Lance Priebe and Lane Merrifield, employees at New Horizon Productions (which became New Horizon Interactive in 2005) in Kelowna, British Columbia, saw a need for 'social networking for kids'. On January 30, 2017, Club Penguin announced that the game will be discontinued/shutdown on March 29, 2017, to pave way for its successor Club Penguin Island. The game has been criticized for teaching consumerism and allowing players to cheat. Thus, a major focus of the developers has been on child safety, with a number of features introduced to the game to facilitate this - including offering an 'Ultimate Safe Chat' mode, whereby users could select their comments from a menu Wordfilter filtering that prevented swearing and the revelation of personal information and moderators (along with veteran players) who patrolled the game. ] The success of Club Penguin led to New Horizon being purchased by The Walt Disney Company on Augfor the sum of 350 million dollars, with an additional 350 million dollars in bonuses if specific targets were met by 2009. While free memberships were available, revenue was predominantly raised through paid memberships which allowed players to access a range of additional features, such as the ability to purchase virtual clothing, furniture and in-game pets called 'puffles' for their penguins through the use of in-game currency. After beta-testing, Club Penguin was made available to the general public on Octo] and has since expanded into a large online community-growing to the extent that by late 2007, it was claimed that Club Penguin had over 12 million user accounts. Players used cartoon penguin- avatars and played in a winter-set virtual world. Massively multiplayer online game External links Official websiteĬlub Penguin was a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) involving a Virtual World containing a range of online games and activities, developed by Disney Canada Inc.

What happened to club penguin island