[Music]
by modern standards
it's not much to look at but during the
pandemic club penguin
a game that was discontinued by disney
years ago became an unlikely hit
unofficial fan run website saw a surge
in players
from chile to new zealand and peru to
portugal
club penguin online the largest of these
so-called private servers
said it put on more than a million new
players in april alone
taking its total registrations to 7
million
but now disney has had the site shut
down after a bbc investigation found
that the game was not as innocent
as it appeared i think most of the
people playing this game are people that
used to play it
and i'm just bored and quarantined
however for former fans logging on
hoping to rediscover the game
or children looking for a new place to
explore it's a far cry
from the original strip club igloo pimps
needed strippers needed
it's awful it's awful the things that go
on there disney wouldn't want
their property being used like this
and what's been going on behind the
scenes of this website and community
is just as shocking it's like game of
thrones with penguins
it's a consistent war people that are
running games that are hackers that are
trying to
consistently take out other competitions
one man's been arrested
and disney says it's appalled by the
abhorrent and illegal use of its game
it's threatening legal action if they
aren't shut down
at its peak in 2013 disney said there
were 200 million players
waddling around in its frozen virtual
world chatting and playing games
together
it was almost all kids between 6 and 12.
for a generation of children
particularly in north and south america
and europe
this weird and family-friendly website
was their first taste of social
networking
when disney closed it down in 2017 it
shocked
those loyal millions still enjoying the
game
waddle on the company said and what
along the community did
new versions of the game sprouted up all
over the internet on private servers
using either stolen or copied source
code
club penguin online has become the
largest version of the game and recently
announced that the multinational
lockdown from coronavirus
led to record numbers of players logging
on they're chatting in english
spanish and portuguese it's still disney
branded with the same child-friendly
design
but it's definitely not disney the
original club penguin was heavily
moderated
by people and computers this is not
there's tons of swearing and almost all
conversations end up about sex
there's even penguiny sex basically
sexting
there's also some pretty toxic chat and
bullying i saw some horrible
anti-semitism
and racism at one stage i was invited to
someone's igloo
which had been decorated by spelling out
the n-word in chairs
the original club penguin also didn't
allow any sharing of private details
people are giving out and asking for
insta accounts discord user names and
all sorts
in one instance everyone was invited to
a zoom chat
many of the players in these so-called
mature sections of the game seem to be
in their late teens
but there were kids here too it only
says this is a mature server you sure
you want to join
you can any kid can just click it and
then they just see
all this inappropriate stuff i met
kaiden on the lively discord forum for
the game
whilst we're both playing he's 14.
in igloos i've seen people say uh strip
club igloo
pimps needed strippers needed the
there's a lot of swearing on there
i feel like there's probably going to be
someone on the other side that's
not who they say they are at all like
probably an online predator
i've been asked a lot of crazy things so
i try to not go on the mature servers
anymore
kaden's dad assumed club penguin was
like it used to be
he's not happy with what it's because i
was shocked i didn't know that i thought
if he's still on club payment
he's in a pretty safe place i just that
was just the way i thought
but now that i learned this i want to go
talk to him long time club penguin fan
miranda
is also not happy with how her childhood
favorite game is being used
as a kid i played it all the time and
just knowing that something that was so
family and friendly and fun
can turn into something like this
monstrous on the internet
is pretty sad what's been going on
inside the game is one thing
but behind the scenes it's truly murky
since disney dropped the game a few
years ago there's been a nasty battle
for supremacy and ownership
of these fluffy penguins and their fans
rival versions of the game or servers
are accused of hacking intimidation and
stealing
in order to get one over on each other
this former volunteer administrator of
club penguin online
claims he was encouraged to attack other
penguin games
i dox users so um i would dox them
which is personal information on the
person their address what they look like
their family's information etc
would ddos other users
i would threaten people i never swatted
anyone i just want to make that
clear never did anything like that the
stuff that i did is kind of similar to
what happened to me
so obviously now i feel really bad about
it i spoke to one of the website's staff
who denied these attacks were encouraged
but as well as this warring between the
different games
a british man involved in club penguin
online has been arrested on suspicion of
possessing indecent images of children
police say he's been bailed pending
further inquiries
disney's also issued legal notices to
all fan-run sites
and it seems club penguin online has
shut down
disney said in a statement 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 we continue to
enforce our rights against this
and other unauthorized uses of the club
penguin game
whether or not more cloned websites pop
up in the future is unclear but for
gamers
this story highlights a bigger issue
around fan run services
they're being run by people who necess
who aren't necessarily
in a position or qualified to run these
sort of service all
it's all good and well to have a
community that you've built
but past when you get past a certain
size
there's a responsibility where you have
to employ a degree of professionalism
for now it seems like the unexpected
rise in interest in this strange corner
of the internet
has ultimately led to its fall
you