Neopets tries to launch comeback as website promises a ‘new era’

Site boasted 25 million users during its peak – but has fallen into disrepair since

(Neopets)

Neopets is launching a comeback that it says will start a “new era” for the virtual pet website.

The site was launched in 1999 and became one of the most popular and beloved parts of the early internet. Players were able to look after cartoon pets as well as playing games and chatting with other users.

Its popularity led it to boast some 25 million users in the 2000s, at a time before the launch of major social networks. Since then it has fallen dramatically, and many parts of the site have broken as technology has moved on.

Now the game is under the management of a new leadership team that has promised to “breathe fresh life into Neopia”, the virtual world in which the game’s characters live.

“For most of the last decade, the The Neopets Team [TNT] has been under the management of JumpStart Games, which, over time, has struggled to find success for Neopets,” the team wrote in a long blog post. “Beset by ageing site features, a waning user base, and a lack of resources, TNT had to work tirelessly just to barely keep the site afloat.

“The resources available to us simply weren’t substantial enough to sustain the level of growth and development that the site needed to keep up with the times, resulting in bugs, unconverted pages, broken games, and a lack of new content. Despite these challenges, TNT pushed onward, guided by an unwavering belief that this iconic brand that has meant so much to so many truly deserved better.”

The new version of the site will launch this week, the team said. It wil included updated games: many of the playable parts of the site broke with the demise of Adobe Flash, but the team has committed to updating them and bringing them back to be played.

The team also said that they would be introducing new games, including a mobile game called World of Neopets. That is a “social life-simulation game”, the team said, and it will be distinct from the crypto, metaverse and NFT-focus that has come to the site in recent times.

Through the 2000s, Neopets was one of the internet’s most popular websites, and in 2005 it was bought by Viacom for $160 million. But in the years that followed it was beset by problems, and was sold again to JumpStart Games in 2014.

That era was marked by a range of problems, including technical issues and data breaches that led to people’s passwords being stolen. In recent years, many parts of the site have been left broken.

JumpStart Games shut down at the end of June. But a new management team has struck a deal to buy the website and its contents and the new team will be led by Dominic Law, who played the games in the 2000s.