The Old Hotel Fades Away

2021 · TRANSITION The beginning of 2021 marked one of the biggest technical changes in Habbo's history. After more than a decade of Flash, Adobe Flash was officially discontinued, forcing Habbo to leave behind the technology that had powered the Hotel since 2009. On 12 January 2021, the Flash client was officially removed and the new Unity-based Habbo client became the main way to play. Unity was intended to make Habbo more future-proof and eventually provide a better experience across desktop and mobile platforms. But the transition was anything but smooth. The initial Unity version was missing many features that veteran players considered fundamental to Habbo. Trading, room rights, furniture functionality and other familiar systems were either changed, incomplete or temporarily unavailable. The community reacted strongly, with many players feeling that the new client no longer felt like the Habbo they had spent years playing. The backlash became particularly visible in January, when the hashtag #SaveHabbo spread across social media. A large number of players protested the changes, and some organised mass logins and campaigns demanding that Sulake restore important features. The controversy even attracted mainstream media attention, with The Washington Post covering the struggle between Habbo's old community and its new direction. Sulake eventually acknowledged that the Unity client wasn't progressing quickly enough. In February, the company brought back the old AIR client as a downloadable application, allowing players to continue using a much more complete version of the familiar Habbo experience while development of Unity continued. Sulake described the AIR client as a temporary solution while the Unity client was brought up to an acceptable standard. For veteran players, this created a bizarre moment in Habbo history: **The future was Unity. The past was AIR.** And for a while, both existed side-by-side. 🪑 Furniture in the new era The furniture catalogue was also caught in the transition. Thousands of existing items had to work correctly in the new Unity client, meaning some furniture and features were temporarily unavailable or behaved differently. Habbo's support documentation even maintained lists of furniture and systems that had yet to be rebuilt or were being discontinued. This made 2021 particularly significant for furniture history. For more than twenty years, Habbo's furniture had been tied to the technology of its time. Now the entire catalogue was being moved into a completely new technical environment. That meant old furniture wasn't simply old anymore. It was becoming legacy content. 🧑‍🎨 The arrival of Habbo Avatars Then Habbo took an entirely different direction. In September 2021, Sulake released the first Habbo Avatars, an NFT collection consisting of approximately 11,900 unique avatars. The project represented Habbo's first major experiment with blockchain and Web3 technology. The avatars weren't immediately fully integrated into the Hotel. That came later in December, when owners could use their Habbo Avatars inside Habbo and receive perks including Habbo Club and Builders Club membership. The move was controversial from the beginning. To some players, it represented an exciting new way of owning and trading digital Habbo items. To others, it felt completely disconnected from the classic community and furniture culture that had made Habbo special. Either way, it marked the beginning of a new chapter in Habbo's economy. And interestingly, the first NFT furniture also began appearing around this time. In December, Habbo distributed Diamond HC Sofas to eligible Habbo Avatar holders. These were individually numbered and tradeable NFTs based on one of the most recognisable pieces of classic Habbo furniture: the Club Sofa. That creates a fascinating connection between the old and new eras: Classic Club Sofa → Diamond HC Sofa → NFT One piece of furniture history had effectively crossed into a completely new technological world. 🌍 A changing company 2021 also marked a change at the corporate level. Azerion completed its acquisition of Sulake, having previously acquired a controlling stake in the company in 2018. Habbo was now part of a much larger European gaming and entertainment company. By the end of the year, Habbo was therefore standing in a completely different place from where it had begun. The Flash era was over. The Unity era had begun. NFTs had entered the ecosystem. The company behind Habbo had changed ownership. And millions of pieces of classic furniture had survived a massive technological transition. 2021 wasn't the end of Habbo. But it was definitely the end of the Habbo that many longtime players remembered.