In addition to the shutdown, the entire Club Penguin team, based out of Kelowna, British Columbia, was laid off, despite being greenlit for two more years of work only three weeks prior to the announcement of the shutdown. Disney HR cited "global competition" as a factor in their decision. On September 27, 2018, Disney confirmed in a letter to Disney Canada, obtained by the website Kotaku, that Club Penguin Island would be shutting down.
On November 30, 2017, the desktop version was launched as an open beta, allowing players to report bugs in preparation for a full release at a later date.
On November 13, 2017, it was announced in a live stream on the official Facebook page of the game that a desktop version of Club Penguin Island would be released the same day the 1.8 update releases at.
The original Flash game's servers went offline on the day of the game's release on Maat 12:01:39 AM PDT (7:01:39 AM UTC).
This beta was extended to iOS users in Canada on January 13, 2017. Ī semi-private "geo-beta" took place in Australia and New Zealand between Decemto its worldwide release. The game's closed beta took place between its announcement and December 2016 in North America. The pre-registration was ended on March 29, 2017. If this was done, they would also receive the Alumni Jacket, with a number on the back displaying how many years the connected Club Penguin account has existed. Additionally, players had the option of connecting their Club Penguin accounts with their Club Penguin Island account. By pre-registering, players would receive a Beta Hat, a set of six emojis, and 100 coins. The official website for the game was released and pre-registration began allowing players to pre-register their account for the game. On November 17, 2016, the project was revealed to be Club Penguin Island. However, Project: Super Secret was initially said to be Disney Mix, with the game's actual development confirmed to have started in 2015.
The game was originally known under the code name of Project: Super Secret, first used in 2014 and teased with sneak peeks in June 2015.
The 1.8 updates, released on November 30, 2017, received positive reviews for adding fan-requested features and launching a PC and Mac version of the game. Ĭlub Penguin Island received mixed reviews from critics and many negative reviews from some of the original game's old players upon its worldwide release for lacking many features of the original version at launch. The gameplay is similar to that of the original Club Penguin, though it runs on the game engine Unity rather than Adobe Flash Player. The game was discontinued on December 20, 2018. The game's public beta testing period took place in Australia and New Zealand from Decemto its worldwide release, and in Canada from Januto its worldwide release. in order to keep the Club Penguin franchise alive as closing its predecessor, Club Penguin, was necessary.
The game was released worldwide on Maand was created by Disney Canada Inc.
Massively multiplayer online role-playing gameĬlub Penguin Island was a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) and is considered a successor to Club Penguin.