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Habbo Hotel going vintage with original game rerelease

Habbo Hotel Origins brings the game back to 2005

Habbo Hotel screenshot on a poolside scene. There’s just one person standing off to the side. Image: Sulake
Nicole Carpenter is a senior reporter specializing in investigative features about labor issues in the game industry, as well as the business and culture of games.

The Habbo Hotel community — yes, there’s still a community — is celebrating the announcement of Habbo Hotel Origins, a rerelease of the original game as it was in 2005. Habbo Hotel Origins goes live Tuesday; developer Sulake has been restoring the game for six months after it found “an old decrepit server with some long-lost files.”

Habbo Hotel has remained in existence (with plenty of ups and downs) since 2000, and people have been playing it since. It had a particularly large resurgence in 2020 during the pandemic. With all the tweaks and adjustments over the past 20 years, the modern version of Habbo Hotel looks a lot different than your childhood nostalgia. Habbo Hotel Origins is intended to fix that. “The simplicity, charm and magic of that early version of Habbo are things we want to retain and protect, so we intend to be careful about what we add, and when,” Sulake wrote on the Habbo Hotel Origins website.

Sulake wrote that Habbo Hotel Origins will be “community-led;” the InfoBus Park is now a “democratic forum” where players can vote on changes to the game.

The Habbo Hotel Origins Reddit page is awash with celebration: The old times are back! There are some caveats to that, though: Habbo Hotel Origins won’t support casinos or any type of gambling, despite the game being for people 18 years or older. Habbo Hotel Origins won’t have any NFTs, either, unlike Habbo Hotel.

Sulake intends to keep Habbo Hotel Origins alive as long as the game sustains itself.

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