“Membership Penguin Rewritten,” a preferred remake of Membership Penguin loved by hundreds of players, has been seized by the Metropolis of London Police, with three individuals in reference to the location’s shuttering reportedly arrested for allegedly distributing copyrighted materials. “Over 140,000 customers have been members of a Discord server for the sport till at present, when each message on the Discord disappeared,” studies TechCrunch. From the report: In 2007, Disney bought Membership Penguin — the youngsters’s RPG that served as my first introduction to on-line fandom — for a whopping $700 million. Even then, as a toddler with little context about tech trade acquisitions, the acquisition appeared foreboding (no less than my mates thought so on the Miniclip boards, the place I fraudulently claimed to be 13). However finally, these of us who have been devoted followers of digital sledding video games and dance events grew out of it, and after as soon as boasting 200 million customers, the sport was shut down on account of lack of curiosity in 2017. Disney tried to shuttle remaining gamers to a brand new cellular sport referred to as Membership Penguin Island, nevertheless it solely lasted for a yr. However ever for the reason that finish of Membership Penguin — when the iceberg lastly tipped in a unusually emotional second — there have all the time been remakes on the market for nostalgic adults to relive their days of accumulating puffles, dancing within the pizza store and speed-running bans.
Just one message on the Discord stays, posted early this morning by an admin: “CPRewritten is shutting down efficient instantly on account of a full request by Disney,” the admin stated. “Now we have voluntarily given management over the web site to the police for them to proceed their copyright investigation.” TechCrunch reached out to the Metropolis of London Police and Disney to confirm these claims however didn’t hear again earlier than publication. In 2020, Disney shut down “Membership Penguin On-line,” one other copy of the sport that acquired over 1,000,000 new gamers in the course of the pandemic.