One of the biggest fan servers for the now defunct Disney MMO game Club Penguin has been forced to shut down. The Club Penguin Legacy team announced via the @CPLegacyTeam Twitter Account that they have received a DMCA takedown from Disney.
— Club Penguin Legacy (@CPLegacyTeam) January 25, 2023
Club Penguin was one of Disney’s largest online games. While Disney had previously developed other online games such as Toontown and Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Club Penguin was arguably their most successful due to its cross-media appeal into merchandise, cartoons and console spin-off games.
The game originally launched in October of 2005 but was shut down in March of 2017 due to a declining number of users and concerns over child safety. A successor game Club Penguin Island was developed for mobile phone devises and released in March of 2017. Sadly the game wasn’t as popular with fans as the original as was shut down in December of 2018.
Since then multiple fan projects and serves have come and gone over the years. The most notable being Club Penguin Rewritten which launched in 2017, but was forced to be shut down in 2022 when the creators were arrested in London due to copyright violation.
Since then its successor site, Club Penguin Legacy, was seen as the biggest alternative. However, now they are being shut down as Disney and there army of lawyers seem adamant on keeping the franchise dead.
Only enough Disney doesn’t seem as interested in shutting down fan servers for their other discontinued MMO games that have multiple fan servers still on operation.
With Disney trying to expand into licensing their IPs to multiple video game partners it would make sense for them to seek another company to revive the once popular MMO. With the series’ 20th Anniversary only a couple years away now would probably be the best time to pursue that goal.
Pirates & Princesses (PNP) is an independent, opinionated fan-powered news blog that covers Disney and Universal Theme Parks, Themed Entertainment and related Pop Culture from a consumer's point of view. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of PNP, its editors, affiliates, sponsors or advertisers. PNP is an unofficial news source and has no connection to The Walt Disney Company, NBCUniversal or any other company that we may cover.