Sulake Corporation

Sulake (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈsulɑke], "fuse") is a controversial multimedia company based in Helsinki, Finland. It was founded by Sampo Karjalainen (born 1977) and Aapo Kyrölä (born 1979) 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'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 rumoured 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 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.

In April 2007, Sulake acquired Dynamoid Oy, the company behind the virtual community IRC-Galleria.

Sulake, has reported a €2.8 million profit for the financial year 2008.

Projects

 * Alacara
 * Alacara is a Spanish language social networking site that is currently only available for Spanish and Latin American users.


 * Luupi
 * Luupi is a social networking site that is currently for Australians only. As of 15th of May 2009 Luupi has closed.


 * Bobba Bar
 * The new virtual world by Sulake for mobile devices. Currently supports a number of S60 devices. They developed a version for the Apple Inc. iPhone and iPod touch


 * Habbo (Habbo Hotel)
 * The Sulake company provides Habbo in over 30 countries, with an estimated revenue of $67,000,000 for 2006. 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 & Toontown
 * Disney's Virtual Magic Kingdom was a concept by Disney and created by Sulake. However VMK is now closed.


 * 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.


 * 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 World Wide Web-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 September 2009, IRC-galleria boasts over 500,000 registered users and 9 million images.