Club Penguin

About

Club Penguin, commonly abbreviated as CP, is a children’s massively multiplayer online game (MMO) developed by New Horizon Interactive. Using cartoon penguin avatars, players can chat, play mini games and participate in other activities with one another in a snow-covered virtual world. Though a large amount of the game can be played for free, some of features are not available unless a membership is purchased.

History

Experimental Versions

In 2000, RocketSnail Games released the game Experimental Penguins, in which players could interact with each other using penguin avatars. The following year, the game was taken offline. In 2002, Penguin Chat^[1] was released by RocketSnail Games as the successor to Experimental Penguins, which was subsequently followed by Penguin Chat 2 (2003) and Penguin Chat 3 (2005).

Club Penguin

On October 24th, 2005, Club Penguin^[3] was released as a web browser game on the Flash site Miniclip to the general public after a short beta-testing period. In August 2007, Disney bought Club Penguin for $350 million and an additional $350 million in potential bonuses

Shutdown

On January 30th, 2017, Club Penguin^[4] announced that they would be discontinuing Club Penguin game on desktop and mobile devices on March 29th, 2017 and launching a new game, “Club Penguin Island,” for mobile. That day, a thread about the news was posted to /r/bnnedfromclubpenguin^[5] where it gained over 15,500 upvotes. The Daily Dot^[6] also covered the news, giving a rundown of Club Penguin’s long history and it’s relation to memes.

Features

Club Penguin players can interact with each other in a variety of virtual locations navigated with their penguin avatars. The game was designed for children of ages 6 to 14, but players of any age can join the game. Developers employed a number of child safety features to confront this, including an “Ultimate Safe Chat” mode in which users can only select comments from a menu of pre-chosen terms.

Related Memes

Tip The Iceberg

Tip the Iceberg is a Club Penguin game in which players attempt to tip the secret Iceberg location by dancing while wearing a hard hat, miners helmet, construction hat or green hard hat item to make the penguin avatar use a large drill (shown below)

On January 31st, 2017, YouTuber punpun uploaded a video to YouTube of the penguins finally tipping the iceberg, revealing a secret dancefloor.

Club Penguin Bans

Since the game was designed for children, rules prohibit any inappropriate, violent or suggestive themes. If a player breaks the rules, a moderator will ban their account. On February 25th, 2013, the /r/bannedfromclubpenguin^[2] subreddit was launched, featuring screenshots of users being banned from the online game.

Purple Republic

The Purple Republic is a group originating on 4chan’s /v/ board dedicated to raiding Club Penguin servers with purple penguins, similar to the Anonymous “Pool’s Closed” phenomenon associated with Habbo Hotel.

Search Interest

External References