Ludwig Talks What Happened With Club Penguin Rewritten Being Shut Down
Players were devastated to find that Club Penguin Rewritten, a fan remake of classic browser game had been taken down by Disney.
14th Apr 2022 16:40
Images via Mogul Mail | YouTube | Disney
YouTuber Ludwig "Ludwig" Ahgren has shared his take following the surprising news that Club Penguin Rewritten has been officially shut down by Disney.
Club Penguin was, for those that grew up in the late 2000s, the game of our childhoods. Waddling around our igloos with our Puffle in tow, we were able to live our best life as a funky-coloured penguin. Not to mention, we got to meet the millions of other players who also enjoyed this sweet, iceberg-fuelled lifestyle. However, things soon turned dark for the MMO which became marred with controversy, eventually leading devs Disney to shut Club Penguin down.
Subsequently, a number of fans took matters into their own hands and built their own unofficial versions of the game. However, one group of creators have now not only had their website taken down but have also got themselves in trouble with the authorities.
Ludwig Shares His Take On Club Penguin
Before all the drama with Club Penguin Rewritten kicked off, there was one streamer who was having a trip down memory lane with another old-school MMO game. In a YouTube video uploaded on April 14, Ludwig admitted that he had lost a bet meaning he had to play Toontown Rewritten, an unofficial, fan-made site based on the original Toontown game.
However, in Ludwig's words, "you guys might not have played Toontown growing up" given how it wasn't the most popular MMO game around, "but you probably at some point played Club Penguin." At its peak, Club Penguin had hit a mind-blowing amount of players, with over 200 million registered user accounts by 2013. However, following a number of controversies, including safety fears for the game's younger players, as well as a decline in popularity, the official game was shut down for good.
So, a group of fans created the unofficial MMO Club Penguin Rewritten which had been running for five years when it was suddenly shut down. The drama even led to three people being arrested by London Police. Speaking about the site being taken down, Ludwig said: "This is what happens when there's like a drug bust [...] it's not for a children's game. It's overkill."
Why Was Club Penguin Revisited Shut Down According To Ludwig?
In a statement on a Club Penguin fan blog, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit said that the reason why the Club Penguin Rewritten creators were arrested was due to "distributing materials infringing copyright." However, Ludwig suspected that there could be something more to it given how the website has only just been closed down after having been operational for five years.
The YouTuber claimed that Disney only just closed down Rewritten due to the fact that the website was using ads and "they were making money, so maybe Disney was mad" because "only they can make money." However, Ludwig offered a "seedier" theory, in that Rewritten was taken down because it got caught up in a bunch of unofficial and controversial Club Penguin's sites being taken down.
Ludwig may have called the Club Penguin fanbase officially "dead." Yet, there are a number of Rewritten players who still have access to the site and are fighting it out to stay on the game until the bitter end. Whereas, Ludwig is currently in the process of hosting his own Fortnite tournament with Epic Games and we're still waiting on his appearance in MrBeast's next video.
About The Author
Emma Hill
Emma Hill is a former Junior Journalist at GGRecon.
