Disney shuts down Club Penguin Online
Club Penguin Online, despite being one of two most popular Club Penguin private servers along with Club Penguin Rewritten, was widely despised by the private server community for the owner being a pedophile and ban anyone who were against the owner and other illegal actions. However perhaps the most infamous aspect thing about Club Penguin Online that almost no one outside of the private server community know about Riley's actions for years.
Background
Club Penguin Online creator and owner Riley has been a subject of many allegations such as his pedophilic acts toward minors, hacking, threatening anyone who are against him or even swatting (which was revealed in Joey Hues' first video), with many of the allegations against Riley dated back in the Virtual Penguin days, around 2014 to 2017. Likewise, Joey Hues was a moderator who worked for Club Penguin Online, according to him, he met Riley around in 2015. During his time as a moderator, he actively defended Riley from "rumors" of being a predator but once he got banned from the game, he immediately turned against Riley, even stating that the reason he defended Riley because he was scared of him.
Before getting exposed by Riley in 2020, Riley was accussed by Tamago2474, who is a YouTuber with 401K subscribers for hacking his Snapchat account in 2018, in which the video has over 700K views as of this writing. Riley himself responded to the Snapchat controversy, stating that he did not hack Tamago's Snapchat account but someone else. However...
April 2020 - The Allegations Came To Light
While allegations against Club Penguin Online was mainly limited to the private server community and Reddit posts for years which went mostly ignored or didn't have validate evidences, the allegations became widespread when Joey Hues broke radio silence by uploading a series of videos exposing Riley, in which the first video gained over 300k views before getting unlisted, those videos also confirmed the allegations against Riley being true. Joey Hues' videos caused many players (including those who were loyal to the game) to quit Club Penguin Online, even several Club Penguin YouTubers decided to cut ties with Club Penguin Online for smaller private servers. Joey Hues also created a petition to request Disney to shut down Club Penguin Online, which gained 13,792 supporters, with some went as far as contacting FBI (with is justifiable since many of Riley's actions are akin to crimes and law violations). Many users also rightfully urged people not to play Club Penguin Online not just to support Riley with ad revenues, but also the fact that the game can collect anyone's info and IP address upon registering to the site.
Riley, in response to the allegations published a blog post saying that the evidences was "fake." He also created a "truth" Discord server to "prove his innocence." However, many people quickly realized that the statement was filled with grammatical errors and confusing statements. However, many people have pointed out that the "Truth" server did not address any allegations against Riley being faked but rather filled with "evidence" as a smear campaign against Joey Hues. It should be noted that while Joey Hues did bad things in the past, he did feel bad for his actions and tried to change himself. As this tweet points out, Riley basically attempted to use cancel culture on Joey Hues but failed miserably (except for his own playerbase).
Joey Hues responded by accusing the moderation team of fabricating many screenshots, and by mentioning that nowhere in the statement did anybody clarify or deny any allegations against Riley. It also worth noting that Riley false flagged Joey Hues' second video.
Early May 2020 - Big YouTubers Join Forces
In May 1st, 2020, the first credible YouTuber known as Kavos made a video spreading awareness about Club Penguin Online, allowing more people outside of the private servers to become aware the allegations. SomeOrdinaryGamers, who investigated the game several weeks before, uploaded a 43 minutes video about Club Penguin Online, which became his 3rd most viewed video. SomeOrdinaryGamers' video also revealed the fact that the game violated both GDPR and COPPA, with the former being refusal of account termination and the latter being without parents' consent upon registering an account. A leaked document also revealed that Disney had been well aware of Club Penguin Online's existence since 2018, as they sued the site because of the domain's name, keep in mind that Disney also sued Club Penguin Rewritten for the same reason back in 2017. As a result, many have called out Disney's hypocrisy for not allowing a man to put Spider-Man on his son's grave but left alone a predator who used their Club Penguin IP to solicit nudes from minors.
Tamago2474, who had his Snapchat account hacked by them two years ago, even made a video covering the situation also covered the controversy. Continue from "However..." in Background section, Tamago also responded to Riley's own response to the Snapchat incident , stating that:
- While Riley himself didn't hack his account, he still encouraged, participated and then revelled in the hacking that was done for him.
- It's stated that Riley didn't know why the hacker did it, but when a moderator for his server asked him why he did it, they responded by saying it was because he spoke about Anthony/Riley in a video, despite that Tamago didn't even criticize him but rather mentioned him, showing that Riley couldn't take a slightest form of criticism.
- Riley was only his Discord server for trolling but he didn't consider sending crude images and messages to his friends from Snapchat account and claiming that Riley will "expose" him as trolling, which Tamago considered this as harassment.
- The day after he posted the video, he held his typical daily live stream and afterwards held a Q&A session with his Discord chat. Riley (who had changed his nickname to Joker) and his hacker friend then joined and started being a nuisance in the chat.
- Tamago stated that he may have laughed but it certainly wasn't with them, showing that Tamago was disgusted by Riley's actions.
In short, Tamago2474 basically furthering exposed Riley as a massive liar and manipulator.
Mid-May 2020 - Disney's Involvement
The massive attention surrounding about the game eventually caved in Disney to take actions against them. On the same day, Riley had been arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children. However, Disney had not only DMCAed Club Penguin Online, but also other private servers, including Club Penguin Rewritten. Disney also released a statement to BBC:
"Child safety is a top priority for the Walt Disney Company and we are appalled by the allegations of criminal activity and abhorrent behavior on this unauthorized website that is illegally using the Club Penguin brand and characters for its own purposes. [...] We continue to enforce our rights against this, and other, unauthorized uses of the Club Penguin game."
Club Penguin Online was eventually forced to shut down, but not before releasing a "statement."SomeOrdinaryGamers himself slammed down the statement, calling them "acting younger than the people your owner alleged to diddle." The statement also had many hypocrisy, such as Riley himself was also infamous for targeting smaller private servers in the past and Riley himself was to blame for the private servers' shutdown, not the YouTubers since he was the responsible for ruining many users' lives.
Club Penguin Rewritten, despite getting DMCA from Disney stated that they had no current plans to close the game. Nevertheless, Club Penguin Online's shutdown was seen as a victory to many people, as many people show support over Disney’s decision of shutting down the game, some believed that shutting down may be too devastating for players, but it was completely justifiable as Club Penguin Online was operated by a child predator, who had solicited many nudes from minors. Since the game's shut down, many former Online players have been migrated to Rewritten and more.
Legacy
Club Penguin Online left a legacy behind, but it definitely won't be a positive one, as the game is now infamously remembered as a pedophilia ring as well as being responsible for the majority of private servers' shutdown.
Additional Notes
It should be noted that Riley himself wasn't the only reason behind Club Penguin Online's closure. Another reason contributed to Club Penguin Online's closure was the mature servers which allowed swear words, homophobic slurs, anti-Semitism, and racist messages to be posted publicly without being moderated (and adding insult to injury) in a children's game. Joe Tidy, a reporter for BBC had the game for 3 weeks and had documented some nasty stuff.
Club Penguin Rewritten also responded to the mature servers scandal, stating that they won't add them because they saw no reason to create one.