After a copyright claim from Disney, Club Penguin Online has officially shut down. The fan revival of the beloved online community began in 2017 after the shutdown of the original server.
The original Club Penguin was released in 2005 and quickly became popular among children as a sort of social media/gaming hybrid. Players on Club Penguin were part of a huge online community where penguin avatars waddled around, saying hello to friends, playing games, collecting money and buying goods like pets called puffles. In August of 2007 the Walt Disney Company bought the Club Penguin parent company, New Horizon, as the game was on an upward trajectory. A trend that continued to go strong into the early 2010s. Unfortunately, in 2017 Club Penguin was discontinued as member numbers began to dwindle. Its place was taken by a reboot of the game, Club Penguin Island, but it couldn’t measure up and only gave the series an extra year.
After the shutdowns, fans took things into their own hands by creating their own versions of Club Penguin. One of the most successful fan driven reboots of the game, Club Penguin Online, accumulated 8 million members. However, the website was unlicensed, so Disney issued the creators a notice through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and a week later the fan site shut down. And because Disney takes their copyright so seriously and is one of the most litigious businesses out there it is exceptionally unlikely that the likes of Club Penguin Online will ever be seen again. Typing in the Club Penguin Online URL now just takes people to a link for their discord for updates.
Club Penguin Online wasn’t perfect. A facsimile of a game intended for children 6-14, Club Penguin Online went largely unmonitored by moderators as racist and bigoted speech was rampant on the website. Reports have also come in that a man associated with the website was arrested in London for suspicion of possessing child pornography.
The Club Penguin brand is beloved by millennials who played it growing up and kids living now, so seeing this downward spiral is hitting pretty hard for some. It’s especially upsetting given the fact that so many people being cooped up inside right now has issued a bit of resurgence to online gaming communities from last decade. But all is not lost! Go feed a Neopet, adopt a new pet on Webkinz, build a new empire on Minecraft, there’s plenty of nostalgia left out there.
A moment of silence for Club Penguin Online, you will be missed.
Source: The Verge