The long claws of the mouse have reached deep into the heart of the Club Penguin fandom and axed a highly popular fan remake, Club Penguin Rewritten, and had London police arrest three of the people responsible for running the game.

On Wednesday, Tech Crunch reported that Club Penguin Rewritten, arguably the most popular and legally sketchy of the Club Penguin fan games that sprung up after the site's unceremonious shuttering in 2017, had been shut down due to legal action from Club Penguin's IP owners, Disney.

On Wednesday, an admin in the Club Penguin Rewritten Discord announced the death of the beloved fan game.

"CPRewritten is shutting down effective immediately due to a full request by Disney," the admin said. "We have voluntarily given control over the website to the police for them to continue their copyright investigation."

The Club Penguin Rewritten website now leads to a sad page of black text that simply reads "This site has been taken over by Operation Creative, Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU)," a division of London's City Police. Three people were arrested as part of the crackdown, though they were later released upon ceding control of Club Penguin Rewritten to the police.

The aftermath of the shutdown was brutal, as Club Penguin Rewritten players shared screenshots of their final moments in the game as it crumbled around them.

it is 4am
10 hours has passed since the notice that it is being shut down
club penguin rewritten has been taken by the police, no one can login nor access the site

i refuse to leave the mines. they are taking us one by one. we will sit here until the true end. pic.twitter.com/SaqvuwxtlT

— s m o l (@s_m_o_l) April 13, 2022

THEYRE KILLING CLUB PENGUIN REWRITTEN pic.twitter.com/uzheGFfT2d

— 𝕰𝖑𝖎𝖟𝖆𝖇𝖊𝖙𝖍 (@COSMOSAZTEC1) April 13, 2022

Club penguin rewritten is dead 😔 pic.twitter.com/6rviPDyxmf

— 𝕰𝖑𝖎𝖟𝖆𝖇𝖊𝖙𝖍 (@COSMOSAZTEC1) April 13, 2022

It's been an arduous journey for die-hard Club Penguin fans, who have moved nomadically to fan remakes that keep getting shut down. In 2020, a fan game called Club Penguin Online was shut down after it became flooded with racist and anti-semitic messages. At the very least, Club Penguin fans will likely find somewhere else to go now that Rewritten has gotten the DMCA axe, but who knows how long whatever hub they find will last.