These features included offering an "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode, whereby users selected their comments from a menu; filtering that prevented swearing and the revelation of personal information;[3] and moderators who patrolled the game.
[30] Club Penguin started with 15,000 users, and by March 2006 that number had reached 1.4 million—a figure which almost doubled by September, when it hit 2.6 million.
[32] The following year, Club Penguin spokesperson Karen Mason explained: "We offer children the training wheels for the kinds of activities they might pursue as they get older.
[34][30] In making the sale, Merrifield has stated that their main focus during negotiations was philosophical,[25] and that the intent was to provide themselves with the needed infrastructure in order to continue to grow.
[40] Since the Disney purchase, Club Penguin continued to grow, becoming part of a larger franchise including video games, books, a television special, an anniversary song, and an app MMO.
[53] In April 2015, it was revealed that Disney Interactive had laid off 28 members of Club Penguin's Kelowna headquarters due to the game's declining popularity.
[68] Multiplayer transmissions stopped and twenty seconds later on March 30, 2017 @ 00:01:39 PDT (07:01:39 UTC), Club Penguin's servers were officially shut down.
[3] The vast majority of users (90% according to The Washington Post) chose not to pay, instead taking advantage of the free play on offer.
[73] An alternative revenue stream came through the development of an online merchandise shop, which opened on the Club Penguin website in August 2006,[74] selling stuffed Puffles and T-shirts.
[76] As with one of its major rivals, Webkinz, Club Penguin traditionally relied almost entirely on word-of-mouth advertising to increase its membership base.
As Lane Merrifield stated, "the decision to build Club Penguin grew out of a desire to create a fun, virtual world that I and the site's other two founders would feel safe letting our own children visit.
The key approaches included preventing the use of inappropriate usernames;[82] providing an "Ultimate Safe Chat" mode, which limited players to selecting phrases from a list;[80] using an automatic filter during "Standard Safe Chat" (which allowed users to generate their own messages)[83] and blocked profanity even when users employed "creative" methods to insert it into sentences;[82] filtering seemingly innocuous terms, such as "mom"; and blocking both telephone numbers and email addresses.
[77] It also included promoting users to "EPF (Elite Penguin Force) Agent" status, and encouraging them to report inappropriate behavior.
Players found by moderators to have broken Club Penguin rules were punished by a ban lasting "from 24 hours to forever depending on the offense.
"[85] Research shows that the design of virtual worlds, like Club Penguin, provide children with opportunities to develop literacy and communication skills while having a powerful impact on their social relationships and identity formation.
[87] Other literacy and communication practices included the use of the in game postal service and of emoticons, which served to build social cohesion and structure.
Lane Merrifield said: "Our players are always looking for ways to make a difference and help others, and over the past five years they've embraced the opportunity to give through Coins For Change, it was exciting to see kids from 191 countries participate together.
[98] Similarly, Brian Ward, a Detective Inspector at the Child Abuse Investigation Command in the United Kingdom, stated that it was good for children to experience a restricted system such as Club Penguin before moving into social networking sites, which provide less protection.
[99] In terms of simple popularity, the rapid growth of Club Penguin suggested considerable success, although there were signs that this was leveling out.
[86] Additionally, Club Penguin merchandise was sold through the website and in Disney retail stores that would unlock items and coins in the game.
In this way, critics believe that Disney positioned children as economic subjects that became acculturated to shopping as a key cultural practice.
[102] In addition, the "competitive culture" that this could create led to concerns about cheating, as children looked for "shortcuts" to improve their standing.
[101] In spite of the attempts to create a safe space for children in Club Penguin, concerns about safety and behavior still arose within the media.
[71] Even within the game, Club Penguin had a unique form of anti-social behavior and cyberbullying that presented as angry emoticons, relentless throwing of snowballs at other players and some messages were able to get through the filtered chat.
[86] Others worried that the display of class and promotion of consumerism within Club Penguin fosters the notion that the accumulation of wealth and possessions are the direct result of one's success and status.
[103] Additionally, some critics have noted the presence of strong sexual connotations due to the modeling of romantic relationships and behaviors.
[103] One criticism came from Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic Monthly: in relation to the safety procedures, she noted that Club Penguin was "certainly the safest way for unsupervised children to talk to potentially malevolent strangers—but why would you want them to do that in the first place?
"[4] While views of the strength of this criticism might vary, the concern was mirrored by Lynsey Kiely in the Sunday Independent, who quoted Karen Mason, Communications Director for Club Penguin, as saying "we cannot guarantee that every person who visits the site is a child.
[106] Citing community support and funding however, the remake returned a month later on April 27, 2018, along with all existing user accounts,[107] nearly twice as many as Club Penguin had 12 years earlier in December 2006.
[110] On April 16, 2020, American musician Soccer Mommy collaborated with Club Penguin Rewritten to host a virtual concert for her new album Color Theory.