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The Club Penguin Leak
Over 800 MB of internal material from Disney's Online Kids Game
June 05, 2024
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Yesterday, I was made aware of a leaked archive of internal documents from within Disney -- specifically focusing on Club Penguin (the extremely popular, online children's game which ran from 2005 through 2017).

This leak -- consisting of over 800 MB of PDFs and archived, internal documentation webpages -- was posted anonymously to 4chan.  So, naturally, I fired up a virtual machine (better safe than sorry when dealing with files from unknown sources) and downloaded every byte.

The Club Penguin Leak is Real

The first thing that needed to be ascertained was the validity of the files within this leak.  Were these files truly from within Disney (and the Club Penguin team)?

And the answer is, with a high level of certainty, yes.  This leak is legitimate.

How do I know this leaked material truly came from within Disney?

Because I used to work at Disney.  Specifically... on Club Penguin.  In fact, I still have my Disney "Cast Member" badge (because having a badge that says "Disney Cast Member" is just too cool to not keep).

While the contents of this particular leak primarily cover the time between 2014 and 2017, which was after my time working on Club Penguin, I know enough details to be able to confidently verify this material.

With that important step out of the way, let's dive into the contents of the leak.

Nothing Overly Surprising or Controversial

I know what all of you are wondering.

"Is there anything controversial or juicy in these leaks?  It's Disney!  It's a popular kids online game!  There's gotta be something wild in here!"

But, you know what?  It's really pretty dull.  Lots and lots of corporate boringness.

The only times anything got even remotely political were during two "End of Sprint" retrospective meetings (Club Penguin development used an "Agile" development methodology, with work divided into multi-week "Sprints").

The first time was immediately following the November, 2016 USA election.

The end of the Sprint after the 2016 Presidential Election.

"What should we have done better?"

The answer?  "Trump was elected!!"

Clearly the team was not thrilled that Trump won that election.

Though, all was not lost!  The team was very pleased with "Darlesson's cookies" and happy that Darryl was buying a house.  So.  You know.  Now we all know those details.  From within Disney.  Back in 2016.

Flash forward to January of 2017, and we have a similar set of statements from another "End of Sprint Retrospective".

The end of the Sprint after the 2017 Inauguration Day.

This, of course, happened after President Trump was sworn in to office.

Once again, the Disney Club Penguin team asked themselves, "What should we have done better?"

The answers?  "Trump" and "End of the world".

But, hey!  Look at all those things they did well!  Cookies!  Perogies!  Oooh!  And Timbits (aka "Donut holes")!  Looks like they were eating well!

Thus ends the entirety of the political content found within these Club Penguin leaks.  Over 800 MB of leaks -- consisting of 137 PDF files and an absolutely massive number of HTML files -- and this is the most politically charged content in the entire archive.

Keeping Club Penguin Clean

One of the difficult challenges in running an online system -- like Club Penguin -- for children... is keeping things... clean.  Family friendly.  G Rated.

No matter how much work went into limiting "adult" content, people would find ways to sneak naughty stuff into the game world.  More often than not through the use of funky acronyms.  Sometimes it would be older kids just being naughty... other times it was adults "playing Club Penguin" and being gross.

Within this leak is a "Top 50 Acronyms Parents need to know" -- which contained a small portion of the known ones.  Some were pretty wild.

Yup.  In a kids game.

To Club Penguin's credit, they worked pretty hard to limit all of this as best they could.

True story: When I was working on Club Penguin, an issue needed to be handled where players would work together to arrange their penguin characters (by simply walking around the world) into inappropriate patterns.  I'm not going to describe those patterns... I'm sure you can use your imagination to figure out the pictures they were trying to make.  The solution was to create a function that checked for the penguins being in certain types of particularly naughty patterns... and, when detected, shuffle the characters all over the screen.  It wasn't a great fix.  But it did the job.

This Leak Gave Me Corporate PTSD

End of Sprint Retrospectives.  Sprint Planning Documents.  Burndown charts.  Reports and proposals.

As I read through page after page of corporate, agile busy work I felt myself becoming increasingly stressed.  And annoyed.  Flashbacks to morning Standups and Scrum meetings.

I was instantly back there.  In the Disney Club Penguin office.  In that meeting room.  Under those fluorescent lights.  Feeling my soul slowly dying as I await my turn to give my daily update.

Part of a presentation from an end-of-Sprint Review.

While there's nothing damning or incriminating in these leaks... it served as a visceral reminder of why I stopped working for Disney.

Here's another screenshot.  This one is a Burn-up Chart pulling data from JIRA (a bug/task tracking system... if you don't know what it is... count yourself lucky).

I had to look at it.  Now you do too.

A Burn-up chart.  From JIRA.  For the end of a Sprint.  Kill me now.

You're welcome.  (I'll spare you from seeing screenshots of the countless other charts and Sprint meeting notes.)

One of the few mildly interesting tidbits in this leak comes in the form of emails, mostly between Product Managers, regarding the final days of Club Penguin -- and when they announced that the service would be closing.

I've censored the name of the Product Manager who sent this email.  Because it just simply isn't important in any way, shape, or form.

And, when I say "mildly" interesting... even that is a bit of a stretch.  This is all about as run-of-the-mill as it gets within the Tech Industry.

Some API Documentation

Ready to really make your eyes glaze over?

How about over One Thousand HTML files... all documenting various APIs used by a variety of systems... many of which are no longer in use.  By anyone.  Anywhere.

Over 1,000 of these.

Seriously.  This Disney leak includes over 1,000 files just like this one.  And the vast majority of the information contained within it is only of historical interest.

But, hey.  Documenting computer history is important.  Even if it is mostly internal, corporate systems.

That's it.  That's the Club Penguin Leak.

Right about now you're wondering to yourself, "Why do I need to know about any of this?"

Quite frankly... you don't.  The truth is -- despite the massive number of documents in this particular leak -- almost none of it was going to be interesting or important to you.  Heck.  Let's be honest, most of it was barely interesting to the people who originally wrote these documents.

But this gives you a little glimpse into some of the work that The Lunduke Journal does.

So far this year, The Lunduke Journal has received of over 27 GB of leaked material (not including video) from a number of the biggest companies on Earth.  And, while some of it is explosive and critically important (such as the Red Hat or Microsoft leaks), most of it is... a lot like this Club Penguin Leak:

One or two mildly interesting statements nestled between notes about food in the break room... and charts about bug tracking.

But The Lunduke Journal goes through it all... and only occasionally tortures you with the boring stuff.

(Unless, of course, you were a big Club Penguin fan.  In which case: You're welcome for this fascinating and riveting dive into the internal documents from the final years of Club Penguin.)

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October 15, 2025
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The Unpublished Anti-Lunduke Hit-Piece
A Tech Journalist interviewed me for a hit-piece article. But the questions made them look bad, and they shelved the story. So I'm publishing their hit-piece for them.

Back in September, shortly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I was contacted by a Tech Journalist writing for FossForce.com (a smaller, Open Source focused publication) who was working on an article around Open Source, Antifa, and the Lunduke Journal’s coverage of those topics.

This particular outlet had, several months prior, run an “anti-Lunduke” hit piece without first reaching out for comment — which resulted in their most popular article (at least on social media) in quite some time.

With that in mind, it seemed reasonable that they’d want to repeat that success with another “anti-Lunduke” story.

This time they were doing the responsible thing. They reached out to the subject of the hit-piece article with questions. I like encouraging Tech Journalists when they do actual journalism, so I answered each and every query with easy-to-quote responses.

But, it would appear that the answers they received were not conducive to creating the hit-piece they were hoping for — my guess is they realized their questions made them look like the villain in the story. The villain they, clearly, hoped to portray me as.

They opted to not publish the piece.

So I’m publishing their hit-piece for them.

Below is every question — and every answer (with no edits) — which I was asked, on September 19th, by a Tech Journalist by the name of Christine Hall, writing for FossForce.

Fair warning: This is very, very politically charged.

Enjoy.


September 19th

Hall:

The last time I mentioned you in an article, you castigated me for not reaching out to you beforehand. Well, I’m reaching out now. We’ll see what comes of this.

You do recognize that the vast majority of organizations using the term antifa as a descriptor are not in the least bit terrorist and pose no threat to society -- and indeed, the only threats they might pose to fascist groups are not physical or life-harming?

Lunduke:

Hello Christine! Nice to hear from you!

Many, if not most, of those proclaiming support for Antifa (within Open Source) have also made statements encouraging or supporting violence and discrimination.

Regardless of that fact -- which I have documented extensively in Lunduke Journal coverage -- when violent acts are committed (such as murder, riots, and lynchings) in the name of “Antifa”, to turn around and immediately declare yourself to be “Antifa” is a clear declaration of support of that violence.

Hall:

And why did you feel it necessary to call out Danielle Foré’s [the founder of the elementary OS Linux Distribution] trans status in such an ugly manner?

Lunduke:

There is a noteworthy overlap between “Trans activism” and support for political violence -- including in the recent murder of Charlie Kirk (the murderer’s boyfriend was “Trans”).

In the case of Daniel Fore, he, a leader of an Open Source project, regularly calls for discrimination (and violence) against people he disagrees with -- often in conjunction with his self-declaration as “Trans”.

Thus, his declaration of being “Trans” becomes a part of the overall story.

It is worth noting here that The Lunduke Journal has never -- and would never -- call for discrimination or violence against someone because of how they identify or who they may (or may not) vote for.

This is in stark contrast those, such as Mr. Fore, who consider themselves “Trans” or “Antifa” -- who actively advocate for both discrimination and violence.

Hall:

Mentioning a person’s trans status in ways that are pertinent to your argument necessates rudeness such as calling her a “dude who likes to wear dresses”?

Lunduke:

Dan Fore is, in fact, a dude who likes to wear dresses.

The only reason to view that as a negative is if you view dudes wearing dresses as a negative.

Hall:

I’ll quote you on that, which I’m pretty sure won’t bother you in the least.

Lunduke:

Absolutely! Quote anything I say here. In fact, I suggest quoting absolutely everything I’ve written to you here, today.

Hall:

You also understand, don’t you, that voicing disagreement with an assessment made by POTUS is not only legal but a healthy part of the national dialog.

Lunduke:

Absolutely! Did I say somewhere that it was illegal to disagree with a politician? It seems unlikely that I have ever said that.

Hall:

Also, how would you reply to this:

There have been very few murders linked to individuals associated with Antifa, some incidents of rioting attributed to Antifa supporters, and no credible evidence of lynchings conducted in the name of Antifa. Compared to far-right groups, violence attributed to Antifa is much less frequent and lethal, with only one suspected kill—Aaron Danielson in Portland, by an anti-fascist activist—officially confirmed in recent U.S. history.

Lunduke:

Murder is bad. I am opposed to all murder.

In the context of these discussions, bearing in mind the Kirk murder is important (as many statements were made in response to it). The murderer of Kirk appears to have been pro-Trans and pro-Antifa (based on all available information).

Hall:

Is there any evidence that the suspect was part of an antifa group? I haven’t seen any.

Lunduke:

I have seen some reporting to this effect (including statements from family and messages he wrote).

But, far more important to this story, is the response to the murder among Antifa supporters (including those within Open Source). A large portion of Antifa supporters have celebrated the murder as justified because it killed someone they considered to be a “fascist”.

Hall:

Also, no group should be held responsible for what some deranged person who identifies with the group has done.

Lunduke:

I agree that a broader group should not be held responsible for the actions of a small number of individuals.

However, and this is critically important, it is entirely appropriate to hold people responsible for their own statements and actions.

With that in mind: The overall messaging of Antifa (and Antifa supporters) tends heavily towards violence. Punching, killing, molotov cocktails, etc. are all common messaging used by Antifa (including by those I quote within the Open Source world -- many of whom have advocated violence against myself).

Advocating for violence, then celebrating when violence is committed, are not good things.

Yet we see a great deal of that among Open Source supporters of Antifa.

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October 13, 2025
Sale ends in a few hours, Lifetime Subs set up.

Holy moly, you guys are amazing.

A few days ago I published a “50% off” sale for Lunduke Journal subscriptions… and all of you showed up. In a big way.

To everyone who grabbed a Lifetime Subscription over the last few days: All of you are set to full Lifetime access. You should have a confirmation email in your inbox. If not, email me and I’ll make sure you’re setup properly.

That “50% off” sale ends tonight at midnight. So you have a few hours to snag a discounted subscription, if you haven’t already.

A huge thank you to everyone who supports this work. Couldn’t do it without you.

-Lunduke

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