I Feel Like Club Penguin Doesn’t Care About Private Servers and Cheating (Spike Hike Replies)

UPDATE: Spike Hike has commented on this post to express his concerns. You can read the comment here.

I feel like Club Penguin doesn’t care enough about private servers or cheating with third party programs in order to stop it. Cheating may have existed since the dawn of Club Penguin and private servers since several years ago, as these two things that violate Club Penguin’s rules have grown in popularity I feel as if Club Penguin does not care enough to stop what 1) is causing a loss of profit and 2) ruining the fun for other players.
A Club Penguin Private Server, also known as a CPPS for short, is a modified version of Club Penguin’s game running on a third party website. This itself is illegal, as Club Penguin is copyrighted and The first ever public CPPS, iCPV1, was launched in July 2010 and became an instant success. Since then other private servers have risen such as Atlantic Penguin, Club Penguin V, Pengable, and Flippr.

CPYS's grand re-opening beta party, image courtesy of Club Penguin Wikia

CPYS’s grand re-opening beta party, image courtesy of Club Penguin Wiki

“Private servers appeal to players
for a wide variety of reasons”

 
 
 
Some of those private servers still exist while others do not. Private servers appeal to players for a wide variety of reasons such as free membership/access to all game features without payment, little or no chat filter, getting any item or coins with a single command, a better change of getting the username you really want, or even the custom experience it offers compared to normal Club Penguin as private servers will modify the game’s files and give it new looks or features.

Private servers have existed for four years and counting. I know some penguins have cancelled their Club Penguin membership in lieu of getting all of Club Penguin’s features on a private server for free. I also know some penguins who quit normal Club Penguin and instead play on a private server because they find it more fun. I also know some penguins who do not even play normal Club Penguin and never have, instead they only play on private servers. These all cause a loss of revenue for Club Penguin. How much, I don’t know. But based on the popularity of private servers, I would be willing to bet it is a fair amount. Think of it like this: a one year membership is $59.95. If 500 penguins played on private servers instead of paying for a one year Club Penguin membership, that’s just under $30,000 in loss of profit. It would be unfair to say that all private server players cause Club Penguin a loss of profit, that would be simply untrue. There are definitely penguins who play on private servers but still also play normal Club Penguin with a paid membership. According to Club Penguin Wiki, iCPv3 had over 300,000 users registered before Club Penguin forced them to close operations. The accuracy of that statement is unknown, and it is possible that number is the number penguins registered and not individual players, as you can always make more than one account.

Back to my original point. Private servers are definitely taking away from at least part of Club Penguin’s audience. the Dock on Sleet used to be popular years ago, but nowadays you are lucky to see more than three penguins there. Yes, Club Penguin’s audience does seem to have thinned out over the last few years however without a doubt some of those penguins who used to hang out on Sleet are now on private servers to chat instead. I looked at Google Trends and compared the number of searches for “Play Club Penguin” and “CPPS”. CPPS is higher, however I have to acknowledge the fact that “Club Penguin” receives far more searches for “CPPS” and “CPPS” has other meanings besides Club Penguin Private Server.


“According to Club Penguin Wiki, iCPv3 had over 300,000 users registered before Club Penguin forced them to close operations.”

Private servers are illegal as I stated above. Copyright infringement is using copyrighted works without permission, whether you are reproducing, distributing, or displaying it. In this case private servers are reproducing Disney’s Club Penguin game without permission. I am not so sure the legality of playing a private server, however the best way I can equate it is with this analogy: a copyrighted movie (for example Frozen) is illegally uploaded online for free. You didn’t upload it to the internet, but you still downloaded it to watch. Both uploading and downloading a copyrighted work without permission is copyright infringement.

So why isn’t Disney doing much to take down private servers? They say not to play them and claim they are not safe or good, yet their doings differentiate from what they preach. Disney even supported SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. I have only heard of Disney supposedly taking down only one or two private servers, and whether it is true Disney that sent a takedown notice I don’t know. I do know, however, that the Penguin City private server that claimed to be taken down by Disney in April 2012 was false, as I disproved it. As for others who claimed to be taken down by Disney, I do not know. Regardless, I feel that Disney does not care that private servers are taking away from their game. If they did they would do more to prohibit illicit copies of their game, whether making it more difficult to run a copy of it or submitting takedown notices to the website host for copyright infringement. They have had years to do something and nothing has been done. I have a problem with that. I’m sure the process would be difficult or time consuming to submit a legal takedown of some sort, but that doesn’t stop Disney from protecting their other copyrighted works such as movies, television, and music. A quick Google search shows that they are actively submitting URL takedown notices to Google, which is a very quick and seamless process. Submitting a URL takedown from Google’s search index doesn’t stop the infringing, but it is at least a start.

“They say not to play them and claim they are not safe or good, yet their doings differentiate from what they preach.”

So why, exactly, is Disney doing nothing? Is it because kids and teenagers run private servers and Disney does not want to take any legal action against them? Leaders of the community such as Chrisdog93 even promote private servers and Club Penguin cheating!




Cheating brings us to my second part of this post’s purpose. Club Penguin cheating has definitely been in Club Penguin since the start, for example in 2006 and 2007 you could moonwalk, flash in and out of rooms, hack items, cheat in Find Four, and more. Things quieted down, then there was the rise of PCL/Penguin Client Library, a cheating system coded in PHP to allow you to operate multiple bots.

“Club Penguin cheating has definitely been in Club Penguin since the start”



It took a bit but eventually Disney managed to shut it down. The only real threat to Club Penguin for some time was money makers, which is not a *huge* deal compared to what Club Penguin is facing now. With the launch of Club Penguin’s mobile app in May 2013 it made way for an increase in Club Penguin cheating due to vulnerabilities discovered in their mobile system. Money makers increased the amount of coins they could get you and now boasted any item. Did you know that the first Club Penguin item adder was publicly made available around July 2013? It was not fixed until last month, a whole year later!

Check out this Google Trends graph for “Club Penguin Item Adder” searches. You can see where it gained popularity and where it decreased in popularity, aka when Club Penguin fixed it.

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However, just because they fixed it, doesn’t mean you cannot hack items still. Last week a new item adder (and other adders) made an appearance, again letting you add any item to your penguin account. Not all the penguins who cheat are caught, only the obvious ones who wear the Beta Hat around the island are the ones who get caught and banned. You can cheat items and never wear it and chances are you will not get banned! The fact that penguins are using item adders to add old items they want takes away the fun from others who work hard to earn their items and only get the items that are actually available in game. For example, I’ve accumulated lots of items since joining Club Penguin in August 2006. Meanwhile, someone can make a new penguins right now and add every single item I’ve ever gotten over the years to their own account. Quite sad, really.

Screen Shot 2014-09-08 at 1.06.26 PM

“Surely in game cheating is a bigger problem and threat to overall company image than a post a few hundred people are going to read?”

The fact that Club Penguin item adders have been around for a whole YEAR before they actually did something (aka when everyone was using it) it what really bothers me. Meanwhile, I make a post about catching a Club Penguin employee illegally downloading something and Polo Field asks me to remove it within hours. It really shows their priorities. However, it would be unfair for me to not acknowledge the fact that unlike people who run cheating websites, Polo Field knows who I am and can easily contact me since we’ve known each other for years. Still though, I find it really lame they will ask me to remove a simple post yet only do the bare minimum to stop in game cheating. Surely in game cheating is a bigger problem and threat to overall company image than a post a few hundred people are going to read? Things are only going to get worse, Club Penguin cheater Lolnok has tweeted he is working on more adders and even an igloo liker.




“Things are only going to get worse”

I don’t know what you guys think, but I feel that Club Penguin needs to step up their game on what they do to prohibit others from ruining the game’s experience. If Club Penguin is committed to safety like their website says, they need to do a better job.

-T



167 thoughts on “I Feel Like Club Penguin Doesn’t Care About Private Servers and Cheating (Spike Hike Replies)

  1. Club Penguin is probably gonna shut down in a few years due to all of this stuff, even Thinknoodles said he would quit, if people kept doing this

      • Why wouldn’t he be nice? I’ve done a lot to help them as well. I even submit exploits to him, although he does nothing to fix them or pass them on. I’m not a bad person at all, I just post my findings publicly (not anymore, I’ve shut down all things against Club Penguin).

        I even wrote an e-mail to a few Disney Interactive employees containing detailed explanations on how each of the adders worked and sent them the source code for lolnok.com so they can see. I want the cheating to stop just as much as Trainman does. It may not seem like it, but the more I look at it now, the more I realize that this has gone too far and needs to stop.

  2. Agree. But I use the Item Adder, but to add items that I saw pass, but I could not retrieve them for some reason unknown to me now .. But I do think a new penguin wrong add items to obtain thanks to our years of experience in CP

  3. Toontown had the same problem too. Not that it matters, but Toontown could’ve also shut down because of hackers. Hackers are demons that are secretly humans. Correction; BAD, NAUGHTY, MEAN hackers.

  4. Oh, dont mention hackers. We ALL know about hackers. Item adder are VERY DANGEROUS. If you use one, you might want to stop. Not forcing you guys to, but I’m just saying. I mean, everything is happening probably right now. Cp is probably getting hacked. Toontown got shut down, now we are having the same problem. Guys, meet me on English server Winter Land at 4:00 Pst if you can. i will explain more there. That will be October, 25.

  5. ¿ʇɥbıɹ sɐʍ ןıɹdɐɐɹɐs ǝqʎɐɯ

    Also saw Lolnok’s stuff being shut down. Interesting timing >.< I was going to rant about how evil Disney is, but that made me rethink that, made me believe they're actually listening. Or maybe, it's a well-constructed plot to make us think that o.0!

  6. PREECH IT!!!! I cancelled my membership because to me it seemed pointless as people can just cheat so much stuff. Bear in mind that I had an auto renewing one month membership for 4 years, and now that’s stopped. Lots of money in total that they’re losing out on!

  7. I think people prefer the private serves because CP is not the same anymore. It’s more about having a million puffles and buying “exclusive” items nowadays. People don’t like that direction. They just want to chat and meet friends, like they used to do back in the.. “old” CP.

    Another reason is that the CP audience is simply growing up. The problem is that CP used to appeal to teenagers too. Now, it’s just too.. “Disney”. It’s just a matter of time before they announce a Mickey Mouse Club House party.

    What do kids found “cool”? What teens find “cool”. If an older player thinks that CP is for “little children”, they will go to a CPPS, where they can do whatever they want without restrictions. What do younger players do then? They will go to the CPPS too.

    I’m changing the subject now and I want to request something. Since your posts are the only way to contact the CP team (I’m sure they ignore 90% of the emails they receive) I’d like to see you make a discussion post about the Stage. I hate the fact that there hasn’t been a new play since 2010-2011! Perhaps if you write about it they will make more plays in the future. Thanks.

  8. *Please don’t attack me just stating my opinion

    Well what Trainman is saying is true, but if we think about it every game has a change, every game shuts down at a point, and every game gets hacked by people who want to out smart either the CP team or others (Wizard101, Fusionfall, WoW, LoL, etc) but if we think about it CP has been using Fire VS Fire in their game. Why did the Sasquatch or the ?????? Mascot have a Beta hat? Why is CP making puffles dig “Rare” items or for example, why has CP in the past 4 years reduced almost 60% of the mini games, Cathin’ Waves, Aqua Grabber, Thin Ice, Thin Ice to only 3 or less levels and the rest is for members? They are from my point of view trying to maybe encourage people to buy memberships, or they have been trying to provoke them. That increases the chances of penguins wether they are young or old to use Item Adders, Money makers etc. That also makes the hackers enoy their time earning money while people use their hacks meanwhile normal penguins stress over items or games.

    What I also think triggers this provoke is the new mascot system, now Mascots have “Assigned” times they can log on for exmple Sunday at 5pm PST in Aurora, that causes servers to massively collapse unless you arrive like 2 hours before and wait until the mascot shows up which means the rooms will fill up in seconds. Before the system was the Mascot had LESS assigned times and that would make more of the fun to finding them! (No I am not against Spike Hike’s new vision of CP).

    All in all Trainman this post is excellent, you have earned my deepest respect, and as we can see there will always be a problem, patch one, 2 more show up. Keep the good work Mate! Just don’t be too targetive, I see it kind of offensing.

  9. Wow, nice post. I agree with Jnk6, “Club Penguin is probably gonna shut down in a few years”.

    If They wants new players, they need to stop with takeovers and use the old form of advertising as well as prohibit these club penguin private servers

    • Yea, that’s what you would think, but it’s actually the other way around. Not saying that normal parties won’t get players, it’s just they will get more advertisments for CP. They might loose old players, but trust me, they’ll gain A LOT of new players.

  10. Club Penguin. A game where I could meetup with real life friends since we weren’t even allowed to have Instagram at that time. Now, more like a place where you can extract things from and call it your own.

    The present. This Club Penguin is very boring. I been a member ever since 2011, and im going to CANCEL my membership sooner or later if Disney doesnt make this game any better, bye childhood. Club Penguin, helped me how to type extremely fast without even watching the keyboard.

    Also many idiots in this world. Some people are SELLING their accounts for A LOT* of money. And people buy it because it has rare items. Okay – no offense to anyone here – but that is a terrible idea. Why would you buy pixels! With that money, you should instead buy a feast and donate it to people STARVING and close to death!

    *PIXELIZED ITEMS DO NOT MAKE YOU COOLER IN REAL LIFE. YOU WILL NEVER, EVER, EVER BECOME A INTERNATIONAL POP STAR JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE RARES ON CLUB PENGUIN!

    Now, any of you Disney staff reading my message, PLEASE FIX YOUR GAME. YOUR DECISIONS DECIDE WHETHER YOU EITHER LOOSE MONEY OR WIN MONEY.

    My wallet is no longer for this game if it is not fixed.

  11. Yea this is pretty sad, I love that you are doing this trainman I agree with you Club Penguin needs to do something I have been playing cp scince 2010 my items are starting to get rare, but someone can just use an item adder and get all my hard earned items like party hats and pins its pretty depressing I hate to say it but cp is going down hill :(

  12. Club Penguin is going down the toilet. If they don’t do something about this, they will lose many players and possibly in the future, shut down. Club Penguin needs to upgrade a hacking detector or something which detects any player recently hacking items. Idk just an idea.

    • Oh please. Everytime someone gives their password out to a friend and then their account ends up banned, it’s always my fault, right? Sit down and shut up. I didn’t do anything to anyone except send postcards to random people. I don’t “hack” penguin accounts or websites. The only site considered “hacked” by me was Dragos’ site, which wasn’t even real hacking. I simply used his password that he uses for everything.

        • I can’t really criticize Lolnok, coming to a conlusion that he’s a good or bad hacker. However, I’ve seen him as a mature hacker and the hacks he has done aren’t that major, compared with other hacks I’ve seen.

          I remember when there was this famous CP Youtuber and there was this hacker who completely screwed up his life. He hacked his CP Account, youtube account, and even his blog. In fact, he even doxed that famous CP Youtuber and threatened his best friend to upload the video or else he would be hacked as well. The most extreme case of bad-hacking IMO. Screwing the life of someone who enjoys playing something.

          I might be wrong, but what he does (apparently) is to simply inform CP their vulnerabilities, helping CP to reforce their security before other bad hackers do their malicious job.

  13. Indeed sir Trainman. Well done on, even CP Staff reads your blog (specially Spike Hike), you provide awareness towards every single reader.

    I feel CP is really focusing on INNECESSARY stuff such as The Spoiler Alert and perhaps, unneeded features as well instead of focusing in their priorities; mainly about safety and parties.

    I do know the owner of Flippr. I am friends with him and trust me, he isn’t a big bug or something similar. He is friendly and about his CPPS, he usually recycles elements from CP swfs and make something new. He runs the CPPS with his own money (yes, his own money in designing and running the CPPS) and CP can’t really sue him or close his CPPS since his CPPS is legally ran and designed by him. I believe the USA government is involved with his CPPS or something similar (I forgot lol, but still, his CPPS is legal).

    Back to the topic, I really feel the essence of CP is dying off. Like certain people said in the comments, some would sell their penguins because their penguins simply have rare items. You know, those penguins could’ve been hacked by adding rare items onto them and therefore, being theoretically scammed. It won’t take that long for people to hack his accounts and ban them.This is a perfect example of a guy losing his money in something truly pointless: https://twitter.com/Ben29682/status/481505510613479424

    Frankly, I dislike how many famous people (Chrishog93 – Yes, I intended to say Chrishog instead of Chrisdog) encourage people towards the wrong direction. If people do not really care of CP, then they could simply quit the game, and join another game such as WoW and LoL instead of joining an exact replica of CP, harming CP. It’s like buying clothing made from an animal. You can either join the fad, and buy that clothing, harming the animals (specially for those endangered species) or buy organic clothing which won’t really harm anything, but benefit the planet. Perfect example I can compare it with CP and CPPSes.

    I happen to believe that there is a factor that caused somehow this. Mascot meet-up times. Now, how did that affect CP drastically? For those curious CP Players, they’d do anything to find the mascot waddling during that party, and soon, they would find themselves a Xat group. After joining a Xat group, cooperation was the first thing by specially teaming up with other people to find the mascots and eventually, you would feel it like your home. Since CP overused the idea of mascot-meetup times, Xat groups have been dying since they’re totally useless nowadays, and instead of chatting with those people they’ve met, they would simply move to another CPPS and chat. Pardon me, I know that Penguin Lodge is also another factor of this.

    The previous paragraph may sound troublesome, so I will sound as the clearest as I can. People would chat in Xat groups instead of CPPSes by saying anything we can (numbers, inapp words, etc.) and not only harming CP but in fact, benefiting ourselves via cooperation in finding the mascots and even socializing.

    Once again Mr. Trainman, you gained more respect by me. Well done in making another intriguing discussion.

  14. I feel as though CP has become lazy with their work. They say they are busy with working on the CP app, but they can’t be that busy.

  15. IMO, Flippr isn’t a CPPS, it’s a custom version of cp. A CPPS like no other if you will. It has custom parties, items and furniture. Even puffles! (I sound like I’m advertising it)

  16. Well, as item adders were so tempting back in 2011, I gave it a try to add an item. However, I was banned for it. Since then, I have vowed to myself for not doing something like this again. If you know about the exclusive unlockable items which can be permed through cheating, I’ve a lot of those- but, I saved money for quite a lot of time for buying the treasure book codes. I feel like, my most prestigious saved money’s value is flying up in the air! Believe me, I I could, I would make all the item adders down by today.

    Do you know, a few months ago, I had complained about a hacker disturbing me though mails, to try his adders. Still, Club Penguin feels that, it is not a big deal!

    Well, from where did you get this news that, an employee was busted for illegal downloads? I just want to know.

    Anyways,
    Good Day!

    ~Lionpolice

  17. Hi there.

    I’m Sandor, the owner of Flippr, here to make a statement on behalf of the CPPS Community.

    We aren’t all illegal. We’re down at the moment, but when Flippr is up, our site ALWAYS displays a disclaimer in the footer, which informs users that some content is property of the Disney Company, but we use it under the Fair Use for Education Act.

    So don’t throw us all in the same basket.

    Also to be noted: the CPPS community LARGELY still plays Club Penguin. Owners, players, most people don’t just abandon CP. We as a community actually did a bit of research, and we’d need about 25 million users to actually dent their revenue.

    So while I do enjoy your blog, there are definitely not all the facts in here.

    Respond here if you have any further questions.

    • I do not know tons about fair use however I do have one or two things to say regarding fair use for education: how come lots of people put that disclaimer in their YouTube videos of copyrighted works and it’s still taken down? That scenario is really no different than running a CPPS.

      http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

      I quote:

      “The distinction between what is fair use and what is infringement in a particular case will not always be clear or easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.”

      Basically claiming it is for fair use is just a silly thing to say in hopes it saves your butt. How is it fair use/educational to others that you run a CPPS? That’s like me downloading 1,000 movies for free and saying it’s “fair use for educational reasons as I’m trying to educate myself on what websites download movies the fastest.” It’s still infringement even if “education”.

      I know lots do not abandon CP, however without a doubt a fair amount do or at least got on private servers more.

      Even if 25 million is what puts a dent in their revenue, any lost revenue is still lost revenue, whether it be $1 in lost revenue or $100,000 in lost revenue.

    • And as another thought, I would consider blogging/running a CP related website and using Club Penguin related images to be fair use. Running a whole modified copy of the game itself isn’t in my book.

    • And also, why a .pw domain and not something a little more common like flippr.org/.com/.net/.info/etc? It does seem like illicit websites go with a small country’s TLD so there is less of a chance of it getting seized. (A good example of this would be The Pirate Bay)

      • Fair Use FOR EDUCATION. Flippr is an experiment to become familiar with the processes and systems used to run an online game. I can’t speak for anyone else. So it goes very far beyong just ‘using’ it. We’re teaching ourselves through Club Penguin’s systems.

        I’m telling you, until we hit that 25mil mark, we wouldn’t be noticeable on their charts. Dollars and cents, nothing more. It’s a bit more of an equation do you think, and the CPPSes are on the losing half.

        We had a .pw, now we have a .in . It’s for two reasons: 1) Flippr.com was taken, and we don’t qualify for a .org, and 2) It’s cheaper.

        • I don’t see how Trainman is being rude. A clear example of being rude would be by arguing with nonsense replies to Sandor such as “NO SHUT UP SANDOR. I AM RIGHT AND YOU’RE WRONG. YOU’RE SUCH AN IDIOT AND YOU WILL ALWAYS BE.”

          What you’ve read right here is a clear example of a mature argument. Honestly, I’ve seen ruder arguments with immature people I had to interfere in the arguments to stop them.

    • You’re completely wrong. Your crappy CPPS that has overly edited SWF files is illegal. Adding a little disclaimer doesn’t mean anything. Looking at your topic on that forum you go on, I can see the community did not do any research like you claimed, but JUST you got some random person that you apparently know IRL to do some research for you. Any amount of CPPS uses dents their revenue, no matter how small or big, it’s still a loss.

      You’re probably the worst one out of all the CPPS kids. You sit there and act like your CPPS is legal. Your CPPS is illegal, it still uses Club Penguin’s client files. Adding a few lines of your own is not completely changing it.

      For a CPPS owner, you sure are special!

  18. Oh, hey Trainman! First of all, this is a very cheesy topic to choose, amazing work on writing this huge post. Anyways, the only reason Club Penguin’s popularity is decreasing day by day, is because they clearly aren’t doing anything that would be likeable by many. For example, if you look at the parties that took place previously, 7/10 items would be available for everyone, and just 3 items would be exclusive to members. Nowadays, 3/10 items are available to everyone, while 7 are exclusive to members. What’s up with that? They need to understand that not everybody can afford membership around the globe. An example – when was the last time Club Penguin updated the items available for everyone in the Penguin Style catalog?

    Secondly, Club Penguin really needs to put in way more effort into what they are going to present to us. The series of Music Jam parties were my favorite, but after what happened this year.. Well, sudden change in opinions.

    I totally agree as far as you talk about the Club Penguin Private Server issue. Being the kind of company Disney is, they shouldn’t have much problem in getting those private servers shut down. Yes, that will indeed bring in a lot of more traffic to the actual game. If you look at the CPPSes these days, I find them putting in more effort into their work. Club Penguin consists of professional and trained staff members, while the people working on Club Penguin Private Servers are just kids, or most probably teenagers.

    As far the hacking goes, I have been against it since day one, but we, bloggers are also to be blamed. Most people breaking in to Club Penguin’s files are bloggers. Why? Because we want to post exclusives on our blogs before anyone else does. This has created a competition sort of environment all around, which I believe shouldn’t exist. Club Penguin blogs are no more recognized because of their content, they are recognized and classified on the basis of money they make from ads and the amount of views they get everyday. Although, I do agree that it shouldn’t be too difficult for Club Penguin to patch all the exploits, after all the people discovering them have lesser knowledge, compared tothe professionals working for Club Penguin. All this has to stop.

    Another thing I’d suggest from my end is they try and bring in their merchandise and magazines across the globe. That would help spread the word about the game, and sure would bring in more profit. Club Penguin needs to start understanding what their users really want, else, I’m afraid it might end up being the next toontown online.

    Thanks, with that being said, amazing post there, Devin.

    • One point I disagree is about the non-member justice. I think CP is going overboard in becoming more than a giving game. I find it completely generous how CP gives away many stuff for non-members these days. Back then in 2009-2012, CP would give away hat items, pins, and backgrounds. Nowadays, CP even gives away igloos for everyone!

      Another point I am skeptical is about hacking. Some hackers are quite clever most can get away easily with it. However, it’s Disney. I guess we can easily assume most people working at CP should have experience in programming and security. The thing is how neglected CP are at taking care of their stuff. Instead of doing serious business, they would focus more on unneeded priorities which even harm more the game (The Spoiler Alert).

      I understand they’re working on the CP App, but currently, they can’t focus all their time on the CP App. Amusingly, there have been an increase in hacking thanks to some hackers discovering vulnerabilities in the CP App. They should’ve revised the CP App instead of publishing it to the public.

      Anyways, I highly hope CP does not ignore this and starting reacting more often/

  19. I cannot wait to see ToonTown, Pirates, and Pixie Hollow fans celebrate next year when game is closed. Then be mad because the game only lasted one to two more years.

  20. What a lot of these commenters fail to grasp is that we-that is, the people who spend as much time on other websites talking about CP as we do actually playing CP-are not the majority of Club Penguin’s players. The reality is that most of them are, to be frank, 7 years old, and it’s going to be a very long time before THAT audience abandons Club Penguin. Not only that, but look at the time of year right now. Everyone is very busy with school and will not be visiting CP as much. When I look in my stamp book, I always notice a distinct lack of September pins in some past years. Although CP’s userbase IS shrinking, it’s still going strong. During the summer and on weekends, anywhere from 10-30 penguins are hanging out on Sleet, and CP parties are sill really active. The other day I accidentally logged off while waiting for a mascot on a Spanish server, and it was half an hour before they were going to show up. I logged back on, and the Snow Forts were full, the Town was full, and the Plaza was very close to filling up. If that doesn’t prove the overwhelming strength of CP’s userbase, I don’t know what does. CPPSes aren’t killing CP as much, either. Many users (me included) get an “unnatural” feel on CPPSes, and it only feels normal on CP. That alone keeps some people from abandoning the game for good. Also, I really feel like nostalgia plays too much of a factor in everyone’s decision-making. Just look to the past – in 2006, there were multiple member-only parties on Club Penguin. If that happened now, just imagine the uproar! To be honest, it’s the players causing CP’s downfall. All some people do now is sit down in Sleet and go browse another website. Want the “old CP” feel to come flooding back? Go sled race with your friends instead of getting d/c’ed for inactivity. I will admit, though, Disney needs to step up their hack-busting game. I added a beta hat to some random penguin I created and ran around crowded servers asking people to report me. I waited a few hours, logged back on, and wasn’t banned. If you go on Sleet, it’s alarming how many blatant fakes walk around in the open.

    TL;DR: Many of these commenters are stupid – CP won’t close down any time soon. Good article, and I think it’s great what Lolnok is doing.

  21. Pingback: Is Club Penguin Slowly Meeting Their End? | Greengirl816 in Club Penguin

  22. “Surely in game cheating is a bigger problem and threat to overall company image than a post a few hundred people are going to read?”

    PREACH IT

    SPILL THE PIPING HOT TEA ALL OVA THEM

    SCALP THEM EFFORTLESSLY

    SNATCH ALL THE WEAVES

    SLAAAAAAAAAAAAY

  23. Amazing post! You’re a great blogger, Trainman. ;)

    I just wanted to say something. I have a six-year-old sister who plays Club Penguin (I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned her before) and she doesn’t seem to love Club Penguin a whole lot. She plays Poptropica more often than CP. We actually introduced her to Club Penguin when she was 2, and she’d use our (me and my sisters) penguins.

    The only times she actually has fun on Club Penguin is when I play with her. Or when she makes friends with a random penguin. She seems to have a lot of fun when my 12-year-old sister and I play with her and sometimes when she’s a pookie, but that’s it. My older sister quit in 2011, but that was because she lost interest. She was around my age at that time. (My sister recycled her penguin and now it belongs to the youngest.)

    I still tell my older sister about Club Penguin, and she agrees that it doesn’t sound very fun anymore. She actually told us a few times that we should seriously consider quitting CP if we really have so many problems with it.

    tbh, the only reason I still play CP is because I need clothes and free items for my penguin. Oh and to play with my sisters. That’s it actually. I know reason #1 is incredibly lame, but hey, I’m that kind of person. I made life rules for my penguin and my sisters dubbed the rules as “The Weird Starfire Rules.”

    Once again, your post is amazing and I look forward to future posts from you. You’re one of my favorite bloggers, along with Saraapril.

  24. This worries me so much.. Thanks for posting this Trainman! It seems like one of the most important things you’ve posted so thank you for explaining the situation to all of us.. I have a feeling that hackers/cheaters might someday be the end of Club Penguin, so I hope the CP staff get on this sooner rather than later, and recognize what a huge problem it is!

  25. “The first ever public CPPS, iCPV1, was launched in July 2010 and became an instant success.” well I have joined iCP and that was very fun in the begining, although it became boring after some weeks playing it: everyone having everything is like everyone having nothing. I also don’t understand the reason why they don’t care that much about these servers.

  26. Hey Trainman, we care a lot about private servers and hacking! As you know, I have been very vocal on the topic and we regularly try to create awareness that private servers are NOT Club Penguin and not safe. We regularly go after CPPS sites to take them down. Hacking, as you know, is against the Club Penguin rules and players who get caught doing it are banned. And we put a lot of work into chasing down exploits and closing them quickly whenever we find them. The safety and security of the CP audience is our TOP priority!

    I know that some of the kids experimenting with hacks are doing so out of curiosity and an interest in technology. But what I would ask them to consider is that what they are doing could get them in a lot of trouble. And more than that its messing with the CP community that we all love and ruining the experience for others. CP is a safe place where kids can play together online and there aren’t too many places that can say that. Let’s keep what’s special about the CP community special by working together to keep it safe and secure.

    Waddle On, Spike!

    • I don’t know if this comment will be published or not, but this is my opinion on that statement.

      CP does very little to actually stop 3rd party programs or stopping copywrite flaws such as from Foxotic and seems to be spending more time on the CP app than giving us good parties or what we want.

      So please take time to shut down 3rd party stuff and listen to what we want than developing some app that we can’t all get. CP affects us all, an app affects a majority. We all have one thing in common. We want a CP where we get what we want and a CP where we can move without fear of a massive glitch or a drama kicking off.

      • JSYK I publish all comments unless they are mean/inappropriate/harmful in any way. I like to promote expressing opinions on topics, good or bad. :D

    • Spike, if what you say is true, then PLEASE do something about it. 2014 has been a huge hacker year, and here’s why:

      A few days before January 2014: A hacker group brings down several online games, including CP.
      April 2014: A hacker sends rude postcards and gets penguins banned.
      July 2014: An exploit that existed for OVER A YEAR was leaked, and people used it to add any item to their account. You guys didn’t even do something about it until about a week after its leak… and a YEAR after the exploit was discovered.
      August 2014: Same thing happens, except it takes longer to patch (I don’t even know if it’s patched or not).

      Just PLEASE patch these things, and shut down the Private Servers, they’re been around for YEARS, and the CP Team’s done nothing about it.
      (Below this sentence was going to be a huge rant about everything I’ve been feeling about CP lately, but I’ll save that for later)

    • Why don’t you make a post on the official blog? Many people don’t read instructions nowadays, and l think it’s necesssary to properly SHOW the rules, not just keep them hidden on another page.

    • If you still are trying to take down CPPS does that mean that CP/Disney hacked Flippr? Because I heard that there was a hack saying “Flippr has been shut down by Disney” or something like that.

    • “I know that some of the kids experimenting with hacks are doing so out of curiosity and an interest in technology”

      no, actually they do this to earn a lot of coins, earn rare items and to harm cp servers. kids are actually pretty dumb.

    • Spike, and take my situation. I even admitted that I hacked just one item. Honest and all, you’d expect the team to take a bit of pity. Yes I’ve been banned 4 times before but over five years. My parents tried to get me unbanned by calling and it’s just a waste of time.

  27. One time I saw a hacker, which had a Youtube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/user/Wivv2/featured ) where he promotes cheating, etc..He even wanted to cheat my penguin to unlock items in exchange for UIO codes! (Of course, I denied his proposal, I hate cheating.) I sent a message to the Club Penguin Support Team about him, and guess what they said? That he can do it, as long as he’s having fun. Wow, they really care about cheaters.

  28. I believe that CPPSes are legal to play but illegal to make. Because the maker use Disney’s files and things to make the CPPS without Disney’s permission, it’s illegal. But because it’s *just* an online game that anyone can access, it is legal to play. I don’t play on them myself but some of my friends do. I’m still a member on CP, but I won that. I probably wouldn’t be because, to be honest, it’s a lot of money for a game and also because there are 6 people in my house. Also because I’m getting older. In the summer holidays next year I may purchase another 1 month membership, but I’m really busy right now. I’ll still log on as a non member every few days, but I’m losing interest. Nothing is rare anymore, lot’s of people seem to be hacking. So many people are so DUMB to wear items that haven’t and won’t be released. Someone wore the Green Trophy that we would have got if the Space Squids won the Penguin Cup. Dumb move. I reported him, and I hope he got banned. Serves him right.

  29. I don’t see how this is a copyright problem, since they aren’t making any money off of the Private Server. The Disney game Toontown Online is still copyrighted by Disney, but the private server ToonTown Rewritten still exists, and the owners of said server don’t make profits off the game. Disney KNOWS about this private server, and haven’t done anything to get the server taken down.

    • Just because you do not make profit off copyright infringement does not mean copyright doesn’t apply. Like I said as an example in my post, if you upload or download a movie for free from the internet, even if there is no monetary exchange, it is still copyright infringement and against the law. Making money off someone else’s goods just adds to it.

  30. I really think that The club penguin team should have IP banners and a more secure website which cannot be easily hacked, this past year has been catastrophic between the abominable hack and the item adders. I do not know if it is possible to block third party programs but I hope they will try soon

    • IP Banners are useless. Some may be hiding in multiple VPN’s, simply using proxy, TOR, SSH Tunneling to evade the bans. It ain’t gonna work. However, it might do a trick since some hackers do not know much about computers, and perhaps it might do something. After all, something is better than nothing.

      Also, what if you invited a friend to play CP on your computer or whatsoever? Your friend’s account and/or other housemates/relatives might have their penguin banned as well. Anyways, if those people do get banned, they can simply contact CP to unban their penguin.

  31. Because Lolnok keeps answering on the post so here is what I have to say about hackers. I think they need to stop. At first I did not care about hackers but then I met (saw) a player with clones. He was not that nice and after that I did not like hackers that much. And, this year Lolnok did the big server hack. I got the mean postcard and logged off before I got ban. After a day of the server being closed I logged back on (after one day) And, Lolnok2 hack CP again! I got the postcard saying Santa is ___ ___. I still think Lolnok2 is Lolnok. Then at the Penguin Cup I saw Lolnok CP1 and he had on a few items all rare even the beta hat! And, he did not have one stamp! (not even the your penguin is one year old stamp!) Now with Lolnok’s new like adder (thing you posted) CP might think that I (anyone) hacked to get likes. He used the like adder on Polo Field! If hackers keep getting better at making hackers (like item adders) they might find out how to frame us!

  32. Trainman umm this might sound odd but I used that google stat thing. And, when the rumors of the Frozen Takeover got big is when CP’s stats went down and the closer it got to the party the bigger CPPSes stats got. I am starting to think that CPPS got bigger because of the Frozen Takeover.

  33. Club penguin doesn’t feel like club penguin anymore. The old days were special. Now it feels like something completely different. I could write a big article like you, but I think the point has come across ready.

  34. Pingback: Discussion: Club Penguin Private Servers | Club Penguin Mountains

  35. “Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.”

    Does anyone even know how copyright works? If the CPPS is under these conditions, it is, as a matter of fact, legal. Most CPPSes are non-profit, and legal. If you don’t want anyone to “spoil” or “cheat” in CP, then why just ignore it?

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