PlayNET
American former ISP
PlayNET (or PlayNet) was an American online service for Commodore 64 home computers that operated from 1984 to 1987. It was operated by the company PlayNet, Inc of Troy, New York.
History
PlayNet was founded in 1983 by two former GE Global Research employees, Dave Panzl and Howard Goldberg, as the first person-to-person, online communication and game network to feature home computer based graphics.
The founders launched the business initially with their own money. They then raised over $2.5 million from a variety of investors, including the venture capital funds of the town of North Greenbush, NY, Key Bank, Alan Patricof & Associates, and the New York State Science and Technology Foundation, and a group of individual investors through a limited R&D partnership led by McGinn Smith.
PlayNet was initially successful and had more than 5000 subscribers, but struggled to grow beyond that, and was short on funds. PlayNet approached Commodore to become Commodore's official online service, but was rejected. Commodore instead suggested to a rival that they obtain PlayNet's software.
In 1985, PlayNet licensed their system to Control Video Corporation (CVC, later renamed Quantum Computer Services), which in October 1991 changed its name to America Online. The modified version of the PlayNet software (Quantum Link or Q-Link) was ported by Quantum to the Apple II, and then to Macintosh and MS-DOS to create the first version of the AOL software.
The public source identifies “PlayNET” as american former ISP. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around PlayNET, American and former.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7202945. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1984, 1987, 1983 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “PlayNET” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.