Club Penguin was a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) created by Lane Merrifield, Dave Krysko, and Lance Priebe in 2005. The game was predominantly accessed and played via a web browser, and apps for mobile phones and tablets were released later on. The game was shut down on March 30, 2017, at 12:01 AM PDT, and was replaced by a successor, titled Club Penguin Island (which itself was discontinued the following year) . The main reason for the shutdown was Club Penguins (and Disney's) inability to adapt to a mobile-first world, which led to a significant decrease in revenue. Interest in the game continuously declined, which likely contributed to the decrease in revenue. The game was shut down simply because it wasn't making money, and they couldn't run the game unless there was money funding it.
After the shutdown, the original game has been hosted and recreated on a number of private servers using SWF files from the game's old website. However, these private servers have faced legal issues. For example, Club Penguin Rewritten was shut down on April 13, 2022, by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit of the City of London Police, who took control of the website and arrested three people "on suspicion of distributing materials". Disney has also shut down other fan-run clones of the game, such as Club Penguin Online, which was shut down in 2020.
