Lane Merrifield, the co-founder of Disney’s popular online game Club Penguin, shared that he just started a new job at Walt Disney Imagineering.
Club Penguin Co-Founder Starts as Imagineer
The developer shared the news on his personal Instagram, with an amusing story about his first day as an official Walt Disney Imagineer.
First day ✔️ I got lost ten times trying to find my way around the office, but otherwise it was a pretty magical day. So excited for this next chapter!
We obviously don’t know what WDI role or project with which Merrifield is involved, but with Disney placing more emphasis on gaming and interactive experience, we’re also excited to see what Imagineering is up to with Club Penguin‘s creator on board.
‘Club Penguin’
Disney’s Club Penguin was a kid-friendly Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) that ran from 2005 to 2017 and was wildly popular: by 2007, it had 30 million registered users, and by the time of the server shutdown in 2017 that number had increased to 200 million. Players created customizable cartoon penguin avatars and explored a winter-themed world filled with quests, minigames, and interactive environments.
The original Club Penguin servers shut down in March 2017 to drive players to its successor Club Penguin Island, which launched the very next day. However, the follow-up game shut down in late 2018.
The lack of an official Club Penguin game hasn’t deterred its most dedicated fans from trying to keep it alive. Numerous unauthorized reboots sprang up after the game shut down for good, with one of the largest, Club Penguin Online, shut down in 2020 after Disney filed a copyright-takedown notice amidst a child pornography scandal involving a man who oversaw the game. In 2022, another reboot, Club Penguin Rewritten, was shut down and three individuals were arrested for copyright infringement.
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