Club Penguin

Club Penguin is an online-based, massively multiplayer online role-playing game (abbreviated as a MMORPG) created by New Horizon Interactive in the summer of 2005. It had a public Beta Testing in August 2005, and was officially launched on October 24, 2005. It was later bought by Disney in August 2007. It involves a virtual world, where the players are penguins, and is featuring a large range of minigames and other online activities, and is based on a snowy island, after which the game is named.

Club Penguin has been noted as sharing similarities with other popular browser-based online environments such as RuneScape and Habbo Hotel, such as the use of an in-game currency to purchase virtual items and pets, named "puffles". The game is specifically designed for players within the ages of 6-14 (however all ages can play), thus child safety is a vital responsibility of the game's developers. The game was founded by Lance Priebe, and co-founded by Lane Merrifield, and Dave Krysko. There are over 200,000,000 penguin accounts created and played in over 190 countries. It is now estimated that over 150 million people worldwide play Club Penguin, which was originally built on a Smart Fox Server. Their headquarters is in Kelowna, Canada.