Twenty Years of Pixels

2020 · A NEW CHAPTER In 2020, Habbo reached a milestone that once would have seemed impossible: twenty years since the opening of Hotelli Kultakala. What had started as a tiny Finnish virtual hotel in 2000 had survived two decades of changing technology, online culture and generations of players. The 20th anniversary campaign, held throughout July and August, celebrated that history with a huge collection of new furniture, room bundles, clothing and competitions. The campaign introduced a special Birthday Ballroom range, including ballroom chairs, carpets, balloons and screens, while a special crackable balloon contained a collection of Rose Gold rares. The anniversary also gave the community some particularly unusual collectibles. Competitions were held for video creators, designers, outfit experts and room builders, with the winners receiving extremely limited trophies. Only three Videographer, Designer, Outfit Expert and Block Builder trophies were awarded for each respective competition, making them genuine ultra-rare pieces from Habbo's twentieth anniversary. But while Habbo was celebrating its past, the company was preparing for a huge change to its future. 💻 The end of Flash For more than a decade, Habbo's browser client had relied on Adobe Flash. But Adobe had announced that Flash would reach the end of its life at the end of 2020, forcing Habbo to find a replacement. Sulake chose Unity. The project became known as Habbo 2020 and represented a complete rebuild of the client. A closed beta began on 26 October 2020, initially involving a small group of selected players. The new client introduced a redesigned interface and new systems, while many familiar features and pieces of furniture were still missing during the early testing period. For long-time players, the change was enormous. The Flash client had been Habbo's home since 2009. It was the interface through which an entire generation had collected furniture, traded rares, built rooms and created communities. Now it was about to disappear. Habbo opened the Unity version to a wider beta in December 2020, while openly acknowledging that the new client was unfinished and that many old features and furni had yet to be rebuilt. Sulake specifically asked players to continue testing the new client and providing feedback. This created a strange situation at the end of 2020: Habbo effectively had two futures at once. The familiar Flash-based experience was approaching its final days, while the unfinished Unity version was being tested as its successor. And then there was the wider world. 2020 was also the year the COVID-19 pandemic changed everyday life around the world. With people spending much more time at home, online communities and virtual spaces became especially important places for social interaction. Habbo's role as a place to meet, chat and spend time with others suddenly felt relevant in a way it hadn't for years. At the same time, the Hotel continued releasing its usual stream of furniture and campaigns. Alpine Heights, Spa Days, Indian Palace, Habbo 20, Neo-Habbo Revisited, Impossible House and Enchanted Winter Forest filled the year with wildly different visual styles. And Neo-Habbo Revisited was particularly fitting for an anniversary year: Habbo deliberately looked back at its own visual history while simultaneously moving toward its future. By December, Habbo was standing at a crossroads. Twenty years of furniture, rooms, badges and memories had been created using technologies that were about to disappear. The next chapter would be built in Unity. But the old pixels weren't going anywhere. They had already become history.