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The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry

Session Name: From $0 to $500 Million a Year - The Evolution of Habbo's Virtual Economy
Speaker(s): Sulka Haro
Company Name(s): Sulake
Track / Format: Design

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Overview: Habbo Hotel, the world's largest virtual community for teenagers, is celebrating its 10th anniversary and doing better than ever. The game enjoys more than 15 million monthly users and collected more than $60 million in revenue in 2009, primarily from micropayments. Simultaneously, the amount of value traded in the economy has increased from $0 to over $500 million a year. In 2000, Habbo Hotel was one of the first online companies to implement an economy of microtransactions. Over the last 10 years, the site has made multiple fundamental changes to the virtual economy to accommodate competition and end-user expectations. This talk examines how Habbo Hotels economic system has evolved, including learnings from the recent addition of taxation into the economic structure of the game.

GDC Online 2010

Sulka Haro

Sulake

free content

Design

Design