The Rise and Fall Of Club Penguin

when i was a kid i spent most of my time on virtual worlds twitter was for celebrities instagram was for people who were cooler than me and took photos like this and youtube was for animated minecraft parody songs so i spent my time signing up for every online virtual world and mmo i could get my hands on from fantage to pixie hollow to wizard101 to animal jam to the endless forest and more but these were all eclipsed by one titan one kingpin the pinnacle of gaming as we know it yes today we're talking about everyone's favorite and most nostalgic online world club penguin from the history of the sight to all of its iconic and nostalgic moments to its downfall and all of the bizarre drama that ensued the club penguin that many know and love is actually just the tip of the iceberg pun intended and the story is actually pretty dark at points and filled with bizarre scandals so settle down in your glue and grab your puffle because today we're talking about the rise and fall of club penguin 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casetvi.com 15 off once again that's izzy today to casedify.comy to save 15 off your order the link will be in the description a huge thank you to case 5 for sponsoring this video and now let's get on with the story of the rise and fall of club penguin while i generally associate club penguin with the late 2000s to the early 2010s because that's when i played development on the game was actually in progress as early as 1999 in a 2011 development blog post lance priebe of rocket snail games reflected on the very earliest ideas for club penguin in the winter of 1999 lance decided that he wanted to make a multiplayer strategy game with penguins and so wanting to start slow and test the core features he developed a rudimentary game called experimental penguins this game laid the groundwork and looking at the models the early traces of what would eventually become club penguin are very clear to see to be honest i don't even know why they changed the models from this you know you can't improve on perfection experimental penguins allowed the player to name their penguin chat with other players and explore a simple world with just four rooms lance was surprised at just how successful experimental penguins was and maybe a little bit too successful because the game had to shut down just a year later due to the huge server costs this was a problem that would continue to plague new horizon interactive and rocket snail games but we'll get to that later by 2001 lance was working on a real-time strategy snowball game called snow blasters whose logo looks suspiciously familiar he had been asked by multiple companies to create character chats for their games so eventually he decided to return to experimental penguins and create the next build using all that he learned this new build was called penguin chat and launched in 2003 with plenty of familiar features like snowball throwing emotes and chat balloons by 2004 just a year later the game had over a million total plays and seeing that rocket snail might just have a hit on their hands lance decided to continue development on penguin chat which he renamed to club penguin because quote everyone wants to be part of a club the only problem was he was only working part-time on fridays and with the resources and development time he had the game was set to come out in 2010 that's a development time of over five years thankfully lance's fellow co-workers dave crisco and lane merryfield loved the idea so much that they fast-tracked development launching a spin-off company called new horizon interactive solely dedicated to club penguin's development and allowing lance to hire on a team and work full time thanks to that decision club penguins beta was out within two months instead of five years the three shared a vision for a safe online platform for kids and wanted to quote build a safe social networking site their kids could enjoy free of advertising which didn't age particularly well anyway with this shared vision and a new expanded team production progressed very swiftly early concepts show the vision that new horizon interactive had for their game and it's super cool seeing that nostalgic old club penguin art style the early style of the game was a lot more messy and imperfect and not quite as polished and symmetrical as the later disney designs but that's what gave it so much charm and it's really cool to see the early concepts for the game before they knew it the game's early build was ready to be released to the public on the 22nd of august 2005 club penguin opened its doors to 15 000 beta testers who bug-tested the game for two months finally on october 24th of 2005 club penguin was launched to the public from lance's blog post quote most people don't realize club penguin launched incomplete why is there a dojo how do you become a ninja why is there a lighthouse why is there a pit shop can you tip the iceberg and don't worry we'll be coming back to that later but all of these missing and incomplete features would be added pretty quickly because like experimental penguins and penguin chat before club penguin was skyrocketing in popularity maybe skyrocketing a little bit too much because by 2007 there were over 12 million active penguins pushing the servers to their absolute breaking points the game had to be completely rebuilt multiple times to keep up with the growing play account and it had become abundantly clear that things just couldn't continue in this way new horizon interactive was sitting on a viral game goldmine with lance even claiming that we had become the modern saturday morning cartoon but despite having over a hundred employees at new horizon interactive and clearly making bank the overwhelming server cost and maintenance took up a lot of time that they could have spent monetizing their game so in 2007 monetize their game they did and listen to this this is honestly mind-blowing although the three club penguin co-creators had turned down lucrative advertising offers and venture capital investments in the past in august 2007 they agreed to sell both club penguin and its parent company to disney for the sum of 350.93 million god damn the number is often touted as 700 million but this is because disney promised them an extra 350 million dollar bonus if they reached growth goals by 2009 which they unfortunately did not but i want to know just exactly how ridiculously high those growth goals were because at the end of 2007 just a few months after the acquisition the player count had already more than doubled from around 12 million to over 30 million and i can only assume the number was well over 50 million by 2009 and while disney's acquisition brought club penguin to new heights that it never would have reached without the mega corporation the new ownership came with its uh quirks while the three creators at new horizon interact if she had a vision for a safe haven for kids free of advertising we all know what disney's like and that's why 2007 to 2015 is called the franchising growth era on wikipedia and with servers now upgraded to handle the millions of players logging in every day attention turned to merchandising and expanding the brand during this time disney would often advertise their properties within club penguin doing crossover events and themed parties for films like frozen zootopia the muppets and star wars and over the years merchandise production rammed up to include everything from dolls and plushies to shirts to games and even animation with the animated specials halloween panic we wish you a merry walrus and monster beach party all of which you had on disney and disney xd the point is this era was incredibly profitable for club penguin with hundreds of thousands of paying players and millions of dollars coming in every year the site got so big that multiple international offices were set up around the globe in addition to the original new horizon headquarters which had been renamed to disneyland studios canada and despite the site's success many began to miss what they called the old club penguin designs models and artwork were updated with a cleaner more modern style imperfections were ironed out the map was updated and features were overhauled in the years after disney's takeover it should have been a huge step up and in many regards it was but a lot of players missed the quirky hand-drawn charm of the old style and felt annoyed by the constant disney partnerships and advertising as is the case with a lot of games the new found success in money had made the game better in concept but in reality a lot of the original handcrafted charm of the game was ironed out with a more corporate style but regardless of these gripes within the community the game was becoming a viral sensation topping most popular website lists year after year raking in millions and building one of the biggest brands in ips around and it seemed like things could only go up for club penguin little did anyone know that things wouldn't be going uphill for much longer but before we get into the game's downfall and all of the scandals that came with it let's take a look back at the game itself and all the nostalgic memories like many online worlds club penguin relied heavily on memberships to keep the lights on though surprisingly it didn't have any premium currency you might think oh that's great no paywalling using premium currency but don't you worry there was paywalling aplenty basically all customization was off the table for non-members with no clothes custom igloos or decorations available non-members could also only adopt up to two puffles in limited colors while members could have 75 i do feel like 75 is a bit overkill though it's like something that pedo would want to get involved in anyway the game was free but a lot of features were blocked off to non-members which is why so many free membership scams went around now i don't know if anyone else relates to this but during the era of the online virtual world and mmo free premium currency membership generators were super common and i saw them all the time basically whenever you as a gullible child would look up club penguin free membership or animal jam free diamonds all of these scam download links would pop up allowing you to download a quote generator you put all of your account information in and then enter the membership type you want and by that point your computer should have about 57 trojan viruses and all of your accounts will be gone i actually used these a few times as a kid and miraculously came away without giving my computer a virus like i didn't get the membership i want but it's kind of a miracle that i didn't just brick my computer i'm actually curious about if anyone else used to use these things or if you know how they actually work because i'm genuinely curious anyway i never got the free membership that i wanted but i did eventually get one the legit way and i can confirm the features were pretty unfairly paywalled against non-members especially with clothing and speaking of memberships and not being able to afford clothes let's take a look at some of the most iconic areas from the game that might seem like a non-sequitur but i'm about to talk about the ski area and tour guides and if you know you know the tour guide project was started in 2007 as a way to help new players find their way around the map a tour guide stand was set up in the ski village and players with accounts over 45 days old who could complete the tour guide quiz could become guides themselves why does this matter well let me tell you it's because you could get a free hat for non-members clothing of any kind was super hard to come by and options were ridiculously limited to like one or two items so rather than giving tours and helping fellow players out most people became tour guides just to get a free hat the only reasons i ever went to the ski area was to try and give people tours until giving up when no one was interested and to play sled racing obviously one of the best mini games but the ski hill and village weren't particularly popular hangout spots and if you were looking for the nightlife you had to go to town this is where players would spawn in and the room had a maximum occupancy of 100 players so it got pretty hectic rather than going into any of the shops in town which were often fairly empty players would usually just stand in the huge crowd outside dancing throwing snowballs and advertising their igloos this seems like a pretty good point to branch off and quickly talk about igloos and the parties that took place within them see club penguin had player housing called igloos and while obviously the plebian non-members got a simple small and barely customizable igloo members could upgrade to far larger and more flamboyantly decorated homes so what do you do when you have this decked out house and no one to show it to you throw a party if you remember the phrase party in my eggie you get a veteran's discount because you were there in the trenches town would be filled with tens of penguins all advertising their igloo parties at once vying for attention and who could get the most attendees but honestly once you actually went to the party would usually kind of fizzle out tons of people would join stand around quietly and then awkwardly go back to their own igloo to play karjitsu just like a real life party but town wasn't the only popular location for socialization the plaza was a pretty similar area lined with shops and filled with tons of penguins dancing arguing and getting pissed because someone wouldn't stop throwing snowballs at them the shops in the plaza are a little more interesting though you have the pet shop where you could buy puffles which were essentially pets that you could look after and walk around and if you had a puffle that wasn't just the non-member blue or red one you're a certified badass it actually makes me laugh looking back because for some reason as a feature the puffles would run away if you didn't care for them properly so pretty much every time i logged on there'd be a little i'm running away note in my igloo r.i.p like twinny blue puffles i hope you found a better life out there somewhere club penguin began coming out with physical puffle plushies and keychains when the store opened and a lot of these plushies would include a code to redeem a puffle and game i honestly like the old plushies better because once they started adding custom faces to him yeah this is just slightly uncomfortable there is one thing i forgot to mention about the pet shop pookies pookies were baby penguins and uh okay this okay this is i'm just struggling to say this moomoos and dudas were parents pookies often hung out at the pet shop using it as a sort of adoption center and they talked in baby language to try and appear cutesy and childlike consulting the club penguin pookie wiki which regrettably yes is a real thing we can glean some fascinating information quote a pookie is a baby on club penguin pookie's often seen in the peer shop saying things like please pick muy and acting cute divapookies are basically pookies that are very picky rude and attention seeking for example many divapookies say mo to non-members doodoos and moomoos liking rare items why haters me hate pookies they hate them for no reason sometimes divas will report people who don't adopt them or who say there's no more room in the fam fam some pookies might reveal to have secrets when they are adopted such as being half mermaid or being some kind of monster to sum it up horrific just horrific getting back to the plaza though the theater wasn't particularly popular as a hangout spot but it was extremely funny to go watch penguins try to perform shows with absolutely no cohesion whatsoever there'd always be one really intense director barking orders and everyone on stage was probably like five years old so they just stood there silently not comprehending any of it it was a sight to behold but the most popular plaza shop and perhaps one of the most classic areas in the entire game was the pizza parlor besides having one of the best mini games in the entire game although i do feel like the stress of the pizza game took at least 10 years off my life the pizza parlor was all about romance the ambiance of the smooth piano jazz tunes the candlelit tables for two the flurry of waders constantly harassing you at your table the armed robber roleplayers swarming in to take you hostage yes the pizza parlor was where the magic happened here people used to get dates rob the place argue about who's the boss ah the memories my childhood i remember pretending my penguin was a way to hear i used to rob this place and ran away from the cops memories did anyone else just stand in the corner and spam the sad face these are all comments left on the extended pizza parlor music track called charlie's hair this track is certifiably iconic and when most people talk about nostalgia for the game this track is most certainly included the tune set the mood for the penguins who would come here to go on dates roleplay as waiters and even spam the sad face in the corner when i think about club penguin nostalgia well i think about the pizza parlor and all the weird but fond memories i have there but enough of that sappy stuff where do you go when you want some serious heart racing card playing action well the dojo of course karjitsu was a simple card game playable at the dojo under the tutelage of the sensei npc and allowed players to rise up in the ranks by earning belts it was by far the most popular game in club penguin partly because of the competitive nature of levelling up and beating other players and partly because it gave you a belt accessory that you could wear if you weren't a member i swear the economy of this game just revolved around non-members scrounging for whatever items of clothing they could get their hands on karjitsu was so popular in fact that it spawned a real-life trading card game one that i actually collected in real life granted i got all of mine from a garage sale and mainly bought them because they were club penguin not because i understood how to play but looking into it they play pretty much exactly like the in-game version of karjitsu it's pretty neat and it's nice to have them as kind of a collector's item even if they are probably sitting in a dusty box somewhere in terms of the rest of the game there a lot of weird surfer girl role plays at the beach the minecart game remains supreme the underground pool was the best hidden room the snow forts were redundant because it was much funnier to annoy people in town with snowballs and the jetpack game at the lighthouse was another certified classic but we're not here to talk about any of that oh no you see there's one location that we haven't touched on yet that's right the iceberg now when we talked about animal jam another classic online world for kids filled with drama we discussed the bizarre creepypasta community that formed around it and all of the myths and legends in the game unfortunately club penguin's urban legend scene isn't quite as spooky as aj's though there's one rumor that began and kind of stuck as an urban legend within the community see a lot of these online mmos and virtual worlds have urban legends where if you jump on a spot or stand on a certain tile you'll unlock free membership and premium currency and club penguin was no different legend said that if enough penguins stood and or danced on one side of the iceberg it would tip over and later after an achievement was added it was speculated that if enough penguins wore the hard hat and jackhammered the ground it would tip over now what this did exactly really depended on who you heard the rumor from some said players would get millions of coins and free lifetime memberships while others said it would unlock a brand new secret area or a new shop the rumor grew and eventually it didn't really matter what the reward was because the legend was so popular and widely believed that the glory of being the first to tip the berg was more than enough and so day in day out players spent hours dancing jackhammering and incessantly typing tip the iceberg everyone hammer over and over again it's unknown where exactly this urban legend started i searched and couldn't pinpoint a single post or in-game event that caused it but it seems that the staff were generally responsible for starting and continuing to spread the rumor over the years hints to the iceberg tipping appeared frequently in the in-game newspaper the club penguin times and one of the creators even specifically mentioned it in that 2011 blog post that we mentioned earlier one of the most damning pieces of evidence came a few years later in 2014 during the halloween party when a painting of a tipped iceberg was added to one of the rooms and when the lodge attic was renovated in 2015 the painting was added there as well after all of these constant iceberg mentions players knew it couldn't just be a mere joke or some throwaway line the staff were intentionally dropping hints about the iceberg it had to be real and so for years the mythos of the iceberg grew and grew building steam until eventually it died out don't worry we'll put a pin in the iceberg for now and we'll come back to it [Music] despite how virally popular the game was unfortunately all good things must come to an end it's unknown how long numbers had been dwindling but by 2015 cracks were already beginning to show publicly with the reveal that the uk office had been shut down and 28 staff members had been laid off from the canadian headquarters throughout the year the decay of the site became clearer and clearer as german and russian servers were completely shut down and many more staff across the global offices were laid off a move which disney called quote consolidating a small number of teams and undergoing a targeted reduction in the workforce as with most things it mainly came down to money it's clear from these layoffs in the gradual shutdown of the site that player numbers were dwindling and therefore so was revenue now knowing how these businesses work it's probably fair to say that disney was still making a killing off of this game but you know what they say in the industry when profits begin to dip it's time to jump ship i'm kidding actually they don't say that i just made it up pretty good though and if you're a businessman you can use it if you want you know spread spread it around make it make it a thing another contributing factor to the shutdown of the site was the popularity of mobile apps and the potential that disney saw within them see the early to mid 2010s was the era of the mobile app with angry birds in 2009 setting the stage for viral games like candy crush flappy bird cut the rope temple run kim kardashian hollywood the gaming industry saw a huge shift towards mobile games and apps and the declining player numbers and revenue on the main site was evidence enough that it was time for a mobile shift and so on january 30th of 2017 club penguin announced that the game would be shutting down on march 29th to make way for the brand new mobile game club penguin island bigger better and more fun than ever with tons of improvements and brand new features while building on the foundations that players had come to know and love and the community flipped out if you grew up during this time period or you play club penguin around this time you know how big of a staple the game was in many kids lives and an internet culture in general it was right up there with neopets in terms of nostalgia and widespread adoration so the news that everyone's most beloved childhood game was shutting down came as a pretty big shock the community was outraged and players who hadn't played in years came out of the woodworks to protest the shutdown and the site saw a huge surge in members as og fans came flooding back intro club penguin fashion a party was announced the ward lawn party which started the day after the announcement and lasted until the final servers went dark an outline article called the party quote essentially a g-rated version of an end of days rager except it wasn't exactly as g-rated as they seem to think but before we can get into that we need to talk about banning the system was put in place to protect children from profanity and vulgarity in all forms and users could face punishments ranging from a simple warning to a 24-hour ban to a permanent account suspension for swearing or discussing violent or suggestive topics there are some pretty great examples of bands glitching out though for example during the 2012 puffle party a glitch caused anyone who danced to be banned that same year during the 2012 music jam anyone who entered the stadium was banned for 24 hours and when disney launched their monsters university takeover players were banned for using the new emoticons for quote attempted game manipulation honestly club penguin bands were pretty funny i remember multiple times when i was a kid i would get banned for like typing in swear words just to see what happened as if something else was gonna happen and i'm pretty sure a lot of people can relate to doing stuff like that as a kid the band meme was so popular that a subreddit called aslash band from club penguin was created in 2013 filled with memes about people's childhood fears of their parents finding out about their virtual bands as well as memes and screenshots of their own bands so while the meme had been going strong for several years at this point when the penguin apocalypse was announced players threw caution to the wind and beckoned the banhammer to take a swing as an act of defiance players began spamming swear words and vulgarities to get their accounts permanently banned flooding the subreddit with screenshots and a trend even started where players would speed run their bands from a pc gamer article quote with disney closing down club penguin on march 29th the future of band from club penguin looked bleak then user button wolves had the brilliant idea to record how quickly he could get banned their run clocked in at 1 minute 54 seconds as others critiqued their technique in the comments and saw opportunities to improve the time a sport was born fast forward a week and 2 kr in 4u has the world record at 39 seconds however that seems to have been beaten by a user called camological who holds the current world record at 33 seconds now that's some speedy swearing and while this very vocal group of profane penguins did exist the other side of the playbase just was revisiting the game to reminisce about the good old days and so can the nostalgia of the game mostly they kept to the town and plaza but a large chunk flock to the iceberg in hopes of finally tipping it and revealing the secrets that it hid underneath the iceberg had persisted as a myth on the site for upwards of a decade by that point so you can't blame them for trying one last time to finally uncover the secret little did they know that the staff had prepared a little surprise for the players attending the waddle on party as a last hurrah and a celebration of the player's dedication to solving the mystery of the iceberg during the warland party players were able to finally tip the iceberg at least five players in the room had to be wearing blue walking a blue puffle dancing and wearing a hard hat for the iceberg to finally tip over and reveal a dance floor with an inscription that read quote together we can build an island create a community change the world and even tip an iceberg waddle on as the final days near the game began to descend into madness and anarchy there were no rules no consequences no future for these players so penguin civilization as they knew it fell apart at the seams club penguin gave all members a free membership on the very last day of the server's existence most felt that it was pointless it was truly the end of days and just like that club penguin ceased to be a game and became nothing but a memory the final serve is shut down on march 30th 2017 at 1201 pdt and you can find multiple clips out there of the final minutes before the complete shutdown they're about as chaotic as you'd expect but they really capture the love and passion that many had for the game r.i.p club penguin you will be missed but it was time to move on to greener pastures and the future was looking bright for the beloved game club penguin was gone yes but club penguin island the brand new mobile game was on the horizon and was set to be a bold new step in the franchise one that would reignite the community and bring the game back into the mainstream though the og game would be missed things were looking up [Music] so club penguin island bombed hard users felt that the game was a huge cash grab and even more egregious with its pay-to-play elements than before not to mention feedback that the game was boring and like the spirit of the original the classic club penguin charm was gone and while the original didn't shy away from advertising crossovers and pay-to-play elements club penguin island took things to a ridiculous degree allegedly during this time disney was hugely scaling back their game department as well a reddit comment on the topic reads quote disney completely gave up on games they shut down their game department studio and cpi was pretty much the only game in there disney is using third party game studios to create games which they've done for things like emoji blitz now you may be saying well izzy this is just a random reddit comment those hold about as much water as a pasta strainer but there's actually evidence to back this up multiple articles from 2016 detailed the shutdown of disney interactive in their games division following the failure of disney infinity with the company shutting down production on games and outsourcing the work to outside development companies this is also backed up by the fact that all of those successful spin-off club penguin mobile apps cashing in on the mobile trend were removed from the app store in the lead up to the original club penguin shutdown so why exactly with no games division and dwindling staff members did disney think it was a good idea to release club penguin island well that's a mystery that i can't answer because it kind of baffles me and club penguin island was shut down the year after its initial release rumors spread that the marketing department had been fired before the game released though these are unsubstantiated and regardless i don't think marketing would have made much difference the game was lackluster reviews were mixed to poor and i can't imagine play accounts were soaring into the tens of millions like they used to back in the golden days there was one other incident the quackity raids yes just like animal jam club penguin island 2 was raided and memed on by youtuber and twitch streamer quackity who is well known for his raids on children's websites like movie star planet mushy monsters have a hotel and of course club penguin island on the 16th of december 2017 the youtube created a video titled club penguin island as the worst game ever in which he claimed that if the video got 20k likes he would raid the game with over 104 000 likes it's fair to say that the video hit its goal and so the raid was carried out on january 13 2018 and was streamed on twitch quakety urged all of the raiders to get the seven day free membership trial in order to wear the mike wazowski suit as a monsters university collaboration event was taking place in the game however it appears that the moderators disabled the free trial before the raid started which became a huge point of contention as raiders began to spam club penguin island and disney demanding that they enabled the trial the setback didn't stop the raid though and as quackery joined the game thousands followed pushing the service to the limits as hundreds of green penguins and mike wazowskis flooded through after only 20 minutes of raiding players began to experience server issues since you know over 8 000 players were trying to get in and the servers then crashed a few twitter hashtags and a lot of angry club penguin island players later and the raid was officially declared a success but it wasn't over yet not by a long shot while club penguin island was picking up the pieces from the last raid and trying to keep this struggling game afloat another attack was being planned this time carried out on september the 1st of 2018. this time over 28 000 people took part in the raid all directed to color their penguin the quote ugly piss color and quackity struggled to even log on to the game and stream due to the crowded servers after spamming the phrase end game raiders got the twitter hashtag biss on mickey trending in the united states and got club penguin island trending on twitch but the moderators weren't going down without a fight they began emptying the servers and disabling the chat feature and due to the spamming on twitter many raiders found that they had been blocked by the official club penguin island account the raid eventually came to an end after quackery felt that the game had been satisfiably broken and the staff were once again left in the wake of the destruction to clean up the mess now i'm not saying this raid was responsible for shutting club penguin island down but i have to say that the staff team must have been wearing very thin at this point the game's numbers had been dropping for a while and the only spike in players was when a bunch of people piled onto the server to troll and try and break the game it's got to be a brutal feeling and so it was announced in september of 2018 that club penguin island would be shutting down in december of that year and disney would be retiring the club penguin brand and a blog post staff wrote quote there's no easy way to say this but after 13 incredible years club penguin will be sunsetting at the end of this year we'll be providing players with all of the necessary information in the coming weeks via in-game messages and updates here on island news when we replaced the original club penguin game a year and a half ago we always strive to make club penguin island the best mobile successor to the original game from day one of development club penguin island has been a true passion project for everyone here at disney but the time has come for the party to end and while the closure of club penguin island went largely without any fanfare especially compared to the big bang that the original went out with the forelight of this decision hit the employees at clum penguin very hard a kotaku article on the subject details how the decision affected the employees quote one former employee who is anonymous for fear of retribution told kotaku that he felt blindsided by the news although employees working on the game new club penguin island wasn't doing well he said the studio had been pitching other projects we were told three weeks ago that we'd been greenlit and would have jobs for at least two years while we built and launched a new product the whole studio was basically popping champagne only to have that pulled out from under us by someone way up the chain at disney he said and so the story of club penguin came to a rather sad and abrupt close leaving players and employees alike in the lurch and though disney had closed the book on club penguin this would be far from the end of our story and in fact it was about to take a dark twist while the closure of club penguin island can be attributed to many things from the raids to the poor reception to the lack of marketing i believe there was one key factor that played a part club penguin private servers a club penguin private server commonly abbreviated and known as a cpps is an online multiplayer game that is not part of club penguin but uses unnice swift files from club penguin a database and a server emulator in order to create a similar environment for the game many now use these environments in order to play the original game after its discontinuation cpps's often contain features that did not exist in the original game such as custom items and rooms free membership etc now private servers had actually existed for a long time before club penguin went offline it's widely believed that the first ever private server was set up in the summer of 2010 and was called icp v1 this server was extremely rudimentary with poor security and unlike the browser-based club penguin and had to be downloaded as a file to the computer allegedly after receiving pressure from disney to close down due to copyright they released their server code to the public allowing other people to start up their own private servers from then on they became more common though pre-shutdown private servers were far less popular and mainly used by friend groups in small communities most of these servers had no regulations allowing players to use cheats and admin commands as well as say anything with no filters this was all well and good for small groups goofing around but after the shutdown more official servers began to pop up and as these became more and more popular the lack of quality control moderation and restrictions became a huge problem by the time that january 2017 rolled around and club penguin's down was announced players were already hard at work setting up tons of new private servers one of the most popular servers in one of the main players in our story was club penguin rewritten launched just a few weeks after the announcement on the 12th of february within a month the game had over 10 000 registered accounts and its own wiki and shortly after when the official game servers closed the play account of club pig when rewritten absolutely skyrocketed and it makes complete sense players across the globe were mourning the loss of their beloved childhood game and here suddenly they were being offered the exact same game with the exact same player base but this time membership was free club penguin rewritten had the edge over other private servers as well since they strive to create an identical replica of the game including its family-friendly safety features while other private servers embraced chaos allowing swearing and cheating and game manipulation rewritten enforced the same rules as the original game and hired on a moderator team to keep the game age-appropriate and faithful to the original the play account had skyrocketed to over 10 000 players by april 2017 and by october they'd hit a million as of 2021 club penguin rewritten has over 10 million accounts and a lot of regards has done better than the original game hitting milestones quicker and garnering more goodwill by adding new content and updates but as you'll come to find out with private servers nothing is ever as it seems and behind the scenes things were kind of falling apart firstly security issues the first cracks began to show as early as 2017 when the site experienced a ddos attack due to lackluster security the developers for rewritten hidden anticipated their numbers getting so high and so were left scrambling to update the site's security as more and more players piled in this came to a head in early 2018 when the site suffered a severe data breach that exposed upwards of 1.7 million email addresses usernames passwords and ip addresses all that stuff had to say in the wake of this drama was that they were aware of the breach and had contacted the affected users in july of 2019 actually on the two-year anniversary since the first ddos attack another data breach occurred this time affecting over 4 million accounts with security on the site unraveling and millions of users exposed the staff finally came out and made a statement and a pretty bizarre one at that it covers the usual ground explaining how the breach occurred and apologizing profusely but in a section titled our story things get weird which leads us to the second issue that played club penguin rewritten staff infighting and drama if there's one thing that i've learned while researching all these fan-made games and communities it's that 99 of the time behind the scenes everything is completely falling apart and all the staff hate each other okay maybe that's a bit dramatic but when all of the staff are unpaid and there's no overseeing company to make sure everything goes smoothly things can go south really quick in their security breach apology post clipping when rewritten included a section titled our story which went into detail about some bizarre behind the scenes drama going on and it's really too bonkers to even summarize so i'll just read you the whole post quote on february 8 2018 our ex system administrator cody was fired from his position this was due to an array of reasons a week after being demoted cody threatened to leak the cpr server code codename auroras which was made by an administrator this was not his work and he had no right to leak it but he did so in spite a few months later cody leaked the personal information of a few team members to the internet and to cyber criminals such as personal emails home addresses and facial pictures he then got people to continuously send pizzas and emergency services to staff houses in spite of being kicked from the team this lead to club penguin rewritten's initial temporary shutdown on march 2018 as we value our staff safety we use this time to look back and figure out the situation this also included the police and cyber security experts getting involved cody and his friends created multiple websites and social media accounts to slander our administration team one of his friends got into a social media account that belonged to an administrator on the cpr team and when they were a minor leaked facial pictures and personal information in an attempt to get cpr closed after a few months of silence cody sent a fraudulent letter to two of our admins pretending to be disney the letter was clearly fake as there was no return address there was bad grammar and no signature of the writer or company we know this was him because he threatened to do this before and impersonated disney before on many occasions to take down other servers on april 23 2019 cody sent a backup of the cpr data pace to have i been pwned he played this off as if it was an actual security breach and went as far as to change the date of the breach to 2019 when the database backup was from early 2018 the year before he contacted the owner of the website troy hunt and tried getting him involved in all of these politics to once again try and spite us troy hunt contacted us and we worked with him to get the correct information out on this website on february 28 2021 a developer from the staff team was removed due to court racist remarks and inappropriate behavior in addition to starting up a relationship with a player due to the inherent unprofessionalism and power imbalance this was heavily criticized and after all of this came to light staff posted an apology on twitter explaining that new rules had been put in place for stuff and the offending developer had been removed controversy stirred up again however when it came to light that multiple prominent staff members had been aware of this behavior for a number of years and they had both failed to do a background check and had willfully ignored it for a long time on their twitter apology outcry from the community can be seen thank you for keeping cpr a safe place they've done nothing but the opposite you guys knew of the developer's actions years ago come on man they knew what he was doing they just kept it hush-hush like they did with the data breach like they did with the fact they stole charity money like they have always done in regards to the stealing charity money claim i looked into this and couldn't find any information about it so as far as i know this is an unsubstantiated claim another controversy occurred on new year's day 2019 where edmunds and stuff were celebrating with players reportedly the admins became drunk during this time and began swearing and playing inappropriate songs culminating in the slightly hilarious headline cpr admins go on drunken rampage on their discord server screenshots of the admin's inappropriate behavior flooded twitter and was shared around the community leading to widespread criticism of the admins and professionalism especially given the community and discord server were meant to be family-friendly spaces an apology was issued in the chat was purge but this event left a permanent stain on the reputation of the staff team and while juggling security breaches and staff drama club penguin rewritten faced a third challenge and perhaps the most daunting of all legal issues their first encounter with disney came pretty early in the site's existence around october of 2017 where disney filed a complaint against the site causing them to change the domain name from club penguinrywritten.pw to cprewritten.net many have described this as a loophole and while i don't understand it and maybe someone more knowledgeable can give an explanation in the comments that seemed to have worked in fending off disney for a number of years however years later in may of 2020 the site was slammed with a dmca due to several huge and extremely severe controversies surrounding other private servers that led to disney and even the police getting involved but we'll put a pin in that and come back to it later as for how club penguin rewritten has avoided the long-loved arm of the disney law well i don't know it could be because rewritten isn't causing a huge dent in their revenue and the time and money it would take to remove the site wouldn't be worth it not to mention how pissed off a lot of fans would be if they removed the server it would be another story if the original game was still up but since the official disney club penguin sunset it in 2017 and has been an active as an ip for several years it's sort of an awkward grey area for now it seems that disney's cool with club penguin rewritten staying up if only for the fact that in a sea of incredibly controversial and harmful private servers in comparison it has a pretty squeaky clean record and that's when the infamous club penguin online comes into play [Music] so club penguin rewritten wasn't the only private server and while it was rising to prominence several others rose alongside it creating a kind of competitive market and one of the biggest players in this competitive market was club penguin online also known as cpo and if you thought club penguin rewritten scandals were bad well buckle in information on club penguin online is a lot more scarce than information on club penguin rewritten but we can put together some of the site's history using the various articles and videos that came out in the wake of the site's explosive controversy cpo allegedly launched in 2018 and it quickly rose in the ranks of private servers to become rewritten's biggest competition the two were frequently compared and looking up club penguin rewritten vs club penguin online will need you hundreds of results of people comparing the two and trying to decide which is the better game in terms of actual content the two are virtually the same though rewritten was based more of the nostalgic 2010s era of the game and cpo was more modern and updated more frequently however in these versus discussions shady ownership and moderation is frequently brought up in regards to club penguin online and most if not all of this drama stems from the owner of cpo a man who went by the name of riley he also went by anthony so if you see that name in any screenshots just know it's the same guy as i said information is pretty hard to come by so instead of going chronologically let's just go through a vague list of all the terrible that went down with cpo firstly the moderation on the site was abysmal and hate speech became extremely common cpo had family friendly servers and r-rated servers but with no way to verify that the user was old enough they were basically no restrictions meaning that kids often found themselves in adult spaces the game also never required miners to get appearance permission before signing up violating copper laws which all games must comply with this meant that unsupervised children were able to access inappropriate content without their parents permission or knowledge which is obviously a huge goddamn problem in an investigation launched by the bbc it found disturbing content within the game quote the bbc set up an account on the english spanish and portuguese versions of club penguin online it found content filters designed to remove offensive language had been disabled on several servers allowing swear words homophobic slurs anti-semitism and racist messages to be posted publicly moderators were no longer removing racist content one player invited the bbc to their igloo which was decorated to spell out the n-word players were engaging in penguin e6 sending and receiving explicit messages disney's original game banned the sharing of personal details for players on this clone site are openly sharing snapchat instagram and discord account details this is especially worrying given the young demographic of the game with many teens tweens and young kids logging on to what they thought was a safe space only to be exposed to very adult content bullet point number two cpo was fiercely competitive and worked to systematically infiltrate and take down the quote competition when reading how riley talked about conquering the competition and strengthening his empire you'd be forgiven forgetting that he's talking about club penguin and there's a reason that one x volunteer was quoted calling the community toxic and like game of thrones for penguins unlike other private servers whose main purpose seemed to be reuniting the community and giving people a fun gameplay experience riley and the cpo staff were out for blood as soon as the site launched and their main goal was to take down every other server who got in their way gaming youtuber tamago included screenshots of a conversation between riley and another staff in his video titled club penguin is shutting down again from the screenshots quote alright today we're gonna kill super cpps what do you mean you're chill with them wasn't your philosophy more users equals more money we must eradicate super cpps i want to take down club penguin rewritten we can't not yet anyway why why not build our empire by conquering the weaker cpps's first another screenshot i found online shows riley asking someone to convince the designers that super cpp is to come and work on cpo obviously an attempt to take down the competing server by turning their own staff against them it got so bad that anyone who said the word cpr or club penguin rewritten in the game would be banned and this drew heavy criticism since curses and slurs were still perfectly fine according to cpo this ridiculous and peaty hatred for competing servers was present in the discord as well with staff members of other private servers being banned from the discord one x staff member claimed that instead of putting the ad revenue and earnings back into the game riley was pocketing the money for himself which explains why he was so adamant about crushing the competition and making cpo the most popular an ex-volunteer who was a minor at the time spoke to the bbc about how riley would force staff and volunteers to harass and attack other servers quote the club penguin online volunteer claims he was encouraged to carry out attacks on rival servers when he was a miner i would find out and publish users personal details like addresses what they look like their family's information i carried out ddos attacks on other users and i would threaten people the stuff that i did was similar to what happened to me which affected my whole family but i do feel really bad about it now this leads us on to our third point the bullying harassment manipulation and doxxing of many players and staff riley was so ruthless and had such an iron grip on the community that his staff are often called his minions and this community has been likened to a cult multiple people have claimed that riley made homophobic transphobic and racist remarks in the discord even muting and then banning one user after she mentioned that she was a trans woman it was basically common knowledge that riley would use the threat of doxing and squatting in order to get people to do his bidding and this is abundantly clear of the tamago situation as i mentioned earlier gaming youtuber tamago made a series of videos on club penguin online and the shady practices all of which garnered a ton of attention and helped to get eyes on the situation in order to get revenge the club penguin online staff hacked into tamago's snapchat account and sent explicit images to people on his friends list they then claimed that they would use this as proof to quote-unquote expose him to ruin his credibility screenshots later showed riley admitting that a friend carried out the hacking but claimed that it wasn't him though tamago replied that even if it wasn't riley who carried out the hack himself his staff still did it for him and he encouraged it and fourthly while i'm not gonna get into it in super graphic detail because it's very unpleasant and youtube stuff the owner was into another very horrific kind of cp according to an ex-staff member who made a series of videos on riley and cpo riley had quote unquote dated multiple underage staff members and frequently bribed miners with moderator positions in return for inappropriate photos he even went as far as to have an in-game wedding with one of these girls with hundreds of attendees i'm not going to get into reading everything in detail because it is quite disturbing but rest assured there are multiple other screenshots of victims being targeted by riley as well as screenshots of riley openly discussing how he only gave mod positions to girls who sent photos one discord screenshot of a cpu staff member discussing riley reads quote how old is he like 25 or something he asks for photos from underage girls black males their families leaks addresses and their photos gives mods to girls who send them bans whoever he doesn't want he has about eight banned discord accounts from people reporting him but nobody has the guts to go to the authorities we're all terrified of riley needless to say people were outraged when they found out the disgusting and vile activities that this man had been engaging in especially while running one of the biggest kids websites out there at the time he was systematically using his position of power to manipulate his army of staff through threats and abuse in order to weaponize them against innocent players and even other servers who had done nothing wrong it was clear that riley was incredibly jealous and vindictive running what has been described as a quote mafia in order to take down people who he didn't like using targeted campaigns of harassment and doxing all to make his own game more popular and in his own words grow his empire those who spoke out about riley or how cpo was being run were immediately banned and silenced and creators who spoke out were doxed and harassed this created an echo chamber of sorts where only the most loyal who would never speak out or dissent were welcome and if anyone stepped out of line or spoke out about riley's actions they were threatened now all of this is obviously just horrific and it's really hard to pinpoint exactly when this all came to light in the public conscience it's clear that tensions between cpo and the players have been brewing for a while due to the unprofessionalism and rampant inappropriate behavior allowed on the servers but when the bbc and large youtubers like kevos some ordinary gamers and the right opinion began getting involved the entire situation blew up it caused a storm on social media with hashtags trending screenshots leaking and users on mass calling for disney to ban the offending server clubping when online made a heavily criticized statement essentially blaming the backlash on haters being jealous that they had the biggest club penguin server which just the fact that they unironically felt this way really goes to show how deluded and wrapped up in this insane club penguin fantasy world they were they also claimed that the screenshots were all faked and photoshopped and had been quote debunked though with screenshots and testimonies from multiple websites and multiple verified sources this doesn't seem too likely in this post they claim that they were considering shutting cpo down for good because quote running the biggest private survey can cause so much trouble for your mental health but it turns out they wouldn't get to make that decision because finally after all the uproar disney who had never publicly weighed in or really acknowledged the existence of private servers issued a statement quote child safety is a top priority for the walt disney company and we are appalled by the allegations of criminal activity and abhorrent behavior on this unauthorized website that is illegally using the club penguin brand and characters for its own purposes now after this really began to hit the fan with disney cracking down hard on any and every private server that they could find alongside obviously shutting down cpo club penguin rewritten was issued with a notice too but for some unknown reason it didn't stick and the server is still available to this day countless other mainstream servers were hit with removals though turning the once flourishing private server scene into a barren wasteland with one or two popular servers remaining and the rest having to keep their activity on the downlow many were upset not only because of the appalling actions of cpo but because the site had effectively been the bad apple that spoiled the bunch ruining private servers for everyone because of the terrible reputation that they now had big news outlets were painting private servers as havens of predation and hate speech and crime and while this was true for cpo and a few other servers that were removed others were just trying to run clean family-friendly servers alongside delivering their insider investigation and disney's comment on the topic the bbc delivered the shocking news that the owner of club penguin online aka riley had been arrested by the uk police for quote suspicion of possessing indecent images of children according to the article he has since been released on bail pending further inquiries and though i assume that riley and the staff would be long gone by now that may not be the case taking a look at our slash banned from club penguin which we discussed earlier in the video one of the top posts is a goodbye post as the owner of the subreddit is shutting it down they explained that this was partly because they recently learned of what occurred on the private servers but also because apparently an ex-member of cpo got in touch recently asking that they remove old posts about riley's abuse and what they theorized may be an attempt to sweep it all under the rug it's incredibly bizarre and not something i particularly want to get involved with at all but in these videos i aim to include all of the context and history behind these situations and i feel like it's hard to cover club penguin without talking about what occurred on the private servers club penguin rewritten remains the most popular and widely used private server to this date somehow surviving disney's purge it's honestly disgusting that so many disturbing horrible things went on in this game that's meant to be a safe space for kids to just have fun and i sincerely hope that anyone affected by riley whether they were a staff or just a player um has found peace and is doing okay now what riley allegedly did is disturbing to the highest degree and really goes to show how dangerous these fan moderated communities can be i think that these types of projects absolutely have a place online but it's important that developers administrators and moderators know what they're getting into and understand how to keep their community safe from the kind of corruption that destroyed cpo also as a side note if i get docs after posting this video you know how to blame [Music] in modern days the incredibly bizarre and disturbing dramas that have arisen out of the private server community have really eclipsed the impact of the game itself it's left a stain on club penguin's name and i think that really sucks while there were a few bumps in the road here and there and obviously no website is safe from creeps the original club penguin did its best to at least try and keep kids safe many people see the entire brand as evil and bad now which is unfair since all of the worst stuff happened on technically illegal servers run by randoms after the original game completely shut down and while it's important to acknowledge that these things happen and learn from their mistakes in order to make fan games and communities safer i think we should remember club penguin as it was a place for kids to hang out throw snowballs put on shitty plays listen to piano jazz walk puffles rob pizza parlors sled surf minecart throw parties and tip icebergs there's a certain comforting nostalgia to old club penguin and when i think back to the golden days of the site life feels simpler in the end though club penguin is no longer what it was and its name has been sullied by the events that happened after its closure we'll always have the memories thank you guys so much for watching i really appreciate it um i hope that you guys enjoyed the video the club penguin video has been in the works for a while i've known that i wanted to talk about it for a while because i spent an unhealthy amount of time on it as a kid and i know that it holds um a lot of people hold nostalgia for it as well so um yeah i hope you guys really enjoyed it um as i said it's a real shame that the sort of garbage that happened later has overshadowed the nostalgia and the good name of the original but you know i hope that people can sort of divorce the two and see them as two separate worlds um but yeah the story is crazy and i wanted to cover it and i hope that you guys really enjoyed it i really want to hear your club penguin stories and the things that you have nostalgia for and your memories or if you have any experiences on private servers i'm genuinely curious to know um you know it's a it's a game that i was obsessed with and it's a topic that i'm really interested in now so you know post your experiences and i'd love to read them also if you have any suggestions for things you want me to cover in the future let me know thank you so much to k2 for sponsoring this video and yeah i hope that you guys enjoyed and i hope to see you in the next one bye thank you so much to my garfield overlords over on patreon and genko fox samsung account checkery trevorzonde is sal sunsun doug boysenberry switchblade jordan nielsen dana home gardener charlie b simon john leach rin pendragon pom agarophan xavier arajo finley helmheimerhand dozo blind sheriff whiskey the furby librarian red myth astriam vortex jesse chisholm sophie skitter brianna robinson gunderson tyson kimono my gyro joe bradshaw and arcantalis thank you guys so much for the support as always if you want to join these guys over on patreon head to the link in the description and yeah thank you guys so much for the support i hope you enjoyed the video and i hope to see you in the next one bye [Music] you

Channel: Izzzyzzz

Views: 2,555,680

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Id: S1ryMTJ1KJg

Length: 57min 0sec (3420 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 25 2022