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.

“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.

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.

“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