How the Teenage Players of Habbo Hotel Turned to Financial Crime
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- Опубликовано: 31 май 2024
- 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. Well, they turn to crime.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Introduction
01:24 The Wild West
04:48 Scams and Cons
13:43 Corporate Corruption
19:16 Habbo's Response to Financial Crime
33:50 Personal Note
46:37 Conclusion
49:08 End Credits
TRANSCRIPT (includes all sources and attributions including licencing information for Creative Commons works):
docs.google.com/document/d/e/...
MUSIC:
Slip - Geographer
Shiny Tech - Kevin MacLeod
Dude - Patrick Patrikios
Body and Attitude - DJ Freedem
Cutting it Close - DJ Freedem
Life After Death - DJ Freedem
Soul Searching - Causmic
Luxery - Causmic
The High Line - Causmic
Much Higher - Causmic
Savior Search - DJ Freedem
Street Rhapsody - DJ Freedem
Two Face - Causmic
Scratch the Itch - Quincas Moreira
Sunrise Drive - South London HiFi
Brooklin - Quincas Moreira
Come Vibe with Me - Patrick Patrikios
Coupe - The Grand Affair
Trapped - Quincas Moreira
A culmination of six months work ... (and six months procrastination)! I hope you enjoy this documentary-length video essay. I certainly enjoyed making it!
*CLARIFICATIONS, COMMENTS, AND CORRECTIONS:*
15:02 [Comment] Mai (-Cess) wishes to give her side of the story. -Cess claims that she did _not_ have access to the account on transfer of the presidency-although it was erroneously thought so. Before the transfer of the accounts, Financier (the founder of the WH), and JoshyTheWashy (Treasury Secretary) realised the funds had been embezzled. Prior to the transfer, only JoshyTheWashy, Richband (a prominent player of the WH), Financier, and Infernum had access to the account and so she was never a suspect.
_My response_
Firstly, I have apologised to -Cess for two different failings on my part:
1. -Cess contacted me on the 11th June 2020. It took until 27th June 2021 for me to finally make her comments public and for me to make my response. While this was a genuine mistake of me forgetting, such a level of negligence is unacceptable. Consequently, during the entire year, I have been told by her that she has been contacted and in some cases harassed based on the allegations made in this video. This is deeply regrettable and I'm sorry.
2. I failed to contact her for her side of the story.
I conducted a review as to why I made the mistakes I did so as to not repeat them in the future:
1. I mistook -Cess for Jess who commented at a similar time. Being both White House cases, I got them confused, thought that I dealt with -Cess' case and then considered the case concluded. This is an unacceptably negligent mistake and I will take steps to ensure that I deal with all comments from interested parties (i.e. those who are talked about in video) in a timely manner.
2. I have tried to attempt -Cess, along with Infernum, and JoshyTheWashy for their side of the story. At the time, I was unable to find any of them, and so I stopped trying. The issue with not being able to contact any of the three was that even though the version of events I told in the video was corroborated by three separate sources (two of which worked in the White House, and one of which was a high ranking official of a foreign agency), none of them were primary sources involved in the actual case. Primary sources aren't necessarily needed (especially in cases where they are inaccessible-such as for this story), but in the absence of them, scrutiny of sources becomes ever more important. Corroboration is not enough in cross-referencing, scrutiny of sources is just as important, and I did not scrutinise the quality of the sources sufficiently in this case.
As a result of -Cess' comments, I do not consider this matter closed. I will try to pursue the story and the inquiry to its full conclusion. If I am able to fully verify -Cess' version of events, I will change this to a formal correction.
16:09 [Comment] Jess (.onomanopia.) has now chosen to respond to these allegations after originally declining to comment. She strongly denies stealing anything from the Habbo White House and denies that she has been a part of any Habbo mafia. She claims the following are rumours and she condemns what she perceives as the perpetuation of these rumours. She also wants to point out that she is an upstanding member of the Habbo community, even going so far as to defend Habbo when it was under scrutiny by Channel 4 news.
16:19 [Comment] The founder of this agency has politely given his comments on the allegations made in the video. He claims the gifts given by his deputy are entirely separate from the agency business and that he obtained his relevant rank solely through merit. He denies any claims of financial misconduct, stating that revenue from the agency comes from Google AdSense payments. He also claims the stated incomes and expenditure of the agency is inaccurate and that accurate records are not disclosed to the public for many reasons. One reason for why the stated incomes and expenditure of the agency is inaccurate is that Habbo Club memberships, pay bonuses, and events (games hosted by the agency) expenditure has not been accounted for in the calculations made. He claims that he runs his agency based on democratic left wing values and that the agency is run and managed through collective leadership, including by those he personally disagrees with.
_My response_
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, I fact-check and cross-reference all stories, claims and allegations made in my videos. There was sufficient enough backing of these claims by quality sources to warrant its addition to the video. However, I believe that people should be given a right to respond to allegations against them, thus I added their comment.
*Some links:*
My Patreon: www.patreon.com/trolligarch
*Transcript:*
For full list of my citations (for you, my fellow academics), attributions, and other footnotes I couldn't fit onto the video, my transcription document is here:
docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRheSm_RtqSGhrSRlTdfbf8f3Wzfar0A4vDqf9VRi2PlgEXjiymRCRt49X1ypdFKm_gAbWjVaCjdxyK/pub
*And finally:*
If you want to help support me, liking and subscribing will do just fine! If you really want to buy me some tea however, you can donate to my Patreon though (but honestly, don't feel obliged to).
trolligarch pls help me out I got scammed at habbo.com I earn my coins for years but my 2 year friend on habbo didnt payed me after I trade my stuffs first pls help me out its a huge money for me im from Philippines our deal cost 300$ pls im beging to yiu guys
@@fissedk7154 Hi Fisse, I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately I don't work for Habbo and there is not much I can do. You will need to contact Habbo support.
@@Trolligarch I already did but surely it wont work because its illegal selling ur habbo credentials irl 😭
Great video. You really put your heart and soul into this. Congratulations
Pin this comments so more ppl see it
You know when your online game has reached peak realism when a mafia forms and there's corporate corruption
lmao good one
and with real monetary value in the thousands
Yea, are these real? I used to be a noob player of Habbo approx 8 years ago but I don't remember "working in a corporation", nor the existence of a "treasury" or "elections". Also finances? And turnover? Reinvestment fund? My business degree is tingling lmao I'm so hopping back on Habbo.
@@charlottejessica hopefully you become a successful mob boss there
Jessica Tan I remember doing the magical chair scam when I was younger but this video almost made me want to start playing again if I had the time and effort since it seems really fun
When I was a kid you could buy habbo coins by calling a number and your phone bill would be charged. I was often sent to the principals office in school for misbehaving. While waiting in the office I would use the school phone on the wall to repeatedly dial this number and buy coins. Needless to say I was a very rich 12 year old on habbo.
LMAOOOOOOOOOOO
Did you get caught?
Legend.
Bruh you a legend 😂 did they ever find out who did it ?
Heheehe🤣
dont tell the fbi
This game is a fucking incredible representation of life in a way. You can take kids with no knowledge of anything bad and they will develop everything including a mafia, scams, politics, power, currency, gambling, and everything else. This is incredible
The most important aspect underlying this system is capitalism and consumerism. It is what fuels this type of corruption
@@townfool4682 Especially since it's basically the only thing to do. Scams happen in all MMOs but you don't see them being so prominent in say WoW because people are busy doing raids, you don't see them in Minecraft (ok, not really a MMO) because people are busy building cool shit (also there's no real economy), you DO see them in Eve but there it's just good meta and also driven by in-game politics rather than IRL financial gain :D
only if you provide the kids with an in game monetization system, introducing them to capitalism. which is the root of the problem.
@@bb-qw2pu ok commi
the root of problem is that if you left kids there there would be less of such scams but the problem is kdis grow up and so their innocence is lost that is also why as time pass by there are more lucritive scams since they are experiecning more in the real world, addiotionally adults are also playing the game when they saw a way to manopolaise the system set up
Fun Fact: The Habbo Hotel Coins are worth over 34000 times more than the currency of Venezuela
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
f u n
You just made me Rich.
damn crazy what happens when you put crippling sanctions on a country so that nobody can trade with them or give them aid
@@thenormalyears who would have guessed that choking out a nations economy would make it's economy collapse?
And I thought that “Pool’s Closed” would be the weirdest thing I’d see in this game.
You should look into the scams on eve online where people have literally lost life savings amounts of money in the game
I think it’s safe to say compared to the shit that went on with a second capitalism and financial crime the 4chan raids may have been the only way to have fun playing habbo and not be scammed
Greatest Era lol
@@brandonporter8509 Remember to Form Standard Health and Safety Swastikas too!
@@patraicemery Ah Eve is better than WSB. That place is crazy people are putting themselves on debt because they're hunting for tendies
As a retired habbo addict, this game is truly amazing for having such a realistic view into the corruption of society.
True, I find prostitution in the game
The good old days. It was a strange world. I had a few friends who invited me while finishing up the eighth grade to do scams so we could buy new games, phones, online subscriptions, lunch... etc.. If done right it was better than selling weed to a highschool.
@@bobdylan6454 good i never wasted time on this hypocrite shit.
yeah i was addicted too , i went from a scammer to a pimp , to banned for saying some bad word
@@pancakeDoesThings19 banned for a bad word? wtf?
This is so surreal. I feel like I’m watching some documentary about the 2008 financial crisis but it’s actually a fucking digital chatroom for teenagers where people scammed for a couple hundred dollars
"A trustee called Jess emptied out the entire treasure account after the white house tried to impeach her for allegedly working for the Habbo Mafia"
we... we just gunna roll right past that sentence????
When i was young habbo was a fun game and nobody i onew spend any mones and just used it to chat .... i really dont know whats wrong with our world that ppl play video games seriously like that :'D
@@yuzuchi5381 I mean if you got a chance to make acouple hundread bucks you would do it.
@@undergrounddrill603 but not over little kids .... thats just disgusting
@@yuzuchi5381 well you cod say I'm a little kid sooooooooooooooooooooooo
@@yuzuchi5381 MONEY IS MONEY
“But don’t underestimate bored teenagers and their desire to obtain virtual currency.”
Could be said for many websites.
Only fans
free robux websites don't work:(
If you send me 1 Bitcoin I will send you 2 back!!!
Me on roblox
And they wish to be paid *t r i b u t e*
From closing pools to financial fraud. Habbo's really grown up.
As a kid, i remember that in what was the equivalent of elementary school in France, we had one teacher who would stay until 19h for the few child that had to wait for their parents (little me) and to wait, rather than deal with us he used to put us in front of the computers.
One day, playing Habbo with a friend, we realized our school had not forbidden the possibility of paying through the Internet bill. Little did they know that it was all the information we needed to spend a few thousands euros on our accounts.
I remember spending 800e the first time we tried while my mate Judi went crazy and bought for more than 2000e of ingots. The most suprising thing about this is that we've never heard of this issue from our teachers, i don't even think the school was aware how much it was paying.
What a time it was, some of the best years in my existence.
To anyone out there: Quitting Habbo and never looking back is the best decision you'll ever make.
Quit all pc gaming
@@darklytravelingboxofficial6622 Do that if you have a shitty PC. Otherwise, don't ever do it.
ive quit years ago
back in 2013 I decided to try it after getting so many ads of it. I played for less than 10 minutes before quitting lol. It was so lame to me
@@darklytravelingboxofficial6622 if you can only play league on your computer , yes , otherwise , no.
It’s hella weird to imagine getting arrested because u stole furniture in an online game lmao
Haha true
back in 2009 or around that time we scammed people with a phishing site on habbo and stole their furniture and coins. We were three people and one guy who lived in Lithuania got raided at some point by the police and had to pay a big fine lol luckily we were all still underage. Nothing happened to me and my friend though because the police in our country was really bad at investigating internet crime stuff so we were lucky I guess. Still fun times though thinking back.
Well please stop imagining I literally confessed my crimes on video ._.
Trolligarch 💀
@Multorum Unum yes appearently but in my country such crimes expire after 5 years so I can't be punished for it anyway now.
Lmao the whole HC superiority was funny as hell, You go to talk to a group of them as a free 2 play player and they just start bullying and cursing you out, "broke bobba look at your clothes"
That brought back memories :’)
Oof I laughed hard at that one. Its so true though, as a "normalo" or "normi" you were pretty much like the poor kid at school
yall remember the “dont talk to me bacon head” 😭
The same as IRL, but they roast your yee yee ass haircut instead
Damn right, it was part of the fun
ngl i remember in grade 7 me and the boys would scam people by hosting falling furnis and just letting one friend constantly "pay to stay" until he won and just collecting what everybody else "paid to stay"
oooooh my god you were one of them :D we started picking up on these scams and would not join certain rooms bc they seemed to be scams or were actually known to have scammed before... Honestly, I never really cared that much, scams were just a part of Habbo by that point and I sometimes would join knowingly anyway purely bc i wanted to play a game ;D
@@evelinas1624 I feel like you would have left mine my little 12 yr old net banger self had the genius habbo name “cooperthegangster”
This dude with 7k subs out here putting in more investigative journalist work than like 90% of gaming journalists give this man a sub
robert turni mind blow. Never thought I’d be sitting through a whole video based on habbo but this guy has reporting skills
I'm here cuz of Internet historian
LEGIT
Alt account? Hhhhhhhh
This is so true
Imagine being Impeached for "Working with the Habbo Mafia"
StixStonez 13, what a time to be alive
I died when I heard that hahahaha , I played this a couple times back in like 08 glad to see how corrupt it’s got LULZZ
I mean, when the highest level of players were making tens of thousands of dollars through a game for teenagers that's kinda insane
@@PikachuTBolts virtual money
@@butterphli3z no, like literally thousands of irl money. I haven't played in a while but the market value is still probably around the same in the outside habbo market. About $3-3.5 per 50 coins. So let's say someone had 10000 coins which is pretty realistic since even I had around 12000 at some point and I was pretty much a nobody lmao. So that 10k coins is already equal to about $600-700. Now consider the very rich people in the game. I believe a user named Fish sold his entire collection in like mid 2010s for like $60000, and he was probably around the top 10 of richest users.
"No purchase necessary to enter" is literally how American companies get around gambling laws for giveaways. It's just easier to enter by buying a chalupa instead of navigting a labyrinthian website. I admire the cut of your jib. I've subscribed for your business acumen. (Plus, that scam wiring is really slick.)
Yeah, "no purchase necessary" somehow doesn't turn into a 5-finger-special, and it amazes me.
"The White House tried to impeach her for working for the Habbo mafia."
"The founder treats the treasury as their own personal bank account."
Is this still a video about an internet chat game for teenagers?
I like to think playing this at such a young age really prepared me for the bullshit that is adult life lol
I swear MMOs will be the posterchildren that the future academic studies on psychology, epidemiology, economics, etc. will based on.
Considering how WoW was used to study how people behave when it comes to pandemics, I fully believe that. How people have behaved with Covid matches up with what happened in WoW
Well, not really. These fields are already well understood, and MMOs are just predictably following patterns we already see in real life (like laissez-faire capitalism is emerging in America) and through controlled experiments. (Kahneman, Tversky, Skinner etc)
The only exception are events that aren't able to be modelled ethically like pandemics
@@MAndSquared WoW has also been used as a simulation for real world economics due to gold inflation on the older servers
CheesecakeLasagna omg have you heard of the blood curse of hakkar in WoW? The cdc used it as actual data for epidemics.
@@AsterBeCastin yep, because it worked the exact same.
Man’s really hit us with the “In this video essay...”
Lmao
Tru
That’s when you check the video length
@@bruhdabones oh bruh, I didnt see that and its past my bedtime wow
well i guess im all about video essays
Here I thought that Habbo was that one game where edgy kids go to stand around in swastika formations while wearing outfits that look like German army uniforms.
It still is. Pool’s Closed is legendary.
4 Chans Pool's Closed is that
Yeah, I was on /b/ from the ages of 13-16 😵💫
there's more legendary trolls, since theres like nothing to do in the game you invent ways to play the game
@@hxxvxnly your therapy must be expensive
I have never played Habbo Hotel, but I’m actually really impressed with everything shown in this video. It’s something I would never have expected from a kids game.
"Of that revenue, 70% was spend on wages"
TFW a Habbo Hotel corporation being investigated for massive corruption is still less exploitative than IRL companies.
Exploitative? Nobody forces anybody to work for a specific corporation (or any corporation for that matter)
@ego lux invicta yeah, no. In the real world you aren't forced to work for one specifik corporation, therefore it's not exploitative.
Hangouts is EA+Valve
@@NightFighterDK But that is the very reason prompting Unions and Strikes, as corporations have the knowledge of how they could expand their business while cutting wages in accordance to other corporations' rate, with the fact that no corporations in their right mind would raise the value and wage of its workers themselves, but by the scarcity of such specialization in the market (aka jobs with very specific skills). All of these help creating the perfect reason to justified the need for a network of interweaving ideas and in-the-dark, tacit agreements of how to keep the workers' wage as low as possible while corporations still have the ace card of saying: "It's a free market, find work at somewhere else!" while they know for sure that such chance for reemployment with higher wage are scarce as the wage bottom floor has been reached- the wage rate that other corporations also employed.
TL;DR: I am corporation A, I want to keep the wage of my workers lower than B's to get more money.
I am corporation B, I see A do the thing, I would also like to do the thing.
We are corporation C to Z, we see them do it, we will do it also.
Aftermath: Corporation A to Z all got richer while all of their workers got poorer with no real alternative choice of corporation for employment.
@@NightFighterDK im calling bait
You can’t just say “She worked for the Habbo Mafia” and not tell us more!
IKR
By the way - the jess on the video was user .onomanopia.
who did the heist for my old mafia Valore Crime Family, i was Underboss at that time and i got more than 80gb because of that, im sure my Don made more than me but he never told me how much he made he is also known as CJ, we sent one of our soldiers to "EDATE" her then after few months we managed to get her addy and after some days we started doing things against the habbo way which made her do whatever we want. by the way im user ErikLiana, Don of Liana Crime Family atm. some of people here asking what happened to mafias, well sadly the mobs stopped openly recruiting like you cant just come and be like hey can i work for you guys thats not how it works, you need someone inside the family to vouch for you, you need to pay the joining fee and alot of another work to be accepted in a crime family. I mean thats the main point of being mobster, if everyone can be a mobster what is fun or scary about that? are we an agency? lol.. anyways love yall have fun
@@lianafamily9747 jesus christ
Liana Crime Family but if you need a voucher from the inside how do you find someone on the inside? I would love to get in contact with you is there a way I could do that?
What kind of crazy lore...
I'm 26 now and used to play Habbo. I got all my furniture stolen when I was 11 because I gave my password away due to a scam lmao.
Lmao same. I was like 10-11 and my dumbass thought it would be ok to give out my password for "free furni". Months of allowance money stolen from me in an instant. It's been over 10 years since then and I still think about it😂. The dude who jacked my shit probably has kids and a mortgage now
Someone gave me HIS password so I could give their rares back to their second account. And that's exactly what I did, I just gave them back :"""D I was so honored that he trusted me so much. This was a different habbo retro though, we all got coins for free every 15 minutes, rares were just really expensive and required a lot of play time.
same ;n;
I'm 25 and I played Habbo so long ago. Thank god I moved onto the Sims franchise.
There's a quote that this video really reminds me of.
"And kids are cruel. All people are by nature, they just lose touch with it when they get older." -Sundowner
Danny! what are you doing here?
Are you implying elderly people are innocent? Or that only kids are capable of savage cruelty?
@@Noah-wv4td
Well, in that case, younger women are usually like that. They act all sweet but theyre out to get your wallet. Its only when they lose their youthful beauty (late 30s/early 40s) do they lose their "docility".
@@Noah-wv4td
Well, even well-adjusted guys face this problem. And the ones who're anti-social and vocally gynophobic are usually whiny entitled incels who think being born "white" is supposed to be divine lieutenancy.
FUCKING INVINCIBLE
Never played the game, no plans to play the game, never heard of the game, yet I just watched a 50 minute video about it. Kudos to you for this vid
that makes 2 of us, memes brought me here
i had no clue what he was talking about the whole video
@@licki9176 me 2
How the hell did you find it ?
internet be like
"Your items are merely data, and thus cannot be owned or stolen." "So, digital piracy is not a real crime, then?"
I thought of it (defending the statement of virtual items):
They indeed are data, but what makes them remarkable is the combination of data that make the structure of such item. It's not raw data without meaning.
It’s only a crime when they are being robbed
Also, if that's the case, why can't you just replicate the data to reimburse the user?
@@komos3719 inflation reasons relating to claiming you were scammed out of alot while in truth you transfered it to another account you control. This allows you to abuse this system to double items.
@@RRKS_TF oh ok, thanks for answering.
RUclips’s algorithm is great, I’ve never heard of this game before and it’s now recommended me a 50 minute video discussing it’s criminal underworld. The internet is a beautiful place.
I opened Habbo now, and believe it or not, everyone is offering a job. A job in a freaking game. There's a cop, an office worker, a guard, wth happen to Habbo, where is the innocent mini games like mazes, falling furnitures, battle banzai etc 😂😂😂
I used to play this game RELIGIOUSLY when I was a teenager. I've been scammed, hacked, I used to scam. I was obsessed. I was so excited to watch this and your previous video on this. So un-ironically educational and nostalgic, to corruption in the real world and in video games. I've subscribed, thanks for the great vid man.
I feel a slight drop of inspiration to be a crimelord now
yeah, people need some solid drive to become a hardass
the only cool way to be a criminal is payday
You should check out Jake Tran's channel.
Freelo Guy bro you wanna start a mob on habbo hotel
Time to become a dirty crime boi.
"Corporate corruption"
"Habbo Maffia"
"President"
"Corporations"
"Treasury"
A game made for teens.
I love how these serious terms are used to talk about fucking Habbo, it's kind of charming and cool.
Don't forget about the FUCKING REVOLUTIONARY UNION
He made it sound as if the Habbo White House was like the official political establishment of the game LOL. Like elections were held across the game. When in reality the Habbo White House was just another agency run by a tyrant (Financier) and his small circle of friends. It's all just personal drama in the grand scheme of things. What I was most interested about was towards the beginning of the video.. about how early habbos invaded old, rare, abandoned accounts with thrones on them and then took the rare-name accounts and the thrones.. that would make a lot of sense about how certain people were rich as hell back in the early days of Habbo UK. Such as Jesta and Interwebz
This game made me single-handedly steal my cousin's account and make a free online form to scam others into giving me their login details. It is ruthless and corrupts anyone who plays this lmao
I remember in AU Habbo the richest casino owner had his entire wall stacked with typewriters lol
I sincerely hope this turns into a "virtual crimes in games" channel. It's the most interesting subject ever, and I don't even know why lol
Same thought :D
So the channel will be EA 90% of the time.
Basically we'd stumble upon EVE Online and we'd be here all day...
A new episode every six months!
Since this is somehow common i would to see more videos based in this subject
"tried to impeach her for allegedly working for the habbo mafia"
im dead bro
This made me remember that one time “Ashlee Simpson” was having a concert on Habbo and I literally fought to get into the room 😂 what was wrong with me?!
I was addicted of this game for like 8 years. Failed all my exams in school. Spent hundreds of pounds. However I had a 177 words per minute and I made some friends who I still speak to this day. I was very very very rich. RIP the glory days.
Can't believe I just watched a 50 minute video on a game for teenagers that ive never played
Quality content proved
Watch his first one. It's even more crazy.
it's too interesting
because the mechanics of financial crime are always interesting, no matter where
Ever remember sitting in history class?
Literally the first thing my 10yo me did on Habbo was trying to start a system that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme...
Great minds think alike (when i was 10 im still playing web minigames because i can play 15mins/ week)
King
I need a full story
BRO ME TOO
I just did it with FF.
Wow, never realised Habbo went this in-depth. Meanwhile my only memory of Habbo was me as a child talking to someone about being a staff, and when they asked for my age, I was only like, 7yo or something. Safe to say, they closed that chat with me pretty quickly lmao.
I admire the way EVE Online is managed in relation to this kind of thing, basically the same, "Too bad for you." policy, but it's lore friendly given the anarchic future the game is set in.
The fact that scams aren't against the rules has allowed these tales to be told, and it's some of the greatest emergent gameplay/storytelling in existence.
I keep having to remind myself that he’s talking about a video game. I was waiting to hear about an extremist militant group that started planting bombs to overthrow the Habbo elite
There are my weekend plans (not really)
I mean this video mentions a revolutionary union within habbo hotel.
Unfortunately as the owners of the game and the mods have god-like control, revolution is not possible, only reform.
What happens when people get tired of paying for in-game currency?
*_CRIME_*
Just like real life
I definitely ran many scam Falling Furni's in my day lmao. Ironically, my account got banned for trolling and being disruptive, not for scamming.
Omg same I would scam during Furni 4 Furni😂
Once a dude was so nice I actually doubled his furniture.
I bought $20 worth of credits in this game when i was 10 years old and forgot my password. I had my mom email the company like 15 times over the course of a year because i was 10 and $20 was a shitload of money and the support team never responded to a single god damn email. 10 year old me was heartbroken because of that.
That's my habbo hotel story.
that’s so sad omg i’m so sorry
WRITE. YOUR. PASSWORDS. IN. A. PASSWORD. DIARY ! (don't forget to code the really important ones in case someone breaks in your house and steal the computer AND the pasword diary)
Ulric-cirlU better yet , have two passwords one you use for your email and one you use for everything else so that if someone hacks one of your accounts you just change the password with your email, and if someone hacks you email you just recover it with your phone number or a second email
My Habbo Hotel story is losing hundreds of invested dollars I used to make an RPG because somebody hacked my account and the staff didn't help in the slightest because as far as they're aware, someone else hacking my account was as much my fault as it would have been if I had given them my personal details, which i didn't.
I did nothing wrong and still lost everything for it.
Jan Marco Ch. that’s horrible advice bruh
It amazes me how habbo literally turned into the most accurate and heartbreaking representation of society over the years
Me reads title: nice joke
Me sees video length: oh holy shî...
Thanks Osama
I’m 6 minutes in and I thought this was like a 12 minute video 😳
"How did you make millions grandad?" - Back in my day there was habbo black market
I like how things can start off so simple and grow into something complex over time
Scientists did experiment on rats. They put them in a place with unlimited food and place they did not need to worry and have all. Eventually that rat society destroyed itself. There seem to be a universal nature of things not being forever no matter how good the circumstances.
this game taught me how to sniff out a scammer early on in my teen years
Legit like I don't get how people can be so easily scammed like... I knew my way around a scammer before I turned double digits bruh
I was just thinking that (and how beneficial it is....)
@YexaC tbf, my grandma has fallen for scams in the past, but that's because they're tech related and she knows fuck all about tech. Ever since I told her about ur bog standard how to be careful online, she hasn't been scammed since. Anyone who's tech literate and falls for scams yep that's just natural selection
Fortnite's Save The World mode taught me scamming. I was attached to a certain gun and it got scammed off of me. I genuinely cried.
The hierarchy in this game was real.
Before I started doing official DM'ing for DND campaigns, I used to do roleplay centric stuff on this game. I even sunk a lot of my allowance into it in my earlier years and was notable at the time for having some pretty well designed rooms. However, my style didn't mesh with other people's as I was more about crafting a narrative over just having people fight in roleplay constantly. This is an important detail because it made me a lot of enemies. Particularly, enemies of the wrong crowd. There were primarily two big roleplay communities when it came to Habbo, and that was the Mafia and Vampire/Werewolf shit (I know this is cringey but bear with me).
As it happens, me having dope ass rooms paired with my hardline "You do things my way or the highway" attitude didn't bode well with these crowds. People frequently walked in acting like they owned the place and for a time I thought that was sheer ego on their parts; them believing that I didn't function by the rules and therefor didn't have a claim to the things I had spent money on. Well, as it turns out, when these people didn't get their way, they would literally hack your account. And that's what they did. Hundreds of dollars I'd spent on that game gone down the drain, even got to go to a secondary account and watch alongside my roleplayers helplessly while some dudes using my account shifted all of my items off to someone else's account.
And Habbo didn't do a damn thing about it. Even though I never gave them my account information or anything of that sort, they treated the matter as if I did and never offered any help or compensation. So I essentially just experienced burglary and had to watch it all disappear while a bunch of shitlords laughed about it in my face. And I never went back.
That was how my childhood experience with Habbo Hotel ended.
I wanna say they wound up helping me as it got me into far more productive means of expressing my desire to build worlds with high fantasy, but the child in my bitter 27 year old salty ass is still butthurt.
I am geniuenly curious what high fantasy worlds you're creating nowadays.
You should collaborate with this channel to tell your story!
I got mad while reading this. Such assholes
@ilove bigbrother Three words dummy, brute force attack. Google them and learn before you try correcting people.
@@mrglibb Two words, IP banning.
"the victim would then run away" with the two coins. That's brilliant, it's like a reverse-scam.
Man dropped one of the best videos ever didn't elaborate and left.
Lol this takes me back. Let me tell you the story of the time I got fed up with habbo financial crime and became a vigilante.
I got hacked with a keylogger back in 06 right after I got like 200c. It was the 4th of July 1/2 off sale. I was so furious, I decided to become a habbo vigilante. Every time I would observe someone advertising a shady links, or trying to swindle noobs. Etc... I would jump into action
1. quietly observe in the background.
2. look up which of their friends was offline
3. send the villain a friend request
4. claim to be one of their friends new account.
4. suggest doing a pool raid
5. dress up in the customary Afro and suit.
And they would go up dancing in front of the pool BAM!...Report them.
Pool raids were punishable by an 11 year ban.
I would put there name on a stickie note in my room of people I brought to justice. Nothing separates the names but a comma. In the end I filled up like 7 stickie notes over a period of 3-4 years. You might be able to still find my stickies. My username was Hetake07
Damn
The hero we didn't deserve
You are amazing
damn legendary genius 😂
WHAT'S A POOL RAID LMAO
Years ago: *POOL'S CLOSED*
2020: *EARTH'S CLOSED*
POOL'S CLOSED DUE TO AIDS PEDOS AND STINGRAYS
Pool's closed due to covid-19
Sizirr01 the CCP virus
k
This is an insanely well documented story, incredible level of journalism, time and care taken. Much respect, you have a new sub.
Oh boy this brings back so much memory of trying to make a living on the site as a young child
The types of scams I was aware of at the time which I often fell victim to were the ones when I'd win falling furni and the host would blatantly ban me without prize 😂
whe he started talking about the whitehouse I literally had no idea what he was on about.
same
Basically it's just a group in habbo. I don't know much but I used to work for one in the game, and it was horrible.
Thank you for the feedback! One mistake I made with this video is that I assumed that people have watched my previous Habbo video on capitalism. In it, I explained how in-game corporations work. I assumed that people would already have a surface-level understanding of corporations on Habbo as a result. This is obviously a wrongful assumption and I will take note re-explain certain concepts as if someone was brand new to my channel.
@@Trolligarch thanks for the reply! I don't think you necessarily need to repeat yourself - you can link videos in the description or the little 'i' button on the top right and just direct people towards the videos which explain them :)
iona I didn't think of adding a card (those i things) at that section. I will add one later. Thanks for the suggestion!
"do you know this game censors your password"? lord i saw this on multiple online games and there's always sb who falls for it XD
It's an online game classic for sure, same as "Press Alt + F4 to open the admin console".
@@BackwardsPancake You mean like th-
@@michaeljohnson905 "Merfolk Surprise left the game (Disconnect by user)"
@@The86thplayer a classic valve moment-you are very cultured indeed
Yes, you see, because i supposedly can do this thing, i totally should do it. nothing could go wrong with me doing this thing and it not working. let's forget the fact that, if true, there's also absolutely no reason i should do it. But you see, i must try this thing, so i can see it happen.
Next level stupidity: the honest guy. In response these companies ban the word "password" in chat, to prevent this scheme, but upon hearing it, dude X actually finds out it's totally true... for him... Because that's his password.
I mean, they're actually geniuses. They turned a simple game into a money making machine.
I don’t know how your three year old video popped up in my recommendations, but I have to say I watched your videos and you did very well on them. Seeing as how you haven’t posted in three years I don’t expect an answer, but I hope you’re well good sir. Hopefully new content is on the horizon.
Me and my friend sold unlinked teleports. We bought a lot of them. I kept them in my inventory and my friend had a shop running with working teleporters. When someone came by and bought a set. My friend and I would quickly trade The linked teleporters with the non linked teleporters. Then my friend would give the buyer the unlinked teleporters. It took some time to master to do it quick, but with in 3 days we made 100cr. We also checked the teleporters if they were linked to corporations or other cool rooms. We sold 2 teleporters to other corporations, so they could easily infiltrate.
There were too many scams to mention, but I did the exact same scam in the past too (except using alts). My alt will have lots of unlinking teleports (you can literally ask people to donate unlinking teleports; people give them away for free), but the one in my shop has the linked one. People buy the linked teleports, but before I trade them, I tell them "can you wait please". During that time, I trade away my working teleporters and replace it with unlinked ones. I then trade the unlinked ones to the customer.
@@Trolligarch screenshotted and sent to fbi
This sounds so cool
@@Trolligarch It'd be so easy for Habbo to get rid of this problem, it shouldn't even be possible to begin with, simply make 'em come together only when they're linked, when they're not, just make 'em appear in separate boxes on the trade window, yet habbo does nothing, cuz its better if a player decides to buy it from the web store once they're fed up with being scammed. It makes scamming perpetual cause when u get unlinked teleports you're likely to sell to another player as linked ones. So there you have it, habbo most likely turned us innocent kids into swindlers and snake oil salesmen
lmao a perfect heist job
I was today year’s old when I found out you could own a corporation or become president in Habbo...
SAME LMAOO
Also even theres a corruption
A hint: you can also do these things IRL, imagine that :D
My buddy and I did the falling furni scam back in the day, around 2008 or so. Dropped some of our birthday money on habbo cards at gamestop and created our own basic falling furni room. We were like 12 years old and thought we were geniuses raking in free furniture. Looking back it was pretty scummy.
I gotta say that this is my favorite video essay I've saw on RUclips. As a former player (and very addict) of Habbo I loved this video, I hope to see more of these!
Hi, I'm -Cess, AKA Mai (also it's pronounced as My haha), the one in the Habbo White House story. I'd like to point out and clarify that I never had the password of the account. 1 day before it was given to me, the account credits was stolen. The only people who had access was rich-band/financier, JoshytheWashy (The Head of the Treasury) and Craig. So the story you had isn't exactly how it was. Even ask JoshyTheWashy who currently is still in Habbo White House who had the account at that time. It happened a few years ago and people didn't even know what happened so I came to clarify and explain it myself. I do hope you respond to this as I feel like you asked someone who didn't know the story overall. Thank you!
Would you be willing to do an interview?
@@jaysanders3874 I would be if I was asked to be interviewed :))
YourQueenBee How do you balance Habbo and your normal life? It genuinely seems absolutely weird that a free game has a mafia, presidency and economic systems. I thought that when a person in minecraft decided to rebuild the earth 1:1 seemed insane. But habbo has proven me wrong .
@@redphoenix2m101 hahaha! Those are 3 different branches of habbo. You can just choose which one you are doing. (Mafias are banned in Habbo White House and other orgs so you can't do both) So for presidency, its alot easier to have a normal life as you have subordinates doing things for you too rather than you doing all the work since in Habbo White House, tasks are divided among ranks.
Why is there a White House for Habbo? I'm putting together that there is a lot to do in Habbo, but is it REALLY that big and complex?
Our basic scam back in the day was.
Add person on msn
Go to forgot password
Secret question
Normally was first pet or something simple
Work it into coversation
Gain access to email account and change details
Ok
o k
OK
Ah, yes. Social engineering.
Old reliable.
Man I like to imagine eventually you have to ask one of them what's there moms maiden name
Habbo really had me and my brother showing up to work on a virtual game, training people, getting promotions, giving promotions, following corporate rules, attending to customers... for a few duck coins
Honestly good on you for opening up and coming clean. Takes some level of guts to do that.
I love how you present your videos- its so informative.
Keep it up!
We live in an era where a RUclipsr named Trolligarch has effectively become the George Orwell of Habbo Hotel.
Welcome to the 21st century.
I don't remeber habbo having a civil war that trolligarch fought with on a United front of communists,socialists and anarchists which forged his hatred of authoritarian governments .
Lol
@@lubrjavo bet
If i closed my eyes I would assume this what a documentary about America 50 years ago or something like that
You know, there is still financial crime in 2020. I'm not kidding.
Jannik Heidemann but the financial crime of the late 1800s and early 1900s was much, much more prevalent.
You_just are you kidding? It’s worse than its ever been right now. White collar crime has absolutely exploded since the turn of the century. What has decreased is the prosecution of the crime
I think the visibility has changed. Hiding financial crime has become more sophisticated.
Quite a few actors also do things that are moraly wrong and damage society but are technicaly legal.
HABBO MAFIA
Shout out to anyone who played this back in 2000.
heres me, casually scrolling through youtube looking for something to watch before bed, and then, out of the corner of my eye I see it, "Habbo Hotel Financial Crime"
I feel like this is where Animal Crossing New Horizons is headed.
I would get back into it if that were the case
I can't play ac and I only know some small things abt it but aren't a lot of the player base trading off some cat guy in a snazzy suit? Idk but that is a slightly sus, if it were just easy in game currency it'd be fine but some people are legit putting some hard cash for this guy on ebay right?
@@anoinks6511 yes, the reason is because all the games randomly spawn villagers to fill the world, but you can buy things to put the villager into the island. Its not exactly the same, but can be scammed on if done correctly. But I know that Ebay has buyers protections.
R/acscammers already exists so :/
the habbo mafia secretly controls the black market raymond market and is trying to shut me up for exp
“Over the last 20 years” sorry WHAT?!
We're getting old buddy
@@Toven_WaveWatcherFi Too old.
@@jamescawl6904 I remember the Pool's Closed event like it was yesterday.
Ikr jeez
I'm really in love with your narration and storytelling! I've always been interested in this game and how its affected other people, so I'm glad that there's someone like you making such wonderful, quality content about it.
Habbo Mafia? We need a film about this
Pool's closed. Directed by Martin Scorsese
Me and my brother got rich in this game back in the mid 2000s.
*The first thng we did was set up a falling furni game.* In Falling Furni players stand in a room and the host places chairs. The person who doesn't get on the chair in time has 3 options: p2p (pay furni to keep playing) or rev (pay a furni to kick someone), or they get kicked. The way we would cheat is my brother would tell me where he is going to place the chair so I would always win. We got a TON of money from this.
*Another way we cheated was pet racing.* Players would bet on one of 2 dogs to run to food. The way we cheated was to have one hungry dog (or aligator, cat etc), and only place it after people made their bets. The hungry dog always rushed to the food. SO many people fell for this.
*After we built up our wealth we started a casino.* Casino scamming was simple. People would lose roughly 80% of the time. And if they won? They just get fucking kicked from the room lol. Somehow we made LOADS of money from this. We were high rollers in the game with Thrones, Habboclub Chairs (green sofas), and it was all from a career of scamming.
tell me you are not working for the goverment now
I can understand the first two
but how on earth didn't your reputation get tarnished with the casino thing? (maybe they thought it was just habbo being terrible again lol)
omg you are evil lmaoooo, habbo in the mid-2000s - early 2010s was amazing.
It clearly shows you were scamming teens, normally people would accuse you or report you if you seem to be doing something akin to cheating, but they didn't they didn't even defamate you at all.... what an easy way to gain things...
I was someone who was pretty 'clean' in the game. I earned money from winning cozzie change games, that chair game where u end up at the end of the room. And I bought a bundle and sold it for a more expensive individual price. I did all that just so I can host games and give people money. Where I would earn from p2p. (Trusty owner). BUT there was a time where I knew I wasn't going to ever go higher than where I was... I was always going to remain an 'average' player that no one noticed. I even attempted to skem people... which in the end I didn't have the guts to do so I ended up quitting.
Minor detail about Runescape:
Some time ago, it was found out that a Jmod (the community term for a Jagex employee, the company who makes Runescape) by the name Mod Jed had been doing some shady stuff and shafting players to say the least. This included leaking everything from ip addresses, to logging into those players' accounts, all to hijack their things (or disadvantage them when they went up against the player vs player clans that Jed was working for, because there was thousands in prize money on the line).
When Jagex successfully caught and proved Jed's guilt, they not only fired him from the company, but they publicly admitted their mistake to the community and restored the items that he had stolen or deleted.
In total, this represented a combined thousands, if not millions, of dollars worth of items, as well as thousands of hours in the form of untradeables (whose value are typically measured in hours required to earn rather than cash spent, because they're unpurchaseable).
This doesn't negate the overall trend you referred to in your video; Jagex largely does not reimburse its users who are scammed or hacked. But, they have made some exceptions for exceptional cases.
Anyway
Edit: fixed spelling of "up addresses" to "ip addresses"
OH MAN THIS THOUGH WAS INSANE.
ruclips.net/video/txpZinJvLLM/видео.html
& The time a mod was involved in the Corporal beast bug.
& the other corp beast bug when the ring of wealth stacked on loot share lmao.
While i get the standpoint of companys like Jagex at times i felt they also didnt do enough to support or help the players protect themselfs. If my account can et hacked and my bankpin in hte game broken in less then 6 hours it feels like blame fals on both sides.
In that case they could have been seen as liable in a court, so they reinbursed people. In other cases they would love scams, means they make more money when people re buy stuff after losing it, profit is profit, companies don't care about morals.
This was a REALLY good, really in depth, really well researched, really thorough, really informative video essay, and I'm very very impressed with it.
Very sad to see you have only one patron, and I'm too broke to assist for the moment, but I'm liking, subscribing and commenting, and I'll try and share this around to get you as many of the metrics as I can. Keep this up! This is high tier journalistic research. 💖
Loved this game when I was younger, would play for hours trying to set up my own “company” in form of a bar :D it felt like I was working a real job that aspect was totally awesome, but the way to get there and to be confronted with the real life problem of “economics and survival of the fittest in a capitalist world” without understanding a single thing it was really depressing :D still had a banger time tho
"Habbo hotel IS an online multiplayer game"
Me: "What?? It still exists??"
No kidding right? This game is old enough to legally purchase alcohol in Canada!
Still going strong, making some players more cash per month than their day job, playing the game legitimately!
Draw Content I’m surprised since the last time I was on there the userbase has been dwindling drastically over the years
I have never played habbo and I absolutely adored this video. I applaud your efforts and your ability to get across information, I've seen journalists and other bigger RUclipsrs do far worse than this, good job!
My goal was to ensure that people who did not play Habbo could fully understand my video and reach (or at least have an understanding) of my conclusion which I've formed through _insider knowledge_ of the game. I'm ecstatic that you enjoyed my video.
@@Trolligarch you definitely achieved your goal man, hope to see more from you in the future :)
@@Trolligarch you did a wonderful job my guy
@@Trolligarch literally all i know about habbo comes from the pool closing stuff 4chan did, and i enjoyed this video
Thank you for this very informative video! I’m an adult now, in his thirties, but as a teen I could relate a lot to the ‘hunger for credits’ you talked about. I was a player back in 2005-2006 and quickly realised free 10 credits were given away for special occasions (now not anymore sadly) so worked a lot on clones. With relatively little real money effort (I only purchased coins like 3-4 times for a total of 30-40€) and getting the rest from clones I built my dream room and became able to try making my route to the top. And quickly realised the sad truth: this game is a sad example of capitalism applied to young teens, to which I stayed relatively immune (I saw some of my habbo friends literally gambling the equivalent of hundreds of euros at a time in casinos!). I only wanted to reach a decent wealth and be socially accepted in the virtual community :) And indeed the way people saw me when I was wearing HC clothes changed a lot, pretty much like when you’re wearing branded items or suit and tie in real life. But yeah Habbo logic is contorted and sick, like teens hadn’t already enough problems of being ‘accepted’ in real world. It’s an alternative reality, a ‘meta verse’ like we would call it today, but it comes with real life-relatable problems. Including being exploited by virtual ‘girlfriends’ and even stabbed in your back by your friends if they are given even the slightest occasion to put their hands on your password.
Im proud of you coming out and telling how these scams work. Excellent analysis
Also by habbo stating "all of your virtual stuff is ours" is literally asking people to hack, scam or cheat. I mean if everything isn't mine and I can't even get my stuff back if someone hacks; might as well join them.
None of your stuff, even stuff you paid for is yours so you're no better off than a new account, which means; a hacker/scammer is 100% has the advantage.
i actually wonder what legal law the aquisition of rights to use and items fals under and what protection it has with it. Cause thats how those "Store" sound like you aquire the rights to use something not own them.
whole lotta gang shit
Imagine that being the case with tangible goods, like "Although you bought the house from me, I still own it, so I can come in whenever I want". The company gets to function through people's income, and it has the balls to tell you that "whatever you buy from us, we still own it, because it's virtual data". You're 100% spot on when the thought of joining scammers feels inviting and lucrative, with little to no consequence depending on what scheme you're running. I was pretty much speechless when Trolligarch pointed out its TOS, when DUE to their lack of protection for your account your goods can get stolen... and the game didn't even have password requirement when it came out... Just let that sink in for a minute. But even after they introduced that security feature, how can someone even consider supporting them with real money if the company isn't even willing to help you out, when you had no implication whatsoever with your account being hacked?
@@j.alex629 "whatever you buy from us, we still own it, because it's virtual data".
You don't even have to imagine. That's basically the angle that a lot of online video game store platforms are already going for. It's so that technically, if they go out of business or decide to shut down the servers for an online game and render it unplayable, they don't have to compensate the customers in any way.
It really sucks too, because it's functionally destroying our ability to archive old games. Once they shut it down, the game's just gone (unless they go out of their way to provide an end-of-life solution such as private servers, which they almost never do), which is pretty tragic if you see games as having any artistic merit at all.
It's really no wonder that piracy is making a comeback: If you want to experience an older/officially dead game, an illegally cracked/emulated copy may be your only way to do so.
this sounds like a whole other country's corruption history dude
Y'know man I've watched this video like 3 or 4 times it's absolutely GOLDEN. I hope you decide to make more content or take youtube seriously in the future. Much love man
Damn when I was a kid playing Habbo I just entered random rooms and acted like a idiot. These kids are going all Jordan Belfort on this shit 😂
Cultural Note: In some servers, "Fallin' Furnis" is known as "Musical Chairs"
On .com musical chairs was literally that, playing trax and standing on rollers that surrounded some chairs, run to the chair when the music stops. I wonder if they on the other servers they just didnt play traditional "musical chairs"
on the finnish servers it was just known as 'Tuolari' which doesnt really translate into anything but 'Tuoli' is chair so the closest word to 'Tuolari' is Chairing i quess lmao
In Dutch it is "Stoelendans", "Chair dance"
On the .es(spain) server it was called "Sillas Locas" or in english, "Crazy Chairs"
@@yasingunaydiin In brazil its called chair dance also "dança das cadeiras"
If the company wants to hold up "getting scammed is user error" the least they should do is make every wired block viewable. No hiding in the sky, and clearity what each block does.
I'm incredibly late, but I'm very glad to see a follow up to that original video I loved! Quality work. I was always aware of stuff like this, but not how deep the rabbit hole really went.
Old school habbo with the hand inventory was so elite. man those were the days
This man singlehandedly just bitchslapped every "gaming journalist" out there. Actual journalism not just bootleg shoddily done reviews of a game
Because he works on his own and is supported by a community instead of a company or goverment
I'd say this video would be like a feature piece if it were in a newspaper
**cuphead tutorial music**
It also took much longer to produce, though. I'm no expert, but I would bet my money that regularly churning out weak content is more lucrative than making an effort and taking time. That's late capitalism for us.
Because it's real life investigative journalism. He infiltrated his subject and explored all the ins and outs to make it clear to the readers/viewers.
Watching this felt like being in a black mirror episode where as it goes on I could no longer tell the difference between the game and reality.
oh man this game was just amazing! i used to host falling furniture daily with a friend as an insider on different accounts. the amount of coins people gave me to try and win was just incredible.