Discussion: Club Penguin Private Servers

Hey everyone,

Today we are going to be talking about Club Penguin Private Servers, more commonly known as CPPSs. Now, this topic is a large thing so I’m going to be focusing mainly on why they are so popular and why Club Penguin doesn’t like them. Don’t think that this is going to be short though because although I’m going to make my points, I’m also including a large interview with a CPPS owner and something from Spike Hike himself! This is also the discussion with the most words yet so sit back and enjoy!

Firstly, what is a CPPS? A CPPS is like Club Penguin yet it is owned by players in the community. Most servers let you have any item for free and you can access the whole game without a membership. They are also fully customisable. To give you an idea, here is a photo of a CPPS I found.

It’s pretty obvious that that isn’t real Club Penguin. Penguins are large, people have the beta hat, the puffle party from years ago has returned, the chat bar is orange and so on. You also get to have a normal conversation as the chat filter is MUCH more relaxed. Some servers even have no filters and allow swearing. This is basically your average CPPS.

I’m sure you get why it’s so popular now. I mean, who wouldn’t love to be a giant with the beta hat on? Yet what does Club Penguin have against it? Firstly, I’m going to feature something from the owner of uPlayEve. uPlayEve is another CPPS out there. Despite the fact it isn’t the most popular CPPS, it still has a lot of views. Here’s the opinion of uPlayEve on this topic.

 

To begin with, Club Penguin have been against CPPSes since 2008, in the very beginning the CPPS era. It’s all about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or for short, DMCA. It’s an US copyright law that forbids using content WITHOUT permission of its owner, and that’s all Disney wants from the CPPS owners: to take them down.

One of my theories is that the more popular a CPPS it, the bigger the chance is of a DMCA in your mail inbox. Part of that theory of mine is also that Disney’s problem is not just that their content is copied, furthermore, they are afraid of losing their users. Club Penguin recently has lost THOUSANDS of players, and CPPS’ activity has been increased, and proportionally, their count too. In 2008, only one CPPS was available on the Internet, meanwhile today only the AS3 private servers amount is around 6. Huh? But why they aren’t empty and CP has only few servers full?

The problem comes out of that Club Penguin barely listen to player’s suggestions. Just the opposite is with the CPPS owners: they know what Club Penguin lacks, and as the original game players they know what the users want. I’ve seen on several posts around fan blogs interviews with Spike Hike. They said they are doing their “best” to improve the game and according to them, they lose players because of CPPSes and cheating. Yeah, they really do, but the problem is in them, not in us, the CPPS owners. If they improve their game and add the features we’re adding and find pretty interesting, bring back some classics (the 10th anniversary party was a TOTAL hit because it contained some of the previous good parties). Have you heard that once Spike Hike said it is really hard for them to add a new room? Not for us, the private servers owners! It is just a minute away from getting a new room configured, and then you just have to finish up its design. Easy! Users are delighted that new decoration is out there, a new item is out there and a new feature is out too. This is what makes CPPSes popular: we are creative, we know what оur players want and expect from us. And the last, but not least, you’re a member therefore you have access to everything CP has + more! Pretty cool, huh?

This is probably one of the numerous concerns Club Penguin have: we’re getting their users, and in my opinion, they are not afraid just of the CPPS they have targeted and that that exact server will “steal” their users; they don’t know what other CPPSes are around and how many are going to them, that’s why they are trying that hard.

In my opinion, however, it is pretty pointless for them to take any CPPS down. Above all, these games are hosted and owned by teenagers, they won’t last long anyway and surely, they won’t get the most of the Club Penguin players – CPPS.me + FreePenguin + VIPenguin (the most popular ones) have 1500 users total online only on the most active days throughout the year.

To conclude, all Club Penguin have against CPPSes is that they are using their content and they are loved by all their players, unlike Disney’s most popular game users, where only about 10% like the content they create. Despite the fact that between 10% out of 300-400k active players per month and 10% out of 2-3k there is a huge difference, CPPSes are still more liked than the original game.

I’d like to give uPlayEve a massive thank you for letting me feature their opinion here.

One of the biggest points I disagree with uPlayEve is in the fourth paragraph where they say that “they won’t get most of Club Penguin players”. One of the most popular CPPS’s is cpps.me. What I found was extremely surprising. That site is the the 53,518th most visited site in the United States. Club Penguin is in the first four thousand. I have got these statistics from alexa.com. Fifty thousand sites in between; massive number, right? Wrong. Think of it this way. At the time of writing, there are 981,370,107 websites at the moment and don’t forget that that number would’ve gone up a lot since when you are reading between when this post was published. Fifty thousand is basically nothing to that number so, yes, I do believe that they do get more of Club Penguin’s players than they should.

My main problem with Disney is that they WANT to take it down, but they don’t. This is also where I disagree with uPlayEve, when they make it sound as if Disney is actually trying to take them down. I mean, all these big servers have been around for a while now. If Disney wants Club Penguin to stop losing views, then they should target the big ones and not the small ones. This is a problem which has been going on for years now. Back in 2012, there was a private server called Penguin City. They claimed that they were taken down by Disney but actually, they were making it up. Why, I don’t know but when Trainman1405 revealed this information, I’m pretty sure Disney were quite humiliated and I’m glad. Yet even Disney claim that they are trying to take them down, despite what I just said that they should take down the most popular one first. This is a reply from Spike Hike when Trainman1405 made a post on his blog about him not feeling that Club Penguin cared enough about CPPSes, and I agree with him. You can read his post by clicking here. Spike Hike replied to that post saying the following.

 

Hey Trainman, we care a lot about private servers and hacking! As you know, I have been very vocal on the topic and we regularly try to create awareness that private servers are NOT Club Penguin and not safe. We regularly go after CPPS sites to take them down. Hacking, as you know, is against the Club Penguin rules and players who get caught doing it are banned. And we put a lot of work into chasing down exploits and closing them quickly whenever we find them. The safety and security of the CP audience is our TOP priority!

I know that some of the kids experimenting with hacks are doing so out of curiosity and an interest in technology. But what I would ask them to consider is that what they are doing could get them in a lot of trouble. And more than that its messing with the CP community that we all love and ruining the experience for others. CP is a safe place where kids can play together online and there aren’t too many places that can say that. Let’s keep what’s special about the CP community special by working together to keep it safe and secure.

Waddle On, Spike!

Once again, the usual. “We care a lot about CPPSes and we do our best” and so on. Well, as I explained in my last paragraph, they don’t. Have you seen any awareness about not going on a CPPS lately? I haven’t. This comment was posted in September 2014, granted, yet even then there was nothing on the official blog that said not to go on them.Instead, you have owners of blogs not affiliated with Club Penguin, such as this one, talking about CPPSes. Just over a year on and CPPSs are growing once again, yet still no official warnings or known takedowns of CPPSs. I am almost certain that’s because they really don’t care about CPPSes. Lots of ordinary players who do not go on CPPSs agree with me on this. I found numerous comments on the blog saying things like they should publish it on the blog. Here’s one by 007 Bond 50.

Why don’t you make a post on the official blog? Many people don’t read instructions nowadays, and l think it’s necesssary to properly SHOW the rules, not just keep them hidden on another page.

As for the second paragraph, I doubt it’s kids experimenting with hacks. I asked one of the owners of the largest CPPSs out there about this. This CPPS is CPPS.me and the owner is Cyberwolf. He, in fact, isn’t even a kid but he is eighteen. All he said was that “new Club Penguin sucks” and that’s the reason he is interested in CPPSs, not because he’s curious. The best that Spike Hike could do was a tweet about the topic. Besides, Twitter is for users aged 13+ so I doubt the majority of the community would know about it. If Club Penguin wants to stop it, they need to address the issue to everyone.

CPPS is not safe and not cool. Stay away.

— Spike Hike (@SpikeHikeCP) May 17, 2013

In fact, CPPSs are hardly even featured on the rules. The only thing that would probably address this issue is the “Play fair” section and this is all it says.

Describing a CPPS as a third party program is very vague. When you click the “What is a third party program” you will be redirected to a page that says the following.

A third party program is a website or program that isn’t associated with Club Penguin. These sites or programs are used to do things in Club Penguin, or get items that wouldn’t normally be possible. Using these sites or programs is considered cheating, and may result in a ban.

This is directed more at hacking and cheating to me. So no, I don’t think CPPSs is mentioned anywhere in the rules so users could easily think that you are allowed to use them when Disney and Club Penguin don’t want you to. It’s probably in the terms and conditions and I highly doubt many people read those when creating accounts. The least Club Penguin could do is add it to the rules page.

Why should Club Penguin care about CPPSs? Money. Think of it this way. Almost all CPPSs are 100% free to play. If, say, those users couldn’t play on a CPPS anymore, they might come back to Club Penguin. If they want to play 100% of the game, they’d be spending around £40 a year. If one hundred players come back, and CPPSs have way more than one hundred users registered, thats £4000 for Club Penguin. It’s also a case of “too little, too late”. Should Club Penguin close down, CPPSs will most likely close down. With the original thing gone, it would be harder for them to create things like puffles etc. because I’m sure they use Club Penguin’s code. Yet there’s no point of the CPPSs gone yet Club Penguin also gone. 

I do see what is so good about these CPPSs yet I also see what’s bad about them. I would not recommend using them and keep in mind Club Penguin does not want you to for some of the reasons I’ve pointed out today. This basically concludes this post with over two thousand words. What do you feel about CPPSs? Is Club Penguin doing enough or should they do more? Do you agree with me or not? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Waddle on!