Category: Creators

Hello Poptropicans! While there hasn’t been any official news from Pop lately, we did recently get a little update from a couple OG Pop Creators.

Jonathan Pitcher, former Poptropica art director, met up with Jeff Kinney, Poptropica’s founder better known for his Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise, at StoryCon in Salt Lake City. We loved his heartfelt post on Twitter/X harkening back to the “golden days of Poptropica,” where Jeff, whom he calls “an old friend”, “directed our stories.”

StoryCon is an event that encourages and educates on writing for both young and old attendees. Guests this year included Brandon Mull (author of the Fablehaven series), Christopher Paolini (author of Eragon), and of course, Jeff Kinney. I’m certainly taking notes for if I ever attend!

The OG Poptropica Creators aren’t the only ones yearning for the good old days of the game! Our little community on the PHC, our Discord server, is still brimming with creativity. Check out these awesome fan art pieces recently shared on our server — just a sample of the fun you’ll find if you join us on the Poptropica Help Chat! ✨

Plus, stay tuned for an update on my fanfic, The Villain Saga! In case you missed it, Season 2 just kicked off last month. See you soon!

Castori honorem ~ Maryann/Smart Bubbles

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 2019–2022, 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 go—and anxious for confirmation on what this means for Poptropica. 🥲

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 exemption—the “audit exemption subsidiary accounts made up to 31 December 2022″—we 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!

That’s right—the legend himself, Jeff Kinney, founder of Poptropica and author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books—has recently made another rare public acknowledgement of the game he helped build.

In a radio interview with WRHU from Hofstra University in New York, radio host and college student Jordan Elliott speaks with Jeff about his latest book, his animated films, and starting from the 6:38 mark, about the legacy of Poptropica (transcribed below, or watch below!).

After Jordan mentions Poptropica’s shutdown scare in December 2023 and the subsequent outpour of support from fans that resulted in the game’s recovery to Coolmath Games, Jeff Kinney shares his thoughts:

I love that game, Poptropica, and there’s something really sad about it, it’s that it of course was written in Flash. What happened is that Flash went away. So that put a lot of stress on the product, like we couldn’t convert all the stuff. It’s not often that something like that would happen, because if you made a movie way back a long time ago, you can still watch that movie today. If you wrote a book a long time ago.

You can still play today, it’s still active, and they did convert some islands, they’ve done a bunch of new stuff. But the stuff that I worked on is by and large not there anymore, and it lives on in the memories of people like yourself. It was a really cool game because we knew what a privilege it was to introduce kids to things for the first time, like Greek mythology. It was just crazy that we could get away with real education as entertainment, and I think it formed a lot of really good memories and a frame of reference for a lot of kids.

It’s great to hear from an OG Pop Creator’s perspective in 2024, with the game freshly migrated away from its original website but still living on with a fraction of its content. Thanks Jeff, for your insights! Although much has been lost, we’re grateful to have enjoyed it while it lasted. 🩵

If you liked this post, you may also enjoy:

• Q&A with Jonathan Pitcher, Art Director at Poptropica & Suit Up Games
• In Their Words: OG Creators on their vision for Poptropica — #ThanksKinney et. al.
• Pop Protip: Play the Old Islands with Flashpoint

Keep on poppin’ on! 💫

~🐠