this. I remember all the scams, it was scary, and wonderful. I miss those wild west internet days.
Great video too!
Anyone got a TL:DW? I never played habbo hotel but I love wild-west internet stories like this, but dont know if ive got 50 minutes to devote to it
I remember I joined a Naval clan or something when I was like 9. They gave everyone 1 coin a day.
Great video! Brings back memories, but I was not one of the savvy teenagers.
Great watch
I've seen a few videos on Habbo and how it's an ancap paradise. It's so fascinatingly vile.