BREAKING NEWS: It seems Poptropica is officially shutting down.
The news comes from a LinkedIn post by ex-Pop Creator, Lauren Kamb, who writes that “I’m announcing the closure of… Poptropica Ltd.”
According to her profile, Lauren served as Digital Advertising Account Manager at Poptropica from 2019โ2022, then as Director of Partner Relations at Suit Up Games, Poptropica’s spin-off Roblox studio, from 2022 to now. So it seems safe to say she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to announcing the closure of both companies.
What’s odd is that, as of now, Lauren’s post is the only place breaking such big news. The announcement of Poptropica’s closure hasn’t yet appeared on Coolmath Games, where Poptropica is currently hosted, nor on any of its socials (nor Poptropica’s socials, for that matter).
But to back up the claim of closure further, Lauren’s post was ‘liked’ and reposted by many in her network, including some with connections to Poptropica and Suit Up Games. (Thanks to jeeperpretzel for the tip!)
And Lauren is not the only recent staff departure from Poptropica and Suit Up Games. Within the past month, according to their LinkedIn posts and profiles, departures were announced by Jonathan Pitcher, art director; Lance Fry, another artist whose Poptropica Portfolio we’ve featured; Justin Kelly, software developer; and Rick Hocker, director of development (side note: Rick’s profile also mentions being responsible for managing Poptropica’s big move from Flash to HTML5 and mobile).
While Jon Pitcher was working on both Poptropica and Suit Up Games, the rest of those mentioned are ex-Poptropica staff, having migrated to Suit Up Games in 2022 when the studio was founded.
With all of them sharing that they are now looking for work, the departures seem to be layoffs, comparable to the layoffs in 2018 of several senior Pop Creators. We’re certainly sorry to see them goโand anxious for confirmation on what this means for Poptropica. ๐ฅฒ
Meanwhile for Suit Up Games, we’re seeing some questionable content that may back up Lauren’s claim of its closure. On their website, the calendar which was previously offered to schedule meetings with them is now unavailable, while the staff’s name is still there. However, according to his LinkedIn profile, Joshua Mixon was Head of Product at Suit Up Games until May 2024. Plus, their job application site is down.
Also on their website, it appears that Suit Up Games is using AI-generated artwork. Taking a closer look at the image alongside their “strategic, data-driven approach” message reveals some wonky-looking numbers and charts that are characteristic of AI art not getting details quite right. This is particularly questionable considering they’ve just let go of actual artists on their team, but if the whole company is going down anyway, perhaps it’s just a minor detail.
While we haven’t yet seen an official announcement of closure from Poptropica as an entity, or any of its related companies, we did come across official documents filed by Pop to the Companies House of the UK government, where Poptropica Limited is registered.
The most recent filing comes just around the time of the latest staff departures, dated 20 August 2024. The document is an “audit exemption statement of guarantee by parent company for period ending 31/12/23”, stating that Poptropica’s parent company Sandbox International Holdings Limited would “guarantee all liabilities of its subsidiary.” In other words, Sandbox is claiming responsibility for all of Poptropica’s financial obligations. But this filing may just be a formality, since Pop was already under Sandbox. (Previously it was under another Sandbox-related parent company, Aspen Newco 1 Ltd.)
Digging further into the previous audit exemptionโthe “audit exemption subsidiary accounts made up to 31 December 2022″โwe find a more detailed document that includes Poptropica’s older (but latest published) financial statements. While page 2 shows a loss of $154,952 in 2022, the previous year still held a profit with $86,537 in 2021. But by page 12 we can see that the cash generated from operations in 2022 was $630,857, so perhaps things were still doing alright then.
Since Sandbox International Holdings Limited has swallowed up the reporting of Poptropica’s finances, we took a peek at their docs, too. On page 35 of the document “Group of companies’ accounts made up to 31 December 2022”, we find Poptropica listed as just one of many subsidiaries held by Sandbox. Then on page 38, we find various losses noted among the company cash from operations. Disclaimer, though: we’re no experts at reading these lengthy accounting statements, so this may not necessarily spell the end for all we know.
All this to say, it’s not super clear right now how Poptropica is doing financially, since their last financial statement reflects the year 2022, and Sandbox has lumped in Poptropica’s finances with their other subsidiaries. But perhaps things will become clearer with the next statement, or with any announcement from Poptropica. We’ll see!
๐ Poptropica Help Blog ๐บ 
Uh oh ๐ฆ I wonder what this means for the game on Coolmath… and Steam…
OH NO! ๐ฐ
God Poptropica, stop playing with my emotions!!! ๐ซ๐
Everything, hanging by the end of a thread…๐ข
If Poptropica goes down, we go down with it. But what does this mean for the anniversary project and the blog?
While it’s Fishy’s decision at the end, I believe we will continue on regardless of if/when Pop ends!
We’re still celebrating Poptropica’s 17th birthday with our art collab, and the PHB will stick around regardless of what happens with Poptropica!
(โ ย โ ๏ผโ โโ ๏ผโ )
If Poptropica really is shutting down, I hope they at least put it in the public domain… since they’re not gonna do anything with it ๐ฆ
Don’t we have to wait 100 years for it to be in the public domain? Like how steamboat willie wasn’t in the public domain till this year?
im making a rewritten game of pop right now anyone wanna help me?
If possible, you might wanna include the 3 Haxe only islands: Goofball, Fairy Tale, and Jade Scarab. Those might become lost media if we don’t get them archived soon. I’d also recommend grabbing data and assets from Flashpoint.
And seeing as how we already have the flashpoint version, we may as well add some benefits. Like maybe we could add some unused tracks into the islands. Or maybe we could get a composer to add some new ones. I might be able to compose a few if I feel like it, but no promises. Weโre probably better off getting someone else. I donโt know much about coding on this grand of a scale, but I can give some ideas.
ok… they’re in the as3 zipped folder in the wiki right?
I think they should be. Iโm not really sure, but we managed to pull the music a while back, so they must be somewhere.
The Haxe-only islands (Fairy Tale, Goofball, Jade Scarab) aren’t on Flashpoint. We were only able to grab their music files through Haxe (current Poptropica).
You can grab more assets from Haxe by going toย play Poptropicaย on Google Chrome and right-clicking on the website, then selecting Inspect. From the dev console that pops up, click on Network at the top, then continue playing Poptropica from the same window. As you play, youโll see the files for your scene loading into the dev console.
Oh, I thought you were talking about the music tracks. Either way, we might need to get on it, and fast. As much as I dislike the new islands, history preservation is important. If you need the scrapped tracks, you should go to the PHB’s music page.
There have been some efforts in the community to create a Poptropica Rewritten game, but they haven’t gone anywhere yet largely due to lack of programmers.
There’s also currently a Poptropica-inspired game in development, brainstormed by former PHB staffer HPuterpop, called Poptropica Legends. If you can code, consider hitting him up to help with the project!
This. While creating Pop Rewritten is noble goal, we need people who can program/code above everything else. I enjoy writing and design, but that’s not enough to make a game and we’re flooded with that.
I’d love to get involved but I know nothing about coding lol, best of luck with that though.
Wait, whatโs stopping us from using the code from the game? Will we be adding new content or something? Because that would be a great idea if we could.
Programming talent โ the Poptropica community hasn’t seen many people with the coding skills and time needed to attempt a recreation of the game. There’s Flashpoint, which is huge, but it’s not completely smooth.
Copyright โ The game is technically still owned by Sandbox, although they have not come after Flashpoint after all these years.
I donโt know. It seems thats what a lot of other rewritten games do.
I think thereโs a lot of people in the Poptropica sub-Reddit interested in coding for Poptropica. I saw someone who seems to have the movement and dialogue down pat. If we do some digging in that subreddit, Iโm sure we code assemble a team.
Well, seeing as how the company is now gone, I don’t think copyright is an issue…
The intellectual property (IP) of Poptropica is still owned by its parent company, Sandbox International Holdings Ltd, which also owns Cool Math Games, the site currently hosting Poptropica. But while the copyright may be in their hands, it doesn’t seem to be an active priority of theirs to enforce it.
OFFICIALLY SHUTTING DOWN? WAS THE RUMORS TRUE?
While this *appears* to be real, the previous event from last December was still very much a hoax!
Oh, heck, heck, heck, heck, heck, heckโ
BardโฆI forgive youโฆok. MAYBE I still have some doubts over what happened to my account, but Sandboxโฆwhy?? Anyone wanna go get the gods and goddesses form Mythology Island for a miracle with me anyone?
Hopefully Bard’s going to switch sides as well now or else they’re all close to becoming lost media ๐ข
that’s weird…
Ough I hope this is just another Hoax ๐ฆ
โSadly, this is all too real.โ -Tessa Turncoat
Itโs so jover ughhhhhhh
where are these darn new player and returning player bubbles??
https://ibb.co/s3BSqw9
Wait, it mentions that the company is closing, not the game. Maybe the game will stay alive? Not alive in that itโll be updated, but it will still exist.
Yes, that seems to be the case at least for now. The game is still hosted and owned by Coolmath Games, which is owned by parent company Sandbox.
That’s how the game has been for months now… ๐
Sad news, but if it does happen, perhaps it’s for the best that this blog can exist as a page to reminisce about the old times. ๐ Thanks for my childhood Poptropica.
I doubt there’s any veterans that don’t know this but if you want a blast from the past to remember Poptropica’s better days, Jeff Heim’s playlist from the classic islands are still available to listen to on SoundCloud. Really brings back memories ๐ฅฒ.
I guess we’ll see how this turns out, but until then,
Explore, Collect, Compete, Poptropicans.
We’ve also archived the Poptropica soundtracks on our Music page! ๐
Wow. If this became the new featured post, it really MUST be over!!
This would’ve happened 7 yrs ago if Fishy had gone with her original CP plan. which is/was worse?
It is pretty amazing that Poptropica has outlasted Club Penguin, which was also extremely popular.
D: Oh nooooooo!
I know this is a complete and utter shot in the dark, but, what if the poptropica community would volunteer to effectivley finish the effort to get all the islands onto steam and haxe?
Plenty of us would love to help to recreate the lost content of the game, but that requires programming skills that unfortunately not many of us have. Still, there have been some programmers expressing interest in doing this, so we’ll see what happens!
Our Discovery Island has just been removed from Google App Store for unknown reasons, but one can assume it has to do with the Pop shutdown. The only way to play ODI is through Apple App Store, but it’s currently unknown if it’ll get removed as well. I and other Pop fans are currently trying to find a way to extract the files and upload them on Internet Archive, as there aren’t any archives of Our Discovery Island.
I just returned to this fandom after a long time, and this is what I see
poptropica will truly be missed if it shuts down..
Props to Poptropica for holding out this long after barely any content since its Haxe transition. A true survivor.
And reaching ten years old!!
17 years, actually โ Poptropica’s almost a legal adult! ๐ฅน
I gotta check my math ๐คฆ
Okay so there’s a lot of people talking about making a new Poptropica game… I literally know nothing about coding/programming but please let me know if there’s any way I can help because that’s such a great idea. I can try to learn basic coding lol but my life’s really hectic right now so I don’t know if I can commit to that. I hope some beta or even alpha islands can return in this Poptropica Rewritten project if it happens.
Regardless, keep us in the loop! I want updates lol!!