The 2010 US-Canada Merge, or simply called The Merge or just Merge, is a planned merge of Habbo Hotel US and Habbo Hotel Canada. By mid April 2010, Sulake plans to merge habbo.com and habbo.ca together into one universal website which can be accessed to both URLs. Since the release of the news story about the merge, there has been very heavy criticism. On April 7, Habbo announced that a second merge is planned; this time with all English-speaking hotels.
Overview
This article covers a current event. Information may quickly change as the event goes on.
On January 20th, 2010, both Habbo CA and Habbo US published the following news story[1], headlined as "Attention Habbos":
We have an important announcement for all Habbos in North America! We are currently preparing to go a lot bigger in North America with thousands of new people for you to meet and make friends with! Coming up in early April Sulake will be merging the Habbo.com and Habbo.ca sites into one. What does this mean? Well, not much will change, meaning all your rooms, friends, furni, pets etc. will of course stay intact. The big change will be that you’ll have a lot more people to meet and have fun with! If you have any questions please read the FAQs here, and if there's a question that hasn't been answered please post to this forum thread - we will be reading it all the time and updating the FAQs with answers to your questions!
A group, called "Habbo.ca and Habbo.com Unite" was created with information about the merge. A thread was created on its discussion forum allowing players to ask questions about the merge that are not covered in the FAQ's.
A possible theory is to why Sulake is merging CA and US together is because of finicial problems regarding Habbo CA. If the merge doesn't happen, Habbo CA may be forced to close down because of low traffic and profits, and the high costs of keeping the hotel up.
2 days after publishing the first news story, a second one was released[2] containing more information.
On January 29th, 2010, Habbo CA and US both released a poll about the merge. This poll asks various questons about the updates and suggestions that would make the merge better. This is the first poll and more are scheduled to come.
Community Response
- Main article: Criticism of the 2010 merges
When Habbo announced the merge, the majority of the community was highly opposed to it. Many people wrote on the hotel managers' guestbooks protesting the merge. There has been rumours that CA manager Puffin will be talking to the managers of the project and questioning them about the merge.
There was also major controversy regarding the planned date of the merge. It was mentioned that the merge would start in early April. Players questioned the fact that it could be an April Fool's Joke.
Username Changes
Some people on Habbo CA and US have the same usernames. Because of this, people may have to change their usernames. This particular rule sparked the a lot of the criticism. However, as said in the FAQ, the most active player will be most likely to keep their username, however this may not be entirely true.
It might be confirmed that because of the same usernames, Habbo's may be required to use emails to sign in rather then Usernames.
Whether email confirmation is necessary is yet to be confirmed.
American-Canadian Rivalry
Even before the merge, Habbo US and Habbo CA have been in frequent rivalry and in "war" with each other. One of the main causes of this is because of the numerous American-Canadian stereotypes that arise (eg. The "Do you live in igloos?" stereotype for Canadians).