Club Penguin Online fan servers closed after discovering appalling illegal activities
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The fan servers used to revive the classic Club Penguin Online MMO has been killed by Disney after the discovery of illegal and hateful content was made known to the company.
Disney filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown to Club Penguin Online last week following a deep investigation by the BBC that exposed the vile content that permeated the children’s MMO.
The BBC discovered that the game’s majorly child and teenage audience were being exposed to racist, homophobic, anti-semetic and sexual messaging throughout its servers. One player invited BBC reporters to their igloo which was designed to spell out the n-word.
The BBC reported that one man interacting with children on the game has been arrested on suspicion of possessing child abuse images.
Players throughout Club Penguin Online would engage in penguin e-sex, invite people to Snapchat, Discord and Zoom groups and would sexually harass children.
“Any kid can click on these mature sections and they just see all this inappropriate stuff,” 14-year-old player Kaden told the BBC. “I’ve seen people advertise strip club igloos, I’ve seen people ask for pimps. There’s a lot of swearing on there and I’ve been asked a lot of crazy things. It’s really put me off.”
Disney immediately filed a DMCA claim and sent the BBC a statement following the report.
“Child safety is a top priority for the Walt Disney Company and we are appalled by the allegations of criminal activity and abhorrent behaviour on this unauthorised website that is illegally using the Club Penguin brand and characters for its own purposes,” said Disney. “We continue to enforce our rights against this, and other, unauthorised uses of the Club Penguin game.”
