Club Penguin Rewritten – a fan remake of Disney‘s 2005 online game – has been shut down, with London police making three arrests following a copyright infringement filing from Disney.
As reported by Dexerto, Club Penguin Rewritten – which launched in 2017 – was shut down yesterday (April 13), following a notice of “copyright infringement” being submitted by Disney.
Since then, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) – a branch of the City of London Police – has made three arrests in relation to Club Penguin Rewritten.
A statement from the City of London Police (via Club Penguin Mountain) confirmed that “following a complaint under copyright law, PIPCU have seized a gaming website as part of an ongoing investigation into the site.
“Three people were arrested on April 12 on suspicion of distributing materials infringing copyright and searches were carried out,” reads the statement, which adds that the trio agreed to hand the website over to PIPCU and have since “been released under investigation and to aid with the police investigation.”
As visible above, the Club Penguin Rewritten website currently displays the City of London Police logo and a message reading: “This site has been taken over by Operation Creative, Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU).”
In a message posted to the Club Penguin Rewritten Discord server, an admin has shared that “CPRewritten is shutting down effective immediately due to a full request by Disney.
“We have voluntarily given control over the website to the police for them to continue their copyright investigation,” added the statement. All other messages in the server – which has over 140,000 members – have been deleted.
While Club Penguin Rewritten is unlikely to ever return, Disney is yet to comment on the takedown.
In other gaming news, CD Projekt Red has indefinitely delayed The Witcher 3‘s current-gen launch. The development, which was previously being handled by Saber Interactive‘s Russian studio, will be continued in-house.
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