Notable community members here are Vital Viper and Hammy120. Vital Viper (behind the cake) is one of the earliest game celebrities, eventually becoming a moderator on the Miniclip forums. After joining in January 2006, he reached community stardom throughout the year on YouTube.
March 2010: Club Penguin Beta Tester and early hacker RancidKraut's igloo. RancidKraut coordinated with the staff in 2005 to exploit the game for in-game currency and secret items, and created the earliest hacking forums, ClubPenguinHQ in early 2006.
The CPPS pictured, named Club Pengufu, was created by a group named GreyHatz, with notable users iRath/iCrack and V0rtex. It was ran on smartfox server. iRath/iCrack eventually went on to create the iCP series (iCPv1, iCPv2, iCPv3) which boomed in success 2010-2011.
V0rtex also worked on the predecessor to the famous program "Penguin Storm", called PCL, in early 2008 with the earliest known hacker, and Club Penguin Beta Tester, Rancidkraut. V0rtex eventually stepped away before the iCP private servers got big.
This photograph was taken during the Club Penguin Beta Test Party, September 21, 2005. Be sure to check out the discord if you'd like to ask PINGO, or some other verified beta testers, some questions!
With this month making 17 years since the Club Penguin Beta Test Party, It's exciting to release this never before seen, never publicized photograph of the Beta Test Party. Cheers!
For those curious of the source of this image, I had recently gotten a response back from PINGO, who then joined the discord and emptied out a ton of pictures from his old computer. It was very cool, given he hadn't discussed the game in 15 years, and didn't even know it closed.
