Club Penguin Journey: Controversies, Closure, and Continuation

On September 23, Club Penguin Journey, with hundreds of thousands of accounts, shut down amidst controversy. Nonetheless, they announced a revival is set to take place. Today, let us delve into the reasons for these fateful events.

Designed by Edu14463

Club Penguin Journey is a Club Penguin Private Sserver founded by Amman on February 5, 2023. In just a few months, the server saw a rapid increase in player count, gaining popularity due to its innovative approach, unlike most other CPPS. There were often times when CPJ had over a thousand users online daily.

CPJourney daily members announcement

Just a year later, CPJ officially surpassed 100,000 account creations. To celebrate this milestone, the staff gave away users a special code to redeem 100,000 coins as a token of gratitude from the staff. The CPPS continued to gain immense popularity, consistently attracting new members.

CPJourney 100,000 members celebration

The private server gained notoriety within the community because of its innovative approach to in-game parties, customized items and mascots, and user experience. Without a doubt, the game’s prosperity pointed towards a possible bright future for the army community itself, as many armies saw considerable growth via rogue events in the CPPS.

CPJ Custom Halloween Party, October 2023

THE FIRST INCIDENT

Back in July of this year, security concerns regarding the game started to brew, as a third party was reportedly invading accounts and making in-game changes to them (modifying igloos, changing outfits, modifying outfit slots, playing minigames, and adopting puffles alongside leaving puffles to run to the wild). Even though the community began to spread a rumor about potential security breaches in CP Journey, the CPPS’ administration quickly addressed the situation and immediately shut the game down to prevent any other issues.

Amman addresses the community

On July 26, a day after this formal announcement, CPJ Head Moderator Pres released a public note fully detailing the occurrence and the actions the team took to ensure this would not happen again. On the note, the team explained that said third party abused a bug in their queue system to trick the server into allowing them to perform actions on user accounts. The CPPS staff assured that no user data was compromised, as this party was unable to access them.

After discovering the root cause, the developers put a fix in place. They temporarily removed the queue system, promising to create an all-new queue system, also expressing their desire to completely overhaul the system. In an attempt to compensate for the occurrence and the game downtime, the staff gave away 100,000 coins to every account. 

An excerpt of the official note

Allegations

From the outside, CP Journey appeared to be a huge success. However, not everything that looks good on the surface reflects the reality beneath. As CPJ gained more attention, it also faced internal conflicts within the staff team. 

In the early hours of September 22nd, a side server known as CPJ Cheats was hijacked by a hacker group that allegedly claimed to be the Pigeon Patrol. This group had previously been responsible for the shutdown of Club Penguin Rewritten in 2022. The server was transformed into a platform for exposing various claims, primarily targeting Amman. The accusations ranged from serious allegations, such as pedophilia, and harassment. The group later resorted to doxxing the CPPS staff members and leaking the entire staff logs, with the apparent goal of forcing the game to shut down.

An announcement made in CPJ Cheats

The evidence was overwhelming. If true, it would indeed cause even more issues than they were already causing. However, a few hours later, CPJ’s staff team responded: Amman addressed the main accusations of the exposé and formally stepped down from the game’s administration. After releasing the following statement, Amman used his personal Twitter/X account to defend himself against the accusations.

Amman’s statement

Around the same time this announcement was published on CP Journey’s Discord server, all the staff channel logs were made public. Undoubtedly, the external circumstances were staggering and the attempts to control the situation were not fruitful. Thus, in the following hours, Amman would release yet another announcement. This time, he informed the community that the CPPS would shut down for the safety of the users and the staff.

Amman announces CPJ shutdown

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Yesterday, in a surprising move, a notice was published on CP Journey’s server. The game’s staff announced the game is set to reopen on October 13 with ‘The Fair’ party. Furthermore, a formal statement was also published, in which the game willingly took accountability for some of the accusations directed at the staff. 

In summary, the document addresses the recent attack on their community and staff by ‘malicious actors’. The team acknowledges internal issues, including inappropriate staff behavior that motivated the attack and commits to restructuring their operations for better accountability and professionalism. Furthermore, they affirm no data was compromised, and the game’s integrity remained intact. Even though the game’s data was lost by the time it closed, the developers restored a backup from two weeks prior to the occurrence.

Moreover, the administration took some measures to ensure the safety of the community and the well-being of the staff. CP Journey is restructuring the Trust and Safety team and implementing comprehensive staff training in moderation and cybersecurity practices; future staff members will undergo background checks and safety training; new policies include anonymized Infraction Transparency Reports and enhanced mental health support for staff. The complete statement can be accessed here.

CP Journey’s Public Statement


Bearing the latest occurrences in mind, we, at Club Penguin Armies, congratulate the CPPS for taking accountability and providing measures to meet the high standards the original game always upheld, being transparent with its users. Nevertheless, we must ponder a question. We have seen many successful private servers shut down under even more complicated circumstances. Do we believe this will be the last one surrounding CP Journey? Will the game be free from malicious attacks? What do YOU think?

For the sake of our readers and armies in our organization, we will continue to monitor similar situations in the future and provide transparent reports. Expect an online safety guide to be released in the next weeks.

 

Mare
Chief Executive Producer

Edu14463
Editor-in-Chief

More Information

Filed under: Latest News, Spotlight | Tagged: , , , ,