Rumors of Sulake cost-cutting

[xxMATTGxx]

Rumors have been rife over cost-cutting measures that Sulake intends to do to its business. It is expected that a whopping 25% of the whole workforce within the company will be laid off as part of the measures. The jobs are said to be terminated on March 16 and may be accompanied with the closure of 11 country offices- a major scale back.

According to CEO Paul LeFontaine, “Fuse [the projected in which Habbo is under] will cut its losses by letting people go and potentially close the offices [internationally]. The reductions do not apply to the company located in Finland in the product and technology center.” The apparent plan is to not to rely on as much manpower but allow teenagers to make their own content and link it up via third parties. However, LaFontaine denied any knowledge of the statistics being rumored by media site Dome.fi that it will be a 25% cutback.

Furthermore, on top of this Sulake’s CTO Osma Ahvenlampi resigned from the company yesterday. However, he emphasized that his resignation had nothing to do with the latest rumors of staff cost-cutting. Though, according to one of his tweets he did state that he was not too happy what he was hearing of his former colleagues and that his thoughts were with them. Ahvenlampi served Sulake since 2003. He also hasn’t decided what would be the next step of his career.

Such a move will definitely effect how Sulake is run and will in turn have a visible knock-on effect with some of the already fragmented staffing on various hotels. Let us know what you think about the potential staff cuts and Osma’s resignation by clicking ‘read more’ and commenting!

Taken from Habbox.com thanks to Grig: https://habbox.com/#!/News/article/1096

So what are peoples views on even more cost-cutting at Sulake, if it all comes out true?

Update @ 20:04:

Taken from the Habbo facebook page:

Nothing will happen tomorrow, we're just collecting questions we see around on forums and fansites, creating an FAQ so that we can answer as many questions as possible.. but for now, we wanted to make sure you all know that no one is being merged or closed down.

The article will be up tomorrow after everyone involved has had a chance to look it over and add their comments - at the moment, because of the time zones, we are not able to get everyone's input. But please rest assured that we are not being merged.

Staff from all over were affected, but no Hotels will be merged or closed, regardless of who are now gone.

You can write your questions here: http://www.habbo.com/groups/296747/i...0953/id/page/1 -- we will be looking through it tomorrow morning.

[MKR&*42]

Wow - even more cost-cutting from them? As if the Merge wasn't enough :S

Quite shocked at the measures Sulake are going to, to save money and actually make a decent profit - I would have thought they got a decent amount of revenue for last year even though 2010 wasn't their best year. 25% has kinda shocked me a lot though :L

Goodness, next thing you know, the .com hotel will have opening and closing times like .se, .fi, .it etc.

[iBlueBox]

Before all the rumours start. Habbo won't quit over this. But It'll probably feel a lot less community based with competitions and more auto-mated things such as the quests.

[Shar]

Before all the rumours start. Habbo won't quit over this. But It'll probably feel a lot less community based with competitions and more auto-mated things such as the quests.

I agree, I doubt its the end of habbo just yet lol

[jasey]

I miss the great times of winning badges and competitions created by localized staff. This is a scary piece of news to read. Do you think they'll start merging more Hotels with the closure of international offices?

[MKR&*42]

I miss the great times of winning badges and competitions created by localized staff. This is a scary piece of news to read. Do you think they'll start merging more Hotels with the closure of international offices?

I was just thinking about this actually. I don't think they could merge more hotels together cause of a language barrier - trying to introduce an online translation system is incredibly hard, and the amount of text speech people use wouldn't do much good in a translator, it would be incredibly confusing. The hotels we have left wouldn't work when merged - they already merged .ch, .de and another 1 last year as well as the English speaking hotels. Although people say "Dutch and German are practically the same language - why can't they be merged", that is not the case.

I reckon they'll look at limiting "opening hours" - like they do on .fi, .se , .it etc. and if that still doesn't prove to be enough in terms of cost-cutting, then they'll most likely close small hotels. I mean Swedish Habbo barely manages over 1000 users on at 1 time - atm, there's 910 on the Swedish Hotel.

So yes, they'll definitely consider restricting hours before closing IMO. And I certainly don't think they'll find a way to merge anymore.

[Aaron]

They best not put closing hours onto the .com site.

[jasey]

I was just thinking about this actually. I don't think they could merge more hotels together cause of a language barrier - trying to introduce an online translation system is incredibly hard, and the amount of text speech people use wouldn't do much good in a translator, it would be incredibly confusing. The hotels we have left wouldn't work when merged - they already merged .ch, .de and another 1 last year as well as the English speaking hotels. Although people say "Dutch and German are practically the same language - why can't they be merged", that is not the case.

I reckon they'll look at limiting "opening hours" - like they do on .fi, .se , .it etc. and if that still doesn't prove to be enough in terms of cost-cutting, then they'll most likely close small hotels. I mean Swedish Habbo barely manages over 1000 users on at 1 time - atm, there's 910 on the Swedish Hotel.

So yes, they'll definitely consider restricting hours before closing IMO. And I certainly don't think they'll find a way to merge anymore.

They can merge hotels and still be multilingual. I remember when the Swiss Hotel (.ch) operated in a few languages around the time when there was just a British, Finnish and Swiss Hotel. The Chinese Hotel, while it was still around, operated in two languages - Mandarin and Cantonese. I will be upset if they start 'closing' Hotels because I am usually on late at night after most of the preteens have gone to bed. Gah, this is a big change for Habbo. Thank you Grig for the article!

[FiftyCal]

Dont we already have closing hours from the maintence breaks we have every night it seems?!!?!??!

[MKR&*42]

They can merge hotels and still be multilingual. I remember when the Swiss Hotel (.ch) operated in a few languages around the time when there was just a British, Finnish and Swiss Hotel. The Chinese Hotel, while it was still around, operated in two languages - Mandarin and Cantonese. I will be upset if they start 'closing' Hotels because I am usually on late at night after most of the preteens have gone to bed. Gah, this is a big change for Habbo. Thank you Grig for the article!

They can attempt to, but I'm sure many users would be annoyed - If it was originally liked that, fine but people don't like change (roll eyes). I've spoken to a few dutch people in the past and they got annoyed when I said their language was German - because it's not identical. People on .com get annoyed when a spanish person starts typing in spanish in a room - a hotel could try to be multilingual but I'm sure many users would fight against it.

Switzerland is a tricky issue lmfao - in Switzerland they have about 4 main languages I think. Swiss French, Swiss German, and 2 other Swiss stuff.

I'm on quite late at night as well - I'd get incredible bored lmao

---------- Post added 16-02-2012 at 06:33 PM ----------

Dont we already have closing hours from the maintence breaks we have every night it seems?!!?!??!

LMAO Kerby. 15 mins .. meh ;] - But it'd be much worse if the hotel was only open 9-9.