Neopets enters "new era" as new management detail big comeback
NFTs are out, over 50 Flash games are back in
Neopets, the long-running website that featured virtual pets and Flash games, is under brand new management and they’re planning a nostalgic comeback. Yesterday, the newly established owners, World Of Neopia, published a blog post to unveil what’s next for the ‘00s petsite, after the previous owners saddled the franchise with dumb NFT rubbish and then shut down.
“For most of the last decade, The Neopets Team has been under the management of JumpStart Games, which, over time, has struggled to find success for Neopets,” says the team's recent blog post. “Beset by ageing site features, a waning user base, and a lack of resources, [The Neopets Team] had to work tirelessly just to barely keep the site afloat.” A lack of resources then led to bugs, broken games, and a lack of content, they also says.
With around $4 million in funding secured from investors, the Neopets Team is planning an expansive comeback tomorrow, July 20th, starting with a revamped website that unifies all Neopet announcements, links to games, and “anything else Neopian you can think of.” Shortly after that, the team will start bringing back over 50 Flash games from Neopet’s past with the use of Ruffle, a Flash game emulator. Maybe that Bejeweled-like one will come back too.
They’re also scrapping the previous NFT project, working on mobile compatibility for the website, and developing a whole new mobile game called World Of Neopets.
The Neopets website launched in 1999 to great success and was a hybrid between a video game and an early social media platform where you could chat with people, play games, and then take care of your colourful creatures. Neopets was soon acquired by entertainment conglomerate Viacom in 2005 and switched hands again in 2014 when JumpStart Games bought the site. They began to push metaverse NFT collections based on the series in 2021, before shutting down just last month, leading to this newly independent era.
Neopets exploded in popularity slightly before my time on the internet. But Moshi Monsters? Moshi Monsters was the thing to play (stare at) if you were a child in the mid-late 2000s. Maybe I’ll check back and see how that MMO-for-kids is doing someday. I'm sure my Monsters are fine after 15 years of neglect, right?