Sulake Oy () is a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

video game company primary known for the creation and

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development hell, when a project is stuck in development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting *Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped *Photographi ...

of ''

Habbo ''Habbo'' (formerly ''Habbo Hotel'') is an online community aimed at teens and young adults. It is owned and operated by Sulake, a Finland, Finnish company. Founded in 2000, Habbo has expanded to nine online communities (or "hotels"), with use ...

'' and ''Hotel Hideaway''

games A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such ...

History

In its early days, Sulake developed and experimented with an open source

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

based

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

called FUSE Light, an alternative to

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe Systems ...

Shockwave In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a me ...

. The key difference between the two technologies was that FUSE Light was designed to run on any

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

, while Shockwave was limited to just

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. This technology was first demonstrated on Sulake's Mobiles Disco, but it soon came to use on the

beta version A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

s of ''Habbo''. In March 2011, Sulake reported that revenue was up more than 20 percent over 2009, resulting in sales of €56.2 million ($78.7 million). Sulake's

EBITDA A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (commonly abbreviated EBITDA, pronounced , , or ) is a measure of a company's profitability of the operating business only, thus before any effects of indebtedness, stat ...

in 2010 totaled €5.4 million ($7.6 million, 9.5 percent of revenue) and thus significantly improved from the previous year (€0.6 or $0.8 million). Net profit was €1.6 million ($2.3 million). Sulake has also been playing an active role in assisting the police in investigations connected to the theft of online furniture. In September 2011, Sulake announced Paul LaFontaine as new CEO as the original management team left the company. In February 2012, it was announced that Sulake will be consolidating some of its manual processes and local operations. In showing the door to 25% of their workforce, Sulake will also close all of their 11 country offices according to the report by Finnish publication Dome.fi. In June 2012, Sulake received negative press for ongoing sexual behavior allegations on their most successful website, ''

''.

Channel 4 News ''Channel 4 News'' is the main news programme on British television broadcaster Channel 4. It is produced by ITN, and has been in operation since Channel 4's launch in November 1982. Current productions ''Channel 4 News'' ''Channel 4 News'' ...

identified that Sulake was allowing users to post pornographic and violent messages - despite the fact that Habbo is targeted at young teenagers. On 13 June 2012, one of the main shareholders, 3i, which held 16 per cent of shares, declared it was pulling out of Sulake shares alongside other investors including

Balderton Capital Balderton Capital is a venture capital firm based in London, UK, that invests in early-stage, technology and internet startup companies in Europe. It is considered to be among the four-biggest venture capital firms in the English capital. Foun ...

. In October 2012, it was announced that Sulake would be implementing a second wave of job cuts. A maximum of 60 out of the 90 jobs will go. Negotiations with employees began on 5 November 2012. In December 2012, it was announced that CEO Paul LaFontaine would be leaving his role after fifteen months. In January 2013, Sulake announced that Markku Ignatius would replace LaFontaine as acting CEO. In February 2013, telecommunications company

Elisa The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (, ) is a commonly used analytical biochemistry assay, first described by Eva Engvall and Peter Perlmann in 1971. The assay uses a solid-phase type of enzyme immunoassay (EIA) to detect the presence ...

announced that it was buying Sulake. By the end of the month it will become the biggest shareholder with 85% of the shares. In April 2013, Antti-Jussi Suominen became the CEO of Sulake. He left his post in January 2017 to join banking startup

Holvi Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (), better known by its initialism BBVA, is a Spanish multinational financial services company based in Madrid and Bilbao, Spain. It is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and is present ...

. On May 17, 2018, Elisa finalized the sale of 60% of the shares in Sulake Oy to the Dutch company Orange Games. The value of the deal was not disclosed. Orange Games later merged with the AdTech platform Improve Digital and became known as Azerion. Azerion remains majority stakeholder in Sulake with Elisa remaining a minority stakeholder. In January 2021, it was reported that Azerion negotiated with Elisa and bought the remaining shares of Sulake. They are now the owners of Sulake Oy.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.sulake.com
Habbo investor pulls out after 'explicit' sex allegations
BBC News.
Main investor pulls out of Habbo parent company
Channel 4 News. Habbo Finnish brands Video game publishers Companies based in Helsinki 2000 establishments in Finland Video game companies of Finland Video game development companies Video game companies established in 2000