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 usage of in-game currency. Thus, a major focus of the developers was on elite russian dating safety, with a number of features having been introduced to the game to facilitate this. On January 30, 2017, it was announced that the game would be discontinued on March 29, 2017. The game was replaced by a successor, titled Club Penguin Island.
The first seeds of what would become Club Penguin began as a Flash 4 web-based game called Snow Blasters that developer Lance Priebe had been developing in his spare time in July 2000. Lance Priebe, as well as co-workers Lane Merrifield and Dave Krysko, started to formulate the Club Penguin concept when the trio were unsuccessful in finding “something that had some social components but was safe, and not just marketed as safe” for their own children. Dave Krysko in particular wanted to build a safe social-networking site their kids could enjoy free of advertising. Work commenced on the project in 2004, and the team settled on a name in the summer of 2005. Since the Disney purchase, Club Penguin continued to grow, becoming part of a larger franchise including video games, books, a television special, an anniversary song, and an app MMO. In 2008, the first international office opened in Brighton, England, to personalise the level of moderation and player support.
Later international office locations included São Paulo and Buenos Aires. On March 11, 2008, Club Penguin released the Club Penguin Improvement Project. On June 20, 2011, the game’s website temporarily crashed after the company let the Club Penguin domain name expire. In September 2011, one of Club Penguin’s minigames, Puffle Launch, was released on iOS as an app. Merrifield commented: “Kids are going mobile and have been asking for Club Penguin to go there with them. In late 2012, Merrifield left Disney Interactive to focus on his family and a new educational product, Freshgrade. Chris Heatherly took Merrifield’s former position.
The company dropped the words “Online Studios” from its name in 2013. It nostalgically looks back on the game’s 12-year history, comments on how far the community has grown, and has an optimistic view on the future for its members. In April 2015, it was revealed that Disney Interactive had laid off 28 members of Club Penguin’s Kelowna headquarters due to the game’s declining popularity. The company’s UK office in Brighton was shut down around April 17, 2015. Some employees in the Los Angeles office were also let go. On September 2, 2015, Club Penguin closed down the German and Russian versions of the site.
On January 30, 2017, Club Penguin announced that the current game would be discontinued on March 29, 2017, to make way for its successor, Club Penguin Island. Prior to being purchased by Disney, Club Penguin was almost entirely dependent on membership fees to produce a revenue stream. An alternative revenue stream came through the development of an online merchandise shop, which opened on the Club Penguin website in August 2006, selling stuffed Puffles and T-shirts. Key chains, gift cards, and more shirts were added on November 7, 2006.
As with one of its major rivals, Webkinz, Club Penguin traditionally relied almost entirely on word-of-mouth advertising to increase its membership base. Thus, one of the major concerns when designing Club Penguin was how to improve both the safety of participants and the suitability of the game to children. The system employed a number of different approaches in an attempt to improve child safety. When using “Standard Safe Chat”, all comments made by users were filtered.
When a comment was blocked, the user who made the comment saw it, but other users were unaware that it was made—suggesting to the “speaker” that they were being ignored, rather than encouraging them to try to find a way around the restriction. Beyond these primary measures, systems were in place to limit the amount of time spent online, and the site did not feature any advertisements, because, as described by Merrifield, “within two or three clicks, a kid could be on a gambling site or an adult dating site. Players who used profanity were often punished by an automatic 24-hour ban, although not all vulgar language resulted in an immediate ban. Players found by moderators to have broken Club Penguin rules were punished by a ban lasting “from 24 hours to forever depending on the offense. Coins for Change was an in-game charity fund-raising event which first appeared in 2007.
