Three developers arrested in London: they created a fan-made version of the Disney game

It’s not uncommon for independent fan developers to get sued for wanting to create their own version of a well-known product or simply modify it, and Club Penguin is a prime example of this. The fact is that the MMORPG, created specifically for the children’s audience by a subsidiary of Disney, was closed back in 2017 – since then, fans have been actively working on creating their own version of the project. They even succeeded, and the video game received the sonorous name Club Penguin Rewritten, but now the developers have problems, as Disney demanded that the studio stop supporting the project – this was reported by Kotaku, citing its sources.

For the past five years, the video game Club Penguin Rewritten has been very active as a fan project, but since the beginning of 2020, the developers have installed ads on their site, generating the income that was necessary to keep the project afloat. One of the moderators of the CPRewritten team’s Discord channel suggested that it was advertising that caused Disney to contact law enforcement agencies – shortly after the official statement, the London police confiscated the project’s website and also arrested the main developers of the video game. At the moment, however, they have already been released.

The situation is certainly unique in its kind – usually large publishers simply send official notice to the developers of fan mods or versions of their products, after which they immediately stop working on the project. Suing a major publisher like Disney is naturally beyond the means of a small team of enthusiasts. But situations when developers were arrested by representatives of law enforcement agencies can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Probably, the reason is precisely in advertising – if it had not been installed, then the project might not have attracted the attention of Disney lawyers.

Source: Trash Box

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