People are mourning the death of a children's game they haven't played in years
The INSIDER Summary:
Club Penguin is ending.
The online game let kids interact with each other as digital penguins.
It spawned a lot of funny memes.
Even though people haven't played it in years, the internet is mourning its demise.
On Tuesday, Club Penguin announced that it was shutting down. The online game - where players logged on as a digital penguin and chatted with each other in a wintry landscape - was a touchstone for tens of millions of people who played it. It was 11 years old.
Once Disney, which bought Club Penguin's parent company in 2007 for $350 million, launches a spinoff game Club Penguin Island in March, the Club Penguin that players know and love will close.
For years, Club Penguin was a sort of gateway to online gaming. It was meant to be safe for kids, with an aggressive swear word filter and moderators who swooped in at every altercation.
But as many players got older, the moderators' swift backlash to players who toed the game's rules became a ripe target for trolling. Screenshots of people trolling Club Penguin spawned the subreddit r/bannedfromclubpenguin.
And though few people with double-digit ages still play the game, the outpouring of emotion when Club Penguin announced it was ending itself wasn't just laughter, but grief. As one Reddit user wrote, "March 29th we're all banned from Club Penguin."
So the internet mourned in its usual, irreverent way.
People referenced the current political climate:
They posted screenshots from the glory days:
And they remembered what made the game great:
RIP Club Penguin.