All things come to an end eventually. Today is an important day for the community, as a big change is taking place that will affect its entire shape. 

While this may seem like a sudden decision, the ripples in the relationship between the Club Penguin Armies organisation and the Club Penguin Army Judges began forming long ago. As time went by, things only got worse and worse. Let us first get into the details and discuss how CPA will move forward. 

The Past

CPAJ has been declining for a while as a whole. The issues started to appear after summer last year, specifically around the October Horrors tournament, and have worsened over time. CPAJ has had issues in most, if not all, of its aspects, and this has affected the entire army community. 

Lack of Active Judges

CPAJ has been facing a lack of active judges for a long time. While this can be blamed on a variety of reasons, we are inclined to believe the Head Judges are mostly responsible for it. The lack of active judges has caused CPAJ to become less capable of fulfilling the reason it was made for (judging battles). Many battles nowadays are reviewed through videos, while this was something unheard of about a year ago. 

The issue is also present at tournament judging. While last year in March Madness there were up to 16 judges signing up for a battle, half a year later during OH many battles were close to being cancelled because of the lack of judges. Notably, the OH Major finals were judged solely by Head Judge Spotty and CPA Administrator JojoTeri, despite the expected five-judge panel for tournament finals.

Due to the intense lack of judges, we barely see vetoes taking place anymore. We have only seen about 5 valid battle vetoes this year. While the number of battles as a whole has been lower, there have still been some intense wars with drama where vetoes would normally be present. Armies have been forced to settle for any judges that accept without having much of a choice, as if they use their vetoes, the battles may not end up proceeding normally. 

Furthermore, there appears to be a growing lack of interest in judging within the community. CPAJ has struggled to maintain judging as an appealing and engaging role within the army community, and the lengthy process required to become a judge may have contributed to this decline. In recent months, CPAJ has also seen limited innovation or meaningful changes to its structure and practices, leading to a sense of stagnation. Ultimately, responsibility for addressing these issues falls largely on the Head Judges, who are responsible for the organization’s direction and development.

The Head Judges

The heads of an organization shape the way it operates. Especially in one like CPAJ, the role of the Head Judges is critical, as they are responsible for overseeing what happens within the organization. Over the past several months, we have seen a number of shortcomings within the Head Judge team. Some have been notably inactive, which has placed additional strain on their colleagues, affected the organization at multiple levels, and contributed to rapid burnout. New HJs entering training have also experienced burnout, sometimes before completing their training, further adding to these issues. We have also seen instances of HJs making public remarks or conducting themselves in ways that could be viewed as biased, which has further harmed the organization’s reputation within the community.

Several community members have been complaining about CPAJ in the last months, yet they were never listened to. During last year’s Mapping the Map Summit, many individuals complained about the structure of CPAJ at that time and its failures. Their voices were not heard, however, and the HJs did not accept the criticism. While they proclaimed a similar style of judging summit, this never happened, and the army community complaints only became more frequent as CPAJ continued to fail. 

At the same time, with some Head Judges having a conservative mindset and being anti-innovation, CPAJ became stagnant internally as well, with the community being less willing to take part in judging. The HJs inactivity boosted that even more, as seen from the section before. 

The VT Investigation

For example, during the Void Troops investigation last year, CPAJ insisted on participating despite investigations of this nature normally being handled solely by CPA. Head Judge Spotty’s involvement ultimately proved unhelpful, as her main contribution was arguing with their leadership rather than assisting CPA and her fellow HJs in determining what had occurred. Once the investigation had exhausted its leads and there was nothing further to uncover, CPA proceeded with releasing its conclusions. CPAJ wanted both organizations to publish their findings simultaneously and took issue with CPA releasing its conclusions first, despite the findings primarily, if not almost entirely, concerning CPA. CPAJ later published an unnecessarily lengthy statement regarding the investigation.

Talks with Club Penguin journey

Most recently, following a CPA Summit 2026 session, CPAJ insisted on being involved in a meeting with Club Penguin Journey, despite previously expressing that they do not support CPAJ judging battles on that CPPS. Head Judge Spotty went as far as implying that CPA Org was incapable of properly hosting or handling such a meeting and demanded that additional organizations be included, ultimately creating a chat involving CPA, CPA: Battleground, and CPA Wiki within the CPAJ server. This incident is particularly concerning because it reflects a recurring pattern of CPAJ, specifically regarding Head Judge Spotty’s demeanor, undermining and belittling CPA Org rather than treating it as an equal partner. This is not an isolated occurrence, but part of a broader pattern of conduct from Head Judge Spotty in which she has repeatedly overstepped the boundaries of CPAJ and diminished CPA Org’s authority and competence.

CPAJ’s Inability to Sustain Itself

As the Head Judges are mostly inactive, they have been unable to sustain CPAJ itself. CPAJ has been running on its own for a long time. It is not uncommon for a judge to have to make the judging group chat themselves, as there is no active HJ to do that. We also see Judge in Training and new Judge hires being done very rarely despite there being no reason for that. People often get accepted months after they applied, to the point that they have lost the drive to judge by the time they are given the role. This intensifies the lack of judges issue, and it is something that HJs are fully responsible for. 

Apart from all that, the JiT promotion process is slow, with HJs making evaluating group chats too late. The evaluating group chats are ones where judges can evaluate the JiTs’ performance after they judge a battle. The HJs also seem not to track the progress of JiTs, which is expected given the lack of organisation in the recent CPAJ. 

Moving on, HJs often announce tournaments to the judges too late. This leads to fewer judges signing up to judge the tournaments on time. Even worse, tournament battles are announced in CPAJ too late, days after they have been made public. This leads to fewer judges accepting them on time and HJs trying to find last-minute solutions. For example, some of the Around the World Cup III battles were announced less than 24 hours before they took place. Due to this, the judges per battle were also announced too late, after the veto window that army leaders have. In the CPA 20 Challengers Cup, judges were announced as late as 2 hours before the battles, while the veto time limit is 4 hours before it. 

Additionally, CPAJ has shown a broader lack of upkeep and maintenance of its server and guidelines. While the guidelines were updated to remove former Head Judge Jojo Teri’s name following his departure, other necessary updates have not been made. For instance, the Battle Rooms section still does not include Beach or Casa Fiesta, despite both being permitted for battles. These may appear to be minor oversights individually, but the judging guidelines are fundamental to the organization, as they establish the standards by which battles are judged. Failing to keep them accurate and up to date can create unnecessary confusion and inconsistency.

CPAJ has also yet to formally acknowledge T_T’’s departure from the Head Judge team and the organization, despite it occurring nearly a month ago. The community was left without a proper explanation, while CPA Org’s media department had to search for information.

The Boxmen Issue

Recently, there has been another outrageous example of CPAJ HJs falling behind. Pingo, Boxmen of Boxland leader, requested the leader role in CPAJ several times. However, the role was never given to him for days. Due to this, he could not schedule his freeland invasion in CPAJ. He requested the role again to announce his invasion, but once again it was not given. He recorded the invasion, as he could not post it in the freeland announcement channel on CPAJ, and forwarded it to the HJs. However, they did not acknowledge it. After hearing nothing from them for days, Pingo’s plans to invade land adjacent to his first were in trouble. CPA had to step in to validate the invasion by itself, an unprecedented occurrence. Pingo was still unable to schedule his next invasion in CPAJ (which was a battle) as he did not have the role. He was given the role less than 24 hours before the battle, with CPAJ invalidating his request for judges.

Inconsistencies in Rules

Of course, as the upkeep of the guidelines is not happening, it is reasonable to expect that rules and precedent would not be followed. Especially regarding when a battle is valid and when it is not, the HJs’ decisions conflict with each other. 

For example, in April, during the Templars versus Water Vikings war, WV scheduled an invasion less than 24 hours in advance. The CPA Administration asked the HJs if the request was valid, and the HJs responded that it was, but CPAJ cannot guarantee that there would be judges accepting in that timeframe. Going back to what was said two paragraphs ago, Boxmen’s invasion was invalidated when its late schedule was a result of a CPAJ failure as well. Additionally, in the TCP Dark Warriors war, a DW battle was invalidated despite it being scheduled 22.5 hours in advance. This creates the impression that the HJs may apply certain guidelines inconsistently, or alter their interpretation of the rules without adequately communicating those changes to the wider community. Such inconsistencies can undermine confidence in the judging process and may lead to concerns regarding potential bias toward or against particular armies.

Lastly, during the Army of Club Penguin vs TCP off-map war, ACP had requested judges from CPAJ. However, CPAJ refused to give judges because “TCP did not want judges”. CPA Administrator Df44 and Jojo Teri criticised this decision made by CPAJ, and the HJ’s responses were outrageous. Ultimately, CPAJ refused to do what it is made for: provide judges to the armies that request them, when they follow the guidelines.

Holding CPA and the Community Back

Map

Regarding the old map, CPAJ had originally insisted on being responsible for maintaining and updating it. This was reasonable at the time, as the HJs were closely involved with battles, assigned judges to them, and had direct access to the results. However, as time went on, map updates became increasingly infrequent, leading to complaints from armies. Despite this, the HJs continued to insist on maintaining responsibility for the map. When CPA administrators began updating it themselves to address the delays, CPAJ objected, arguing that the administrators were interfering with their responsibilities. Eventually, CPA Administration took over the map updates due to the continued delays. While the HJs still retain the necessary access and permissions to update the map, they have not made any attempts to do so since the launch of the new map.

War

A war between the Shadow Legionaries and the Fire Vikings ended in a ceasefire earlier this year. The cause for this was the lack of judges in both armies’ battles, which made everything more difficult for their planning. The war resumed a few weeks later, but the issues remained.

Tournaments

Summer Blitz

CPA has had issues with how CPAJ handles the tournaments for about a year. Starting with Summer Blitz, CPA Admins took over the map updating and let the HJs out of it, since they were not updating it fast enough. The main map, which was still up to the HJs to update it, lacked updates for a week at that point. The HJs complained about it negatively. CPAJ at that point had a freeland outcome pending for 41 hours in the main map, which would be something unacceptable for a fast-paced tournament like SB. 

October Horrors

Several issues arose with CPAJ during this tournament, exposing some of the deeper problems within the organization. Tournament battles came close to being cancelled due to an insufficient number of judges signing up to cover them. This was partly caused by CPAJ announcing the battles too late, on October 21, despite knowing that a large number of battles would take place beginning October 24. Two weeks earlier, Head Judge Spotty had also raised concerns about not being informed about the tournament in advance, despite having received information about it approximately three weeks earlier, in mid-September.

CPAJ HJs were dissatisfied with CPA regarding the tournament format, specifically about its ability to have both armies advance in case of a tie, calling it a shitty format. They were also blaming CPA for CPAJ’s inability to provide a sufficient number of judges. The issues continued throughout all three days of the tournament, with the HJs engaging in heated discussions in the Admins-HJs chat and raising repeated concerns about the tournament format, despite having been informed of the format well in advance.

Operation: Winterstorm

CPAJ’s inability to perform its duties was once again seen in Operation: WinterStorm, even more intensely this time. Some Head Judges tried their best to sabotage the tournament. They claimed it would be messy if done without armies, but with community teams instead, and that people would not join it. CPA insisted that the tournament had to take place at that time, during the free window between Christmas Chaos and March Madness. They also questioned CPA’s new map as a whole, even though the Army Board had voted on it a few months earlier. 

OP: WS ended up proceeding, with the teams performing even better than expected and about 220 people signing up to participate in it. Some of the teams even managed to max out more than 20 in the battles between each other. A lengthy look at it can be seen in this post. Given the tournament’s success, there were many battles going on, which required judges. 

The distribution of the number of battles per judge looked like this: 

Edu14463* – 23 

Shpec* – 14 

df44* – 9 

Jojo Teri* – 5 

Kira – 2 

Leah – 2 

Zooy – 1 

Spotty* – 1 

Moon – 1 

Spin – 1 

Those with asterisks are the Admins, HJs, and the map developer at the time (df44). It can be seen that only 5 other judges judged during the many invasions of the tournament, which also had around 5 battles reviewed by video due to the lack of judges. The 5 judges judged only 7 times, compared to the total of 59. (The total number of invasions was not 59; it was fewer. This is the number of judges participating in an invasion) 

On the fourth day of the tournament, about in the middle of it, CPAJ requested that the tournament end, as the judges were burnt out. A look at the statistics above shows that barely any neutral judges were actually involved at all. CPAJ said that they did not want the tournament to take place, and a CPAJ shutdown was put in question for the first time, as it was failing to perform its duties. The Admins requested that CPAJ either reform and bring in new Head Judges or shut down if it does not improve. 

April Board Meeting – Multilogging Mayhem

A similar situation occurred shortly before Multilogging Mayhem. CPAJ complained that they had been given insufficient notice of the Board meeting concerning the tournament, despite receiving the same notice as the Board Representatives. They also raised concerns about judge burnout and stated that CPAJ was not in a position to handle another tournament. While the HJs have repeatedly identified issues such as burnout and insufficient staffing, they have often failed to propose or implement effective solutions to address them.

The Present

Moon & Sweater

On May 15, Moon and Sweater were promoted to Deputy Head Judges. What followed was a similar pattern. The Head Judges were almost completely inactive at that point, with Sweater, mainly, and Moon handling everything. The Head Judges in training had to step in in order to keep the organisation running. 

Before his removal, Sweater had potential to perform well as a Head Judge; actively trying to bring back the hype into judging. He even offered rewards to the judges that helped CPAJ in tournaments. During that time, JiTs were allowed in tournaments too, once again, to help them get promoted faster. With a very active HJ, CPAJ started seeing a growth in activity once again, with more judges signing up once again. Moon was also around, contributing to that small growth. 

After months of issues with CPAJ, CPA finally had some tournaments run without complaints and issues with CPAJ. However, the majority of the problems in CPAJ still remained, with the other HJs being inactive. While Sweater’s and Moon’s hirings as Deputy HJs gave CPAJ a fresh breath of life, this also forced him and Moon to get quickly burnt out, as their colleagues were inactive. Some weeks before his removal, Sweater raised this exact issue to the other Head Judges. Nothing came of it, though. Similarly to T_T, he and Moon were left alone without help from the rest of the team. 

As Sweater played a major role in keeping CPAJ operational during his time there, handling much of the organization’s internal workload, his removal exposed a significant gap in its leadership and structure. Despite managing three tournaments over the course of nearly four months with very limited assistance, he was never granted a full Head Judge position. This raises legitimate questions about the effectiveness and consistency of CPAJ’s Head Judge training and promotion process.

Below is a comparison of messages sent by each one of the Head Judges and Deputy HJs mentioned earlier during 2026 (the messages are from public chats as well as chats available to the judges, so pretty much everything apart from army leaders/reps and the HJ chat). 

Shpec: 562

Spotty: 473

Sweater: 706

T_T: 588

Moon: 277

Yvng: 10

It seems like the most active HJ during the year was one who did not even manage to finish his training. The Top 2 are no longer in CPAJ, while Yvng’s inactivity can also be put in perspective. 

The Future

On September 23, CPAJ finally announced Moon’s promotion to HJ, after more than 4 months of training. Along with that, GreenVege and xDemon were hired as Deputy HJs. 

GreenVege

GreenVege has remained consistently active as a judge and, compared to the individuals mentioned above, has posted more than a thousand messages in CPAJ this year. Since his promotion, he has taken on a significant portion of CPAJ’s workload, much like Sweater did previously. However, this raises concerns about the sustainability of relying so heavily on a single active HJ. With limited support from other active colleagues, there is a legitimate concern that GreenVege could eventually experience the same burnout faced by previous HJs, including Sweater, Moon, and T_T.

xDemon

xDemon was a surprising appointment, given that he has posted only 34 messages in CPAJ this year. Aside from accepting some battles, there has been little visible activity from him during his tenure as an HJ. His promotion is also controversial in light of his previous conduct.

Last November, xDemon was quietly removed from the Void Troops leadership after unbanning and inviting individuals who had been banned from the wider community due to their conduct. He reportedly took similar actions within his own army, the Phantom Republic of Club Penguin, putting both communities at potential risk. He also continued associating with individuals whose conduct had resulted in their removal from the wider community.

Given this history, CPA has serious concerns about maintaining a partnership with an organization under xDemon’s leadership. While GreenVege’s promotion was encouraging due to the return of an active and capable individual to the HJ team, xDemon’s appointment raised significant concerns about the direction CPAJ is taking. Rather than providing confidence in a stronger future, the appointment suggested that many of the underlying leadership issues within CPAJ may continue.

A Future Without CPAJ

Considering all of the above, CPA began exploring possible ways to restore judging within the community to the standard it had reached in the past. Ultimately, two possibilities were considered by the Administration: restructuring the existing Head Judge team or establishing an entirely new judging organization.

In this context, the CPA Administration was approached by individuals interested in creating a new judging organization. While there was initially some hesitation, the Administration eventually decided to support the initiative after thorough consideration, particularly following CPAJ’s announcement of its most recent Deputy HJ appointments. At that point, we believed CPAJ had reached a stage where meaningful reform was unlikely, and that the best path forward was for a new organization to take over the role of providing judging services to the community.

This decision was ultimately guided by CPA’s core mission: to ensure that the army community operates at the highest standard possible and that its institutions continue to serve the community effectively. Our partnerships exist to support that mission, not the other way around. While CPAJ has been an important partner for many years, and we are truly appreciative of their service, regardless of all the past attritions, maintaining a partnership simply because of its history would not be justified if we no longer believed it was serving the community’s best interests.

As CPA considered this path, the Administration also spoke with several armies regarding the Open Letter that had been circulating and which CPA ultimately signed. The armies consulted expressed the same or similar concerns regarding the state of judging and the need for change. All eight Major Armies, as well as a majority of Small/Medium Armies, supported the movement behind the Open Letter and the creation of the new judging organization, the Army Judging Board (AJB). AJB also reached out to CPA on several occasions to request feedback on various aspects of the organization. CPA provided that feedback in the same spirit in which we have previously advised CPAJ, helping establish the foundation for a potential future partnership.

Ordinarily, before formalizing a decision of this magnitude, CPA would consult the Army Board. In this case, however, the breadth of support made a formal Board discussion less necessary. Every army represented on the Board had expressed support for the initiative, alongside widespread support from the broader community. Nevertheless, this was not an easy decision. CPAJ has been a key partner since the creation of CPA, and its contributions to the community over the years are not being disregarded. However, our responsibility is ultimately to the health and development of the army community as a whole. When an existing partnership is no longer fulfilling that purpose, CPA must be willing to pursue alternatives.

EXECUTIVE ORDER

For these reasons, CPA has decided that its partnership with CPAJ can no longer continue, and the alternatives discussed above are now being put into effect. We recognize that the CPA Administration could have communicated with CPAJ earlier and handled certain aspects of this transition differently, and we acknowledge our shortcomings in that regard. However, we believe that the underlying concerns would have remained. Our intention is not to diminish CPAJ’s past contributions to the community, but to ensure that judging continues to develop, remains accessible and impartial, and meets the standards that CPA and the wider community expect. Ultimately, CPA’s responsibility is to the health and continued improvement of the community as a whole.

Effective immediately, Club Penguin Armies hereby dissolves its partnership with Club Penguin Army Judges and announces a partnership with the Army Judging Board. 

We would like to thank CPAJ for all the support they provided in the tournaments, the wars, and the maps for more than four years, but everything comes to an end eventually. CPA had been lenient with CPAJ’s recent failures and tried to support it as much as possible, even asking people to apply to be judges. However, the problem stemmed from the organization’s management itself, with the only two solutions being either changing the entire management or choosing an alternative organisation, as CPA and the community did. 

CPA will provide all necessary support to the new organization and recognize it as the sole partner judging organization. All map battles and tournament battles of CPA will take place there under its guidelines. To allow for a smooth transition, CPA has decided to pause the map for 10 days. This is to ensure that AJB is ready to take on the map judging and that the judges have been made aware of its guidelines. 

CPA will work closely with AJB to figure out when it can support a tournament, and then it will announce the tournament options to the Army Board. Additionally, during the map break, there will be map maintenance and balance fixes as they were decided by the Summit. Those will be announced in detail in another post in the following days, and a Board meeting will also be hosted for further discussions. Apart from that, some internal CPA changes can also be expected in another announcement. 

It should be noted that CPA does not have any internal involvement or special positions within AJB since its official creation. AJB is an independent organization, led by community members who are neutral to our organization, with CPA having no control over any of its aspects. CPA fully supports judging being run independently, as a separate organization from leagues and media ones, as this works in favor of everyone, as seen by CPAJ when it was still operating well.

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The Administration
Edu14463 df44 JojoTeri Kira

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