Tesco, WH Smith and GAME have stopped selling gift cards for use on the teenage social gaming website Habbo Hotel following claims it has been infiltrated by paedophiles.
An investigation by Channel 4 news has revealed the site to be "full of pornographic sexual chat", despite it being aimed at children age 13 upwards, and used by some as young as nine years old.
Channel 4 news producer Rachel Seifert spent two months playing on Hotel Habbo, visiting the site 50 times. Alongside the ballons and teddies featured in the game she found chats and interactions of an explicit sexual nature.
"The chat was very sexual, perverse, violent, pornographic, [with] overtly sexual acts, people saying they were going to do things to others, and it was very graphic," she said.
"Within two minutes I was being asked individually 'Do you have a webcam?', 'Can we chat on [instant messenger service] MSN, on Skype?'. I was also, within a couple of minutes, asked to strip, fully naked, and asked what would I do on a webcam."
In one recent case a paedophile was convicted of sexually abusing dozens of children whom he befriended through Habbo Hotel. Matthew Leonard was jailed for seven years after persuading girls to go off-site in return for free, virtual furniture for their room, which would normally cost users money.
The girls were then persuaded to strip and show themselves on webcams, which he then used to blackmail the children into performing further sexual acts for him in front of the webcam. Police traced 80 victims, all of who had been targeted through Habbo Hotel.
WH Smith, Tesco and GAME were all selling giftcards for the site that can be loaded with cash to buy virtual items, until the Channel 4 report was aired.
WH Smith said: "We were concerned to learn of Habbo Hotel allegations made in the C4 report. We have taken this product off sale, pending further investigation."
Tesco also confirmed it had decided to remove the gift card from sale.
Paul LaFontaine, chief executive officer of Sulake, the company which owns Habbo Hotel, announced that all conversations between users will be muted on the site while the claims are investigated.
In a statement published on the site he said: "I am greatly saddened that following reports of abusive behaviors amongst a very small part of the Habbo community we have taken the decision to mute all conversations across the site.
"We are still reviewing our long-term plans for the Habbo community, and would like to thank our millions of loyal users for their support at this challenging time. This decision has not been taken lightly and underlines the company's continuing commitment to ensure that all our site users remain safeguarded from inappropriate behavior and conversations.
"Our internal investigation is currently on-going, but we will be sure to inform all users of further developments in the coming days and weeks."
Just two days earlier he had posted "it's an incredibly rewarding job to have responsibility for an online community like Habbo". He wrote: "To keep users safe, we filter content and block inappropriate users. We also employ more than 225 moderators, tracking some 70 million lines of conversation globally every day on a 24/7 basis.
"We work with child safety organisations and local police forces to address inappropriate behaviour."
The terms and conditions of Habbo Hotel stipulate that users must not post any material or information which is inappropriate, obscene, indecent or unlawful, including pornography, depiction of acts of violence and sexual acts. Nor must they create a false identity allowing them to mislead other users.
But point 2.4 says: "Habbo UK does not control or endorse the content, messages or information found in any home page, chat room or on the message boards and, therefore, specifically disclaims any liability … ."
Some of the 10 million users worldwide of Habbo were far from grateful to Channel 4 for revealing the danger to which they were exposed, with many taking to Twitter to troll C4 news programme editor Oliver King.
One user tweeted: "You've just ruined a day for more than 2 million people. How do you feel about that?", while another said: "What do pedos [sic] and your news reporters have in common? They both pretend to be little girls on the internet. Dumbass."