Club Penguin Is Becoming Less Tolerant of Armies

KLONDIKE, CPAC Headquarters – Every once in a while, a post is written here about Club Penguin’s stance on armies, and they all end up reaffirming that they have nothing against armies unless we break the rules. However, given some recent happenings that will be discussed in this post, a strong counterargument can be laid down: Club Penguin does not want us on their game.

Before I begin, I would like to make it noted that I will continue to dig up more occurrences of army events being interrupted by moderators and add them to this post. The latest skirmish between Club Penguin moderators and an army happened just yesterday during a practice battle between the Water Vikings and the Golds. Just a few minutes into the battle, WV’s tactics weren’t working and then some of them were booted off the server by a moderator. When I asked her about it, WV 2ic Teagan had this to say:

Now, it seems very unlikely that a moderator would even have the power to block their emotes, but the real issue here is the fact that their troops were removed from the server within 10 minutes. For those of you who aren’t aware, getting removed from a server is not the same as getting banned; it’s more of a warning. Usually, the message that comes up will give a reason for your removal, but in this case, no reason was given for any of the troops. You may now be thinking, “well maybe they were removed because they were doing too many word tactics”. Nope, Teigan said they had only tried to do emotes until this happened. Reportedly, an Ice Warriors event last week was also crashed by a moderator, and resulted in a few troops getting banned.

This was not the first time the Golds had been involved in a run-in with Club Penguin mods. In fact, they have had the same moderator show up to 2 other scheduled events, both within the first 10 minutes. I personally witnessed these incidents myself. The last time it happened was last month, on Christmas Eve during a practice battle with RPF. A mod called Puffle Quest came to the Berg, and soon after, Golds leader Tilgen had his penguin banned forever (the first offense on that particular penguin), and a couple of troops were removed from the server before everyone logged off. Strangely, no one in RPF got booted or banned. In the image below, the mod is standing right next to the Golds line.

In the middle of November, a UK training session was also crashed by Puffle Quest. A few Golds troops got banned forever (some on first offenses again), and several were removed from the server. The important things to note about these 3 incidents is the fact that all of them were scheduled, were held on essentially empty servers, and the only penguin in the rooms that wasn’t in either of the armies happened to be the same person twice. This makes it very unlikely that all of these troops were coincidentally booted off the server or banned at around the same time. Think about it, a moderator has no reason whatsoever to check an empty server. There are two reasons that I can think of for one showing up to an army event. They might have seen that a bunch of people logged on to an empty server at the same time, and decided to check it out. Maybe they had a hunch that armies were involved, maybe not. Or, given that these events were scheduled, they were looking at our sites, and knew exactly when and where to find us and “monitor” us.

A few weeks ago, my original penguin was banned forever for “attempted game manipulation”. I had a feeling that I knew exactly what finally did me in. Earlier that day, I was logged on for a training session on a 1 bar server. A couple of random penguins showed up and asked us who we were. I responded with “golds army”, saying it twice in case they didn’t catch it the first time. The next time I try to log in, I’m banned forever. Seems a little excessive, doesn’t it? I called Club Penguin to confirm that this was the reason for my ban, and that it is now against the rules to even say an army’s name. This is a rough transcription of my questions and the staff member’s answers.

Me: I’m pretty sure I know exactly why I got banned (insert explanation from above), and want to know if that was actually the reason. I wasn’t reported, was I?

CP: No, you weren’t reported. In the notes for your penguin, it says that a moderator found this to be advertising, and issued the ban.

Me: Could you look at the chat log from the last time I was logged in, because then you’ll see that I only said the name twice and wasn’t spamming it or trying to tell anyone to search for it.

CP: Yes, you only said it twice, but I think because it’s an army, the moderator labeled this as advertising, even though you weren’t meaning to. Because of the Club Penguin rules, there is very little to no tolerance for this. 

Me: So, for future reference, even just saying an army name can get you banned?

CP: Well, if a moderator sees it and thinks that you’re trying to advertise, yes.

There you have it, folks. The most telling part is their second answer. It is against the rules to be publicly display your involvement in Club Penguin armies. What’s even more ridiculous is that by that logic, any thing you say that doesn’t officially exist in Club Penguin could be interpreted by a moderator as “advertising”.

With all of that covered, we can finally approach the question: Why is Club Penguin taking a stance against armies? Well, some of you may recall two posts from last year, one by Freezie66 reporting on people getting banned for participating in armies, and one by Lord Jay with a direct response from Club Penguin about their rules regarding armies. The first post cites the Dark Warriors having trouble with moderators at one point. The second is a rather positive response to the issue, as CP replied by stating that they would never ban people just for being at events, and that they were only targeting penguins that were autotyping. They even gave us specific phrases that were forbidden. If this is to be believed, then why would a moderator log on to an otherwise empty server where an event is being held, and start removing and banning troops, even if those penguins were never used for autotyping? WV no longer autotypes, and by the time the second incident with the Golds took place, they had stopped autotyping as well.

On yet another post regarding this problem, I made a comment that hopefully provides some additional insight.

As long as Club Penguin is owned by Disney, they will never make any change that specifically helps Club Penguin armies. This has, for the most part, always been their stance. The difference between now and 2006-08 is that Club Penguin’s staff and resources have grown exponentially, and because they are owned by one of the largest and well-known companies in the world, they have to have those policies to protect the kids playing their games. Granted, the old moderators like Happy77 and Billybob did seem to have a more lenient stance on armies, but this was because armies used to be an actual phenomenon on Club Penguin. It was pretty widely known throughout the general CP community that you could go to the Mammoth Dojo at any time and find armies battling there. That kind of exposure is what got people to search for our sites and find our Xat chats. Sometimes we had to tell a recruit to do it, sometimes we didn’t. This is the method of recruiting that not only brought in genuine, enthusiastic, green-as-the-summer-grass noobs, but also didn’t break CP rules. Armies have changed to the point where now, we hardly ever use busy servers for battles, we only log on for 30 minutes a day, and we recruit with autotypers that blatantly break Club Penguin’s personal information rule over and over again. It doesn’t matter if you think that armies should be an exception to this rule, because once again, CLUB PENGUIN WILL NEVER CHANGE FOR US. We’re playing their game; we have to change for it.

We can go back to a full year ago, when Burr made a post showing the result of him subtly asking Club Penguin about their stance towards armies. In their response, the staff member actually discourages him from joining any army, saying that doing so may “compromise” his account.

Even further back, over 4 years ago, an interview conducted by Sergie717 with Billybob in person (supposedly), was posted. Now, obviously, this may not be legitimate. But, ignoring the dumb, added commentary and taking it for what it is, you can see that Billybob is actually rather sympathetic towards army, and clearly explains why we couldn’t get the things we want (mainly the old Dojo back). He also acknowledges that 3rd party programs were being used to recruit back then, and was (of course) against the rules. When asked whether Club Penguin is for or against armies, he replies “neither, but the team is still discussing it”. Keep in mind, this was well after Club Penguin was acquired by Disney, and about a year before the original creators left the company.

I don’t think anyone would argue against autotyping being a reason for this. Having multiple penguins on different servers repeatedly trying to direct players to a third party site has definitely left Club Penguin with a sour taste in their mouth when it comes to armies. Can you really blame the moderators of a kid’s game for being opposed to their players going on sites that have DDOS accusations out the wazoo, constant badmouthing and demonizing of other armies, one of them going so far as equating an enemy to an existing terrorist organization.

We can no longer continue in denial that Club Penguin is absolutely okay with armies. They may tell us that as long as we aren’t advertising on CP, then we’re fine. But their other reactions to us send the opposite message. This community is treading on very thin ice. It seems that the only reason Club Penguin hasn’t started flat-out purging armies is because there are still plenty of them that follow their rules and don’t give in to the hate-mongering that some armies spit out on a regular basis.

Think about it this way: Most armies only spend 30 minutes to an hour on Club Penguin each day for their actual events, and they are always on empty servers. Compare that to the many hours spent autotyping on busy servers. If you’re a random player on Club Penguin, you are much more likely to come across an army autotyper than an army actually having an event. The same deal goes for Club Penguin moderators. Combine that with players reporting army autotypers, and now the moderators’ impression of armies is that pretty much all we do is try to advertise for our sites. You might think that they’d only target the armies that are regularly autotyping, but do you really think they’re going to put in the effort to figure out which armies autotype and which ones don’t? To them, we are guilty until proven innocent. Leaving you with something to think about…

Lorenzo Bean

CPA Central Associate Producer