Club Penguin clone with rampant "penguin e-sex" shut down
Disney discontinued the penguin-themed virtual world for kids in 2017, but copies have sprung up since.

Once upon a time Disney's Club Penguin was a popular digital hangout for kids. Its content filters and s limited what children were exposed to in ways that were so strict speedrunners would race to set records on how quickly they could get banned.
After Club Penguin's closure clones inevitably sprung up, the largest of which was Club Penguin Online. As the BBC reports, Club Penguin Online was not as strict. They found a less family-friendly cartoon Arctic where players engaged in "penguin e-sex" and some servers disabled content filters: "One player invited the BBC to their igloo, which was decorated to spell out the n-word".
During the COVID-19 pandemic, population numbers for online games have boomed, and Club Penguin Online was no exception. That brought it to the attention of Disney's lawyers, and a was sent last week. It's now offline and, the BBC notes, "One man involved in the site has been arrested on suspicion of possessing child abuse images."
When the original Club Penguin closed down we spoke to its community manager, Bobbi Rieger, and asked her how she felt about the inevitable clones. "It scares me a little bit because a lot of those third-parties aren't as safe as Club Penguin was," she said.
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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he re having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.