Disney Canada
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| Developer | New Horizon Interactive RocketSnail Games Disney Interactive Studios |
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| Type | Massively multiplayer online game |
| Launch date | October 24, 2005 |
| Platform | Online (Adobe Flash) |
| Status | Discontinued in favour of Club Penguin Island (March 30, 2017) |
| Members | 250 million+ (2014) |
| Website | Club Penguin Website at the Wayback Machine (archived March 30, 2017) |
Club Penguin was a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), involving a virtual world that contained a range of online games and activities. It was created by New Horizon Interactive (now known as Disney Canada Inc.). Players used cartoon penguin-avatars and played in a winter-set virtual world. After beta-testing, Club Penguin was made available to the general public on October 24, 2005, and expanded into a large online community, such that by late 2007, it was claimed Club Penguin had over 30 million user accounts. As of July 2013, Club Penguin had over 200 million registered user accounts.
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. The success of Club Penguin led to New Horizon being purchased by The Walt Disney Company in August 2007 for the sum of 350 million dollars, with an additional 350 million dollars in bonuses should specific targets be met by 2009.
The game was specifically designed for children aged 6 to 14 (however, users of any age were allowed to play Club Penguin). Thus, a major focus of the developers was on child safety, with a number of features having been introduced to the game to facilitate this. These features included offering an "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode, whereby users selected their comments from a menu; filtering that prevented swearing and the revelation of personal information; and moderators who patrolled the game.
On January 30, 2017, it was announced that the game would be discontinued on March 29, 2017. Club Penguin later shut down its servers on March 30, 2017 at 12:01 AM. 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. Priebe's attention was brought to penguins after he "happened to glance at a Far Side cartoon featuring penguins that was sitting on his desk". The project was never finished, and instead morphed into Experimental Penguins. Experimental Penguins was released through Priebe's company of employment, the Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada-based online game and comic developer Rocketsnail Games, in July 2000, though it ultimately went offline the following year. It was used as the inspiration for Penguin Chat (also known as Penguin Chat 1), a similar game which was released shortly after Experimental Penguins' removal. Released January 2003, Penguin Football Chat (also known as Penguin Chat 2) was the second attempt at a penguin-themed MMORPG, and was created on FLASH 5 and used the same interface as Experimental Penguins. The game contained various minigames; the premiere title of RocketSnail Games was Ballistic Biscuit, a game that would be placed into Experimental Penguins and eventually be adapted into Club Penguin's Hydro Hopper. RocketSnails Games' Mancala Classic would also be placed into the game as Mancala.
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