The Sulake Logo
Sulake (Finnish for fuse) is a multi-million dollar multimedia company based in Helsinki, Finland. It was founded by Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä in 2000. Sulake's main focus is virtual worlds, casual multiplayer games and social networking. The corporation's CEO is Timo Soininen, also from Finland. The company consists of about 300 employees, spread throughout 18 offices around the world.
The company's first project, Mobiles Disco, was intended to promote a Finnish rap group called Mobiles in 1999. As the site grew in popularity, the (Finnish) rooms were swamped with foreigners, so an English international version was created. This made Karjalainen and Kyrölä wonder about possibilities for financial success. It is believed that Dee 'Daisy' Edwards sold the rights to the early 'Habbo Hotel' brand back. The user was known daisy, from the United Kingdom hotel. It was rumored that such rights were sold for nearly one million pounds, paid by investors within Sulake. Sulake then sold the concept to the Finnish telecom giant Elisa Oyj through the advertising agency Taivas. In August 2000, Hotelli Kultakala (Hotel Goldfish) was launched as part of Elisa's portal, which is now the foundation release of Habbo Finland.
Karjalainen and Kyrölä then created an online multiplayer game called Lumisota (Snow Wars). The game is similar and is now what Habbo's Snow Storm game is based on. The game was a further success and became associated with Radiolinja, a Finnish telecommunications network, which Elisa Oyj has invested in.
Sulake then was approached by clients, such as Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom and Coke Music, which is now known as MyCoke. Karjalainen and Kyrölä assisted their clients with these projects, but now Sulake's main focus is Habbo.
It has been rumored that Sulake has suffered extreme losses within the past several years. The Chinese hotel brand was forced to close after high operation costs, and conflicts regarding shockwave in the Republic of China. Soon after this closing, word was released that three (3) of the Habbo offices were to close in Europe. Although the local hotels did not cease operation, the local staff were terminated. It is believed three non-english hotels operate from one standard location. With this being said, another cut was made. [Habbo.ru] will cease operation, along with a local office closure. Users on the Russian hotel will be given a voucher code which can be redeemed on the United States hotel.
Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 EMEA list ranks Sulake as the 12th fastest growing technology company in Europe.[1]
In April 2007, Sulake acquired Dynamoid Oy, the company behind the virtual community IRC-Galleria.
The Fuse Engine
It is also believed that Sulake's main focus, Habbo is powered by a game engine called Fuse developed for use with Macromedia Director which allows complex Director applications to function using less server resources than a standard ActionScript Communication Server. Sulake have released a Javatm based game engine that can run on any platform with a web server called Fuse Light
Projects
- Habbo (Habbo Hotel)
- The Sulake company provides Habbo in over 30 countries, with an estimated revenue of $77,000,000 for 2006.[2] Sulake earns this revenue via four methods; selling in-game credits, website advertisement and sponsorship and Habbo-related merchandise.
- Coke Music
- The first incarnation of chat environment within Coke Music (now MyCoke), CokeStudios, was designed by Sulake. The most recent version (v2.x) of CokeStudios was programmed exclusively by MyCoke's operators, StudioCom.
- Virtual Magic Kingdom
- Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom was a concept by Disney and created by Sulake.[3]
- The Wreck Room
- "The Wreck Room" is a mini-game by Disney for the promotion of their 2003 movie Holes. The game design was based from Habbo.[4]
- Mini Friday
- MiniFriday is a small research project on virtual worlds on mobile phones, with concept and design by Sulake. Sulake have just released that they have over 1 million users registered with their experimental service. They are now continuing to develop a commercial version with more features.
- IRC-Galleria
- IRC-Galleria is the largest WWW-based virtual community in Finland. It was founded in December 2000 by Tomi Lintelä as a photo gallery for the Finnish users of Internet Relay Chat (IRC). It was acquired by Sulake along with its previous owner, Dynamoid Oy on April 2007. As of February 2007, IRC-galleria boasts over 400,000 registered users and 6 million images.[5]
External links
- Sulake — official website
The company consists of about 300 employees, spread throughout 18 offices around the world.