Neopets is making a comeback! Nostalgic virtual pet game will be re-released tomorrow – 24 YEARS after the original game launched
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Like Pokémon and Tamagotchi, Neopets sparked a wave of interest in virtual pets, especially among children, in the late 1990s and 2000s.
The game originally launched on November 15, 1999 and quickly became one of the most popular websites in the world, with over 25 million users at its peak.
Its follower count has declined in the years since its boom, and it has been plagued with bugs due to underfunding.
Now a team of developers is promising a “new era” for Neopets, with $4 million in funding from various investors to “revive the game.”
A revamped version of the site will relaunch tomorrow, followed by over 50 “revived” games on July 25.
Like Pokémon and Tamagotchi, Neopets took a huge interest in virtual pets in the late 1990s and 2000s, especially among children. The game originally launched on November 15, 1999 and quickly became one of the most popular websites in the world, with over 25 million users at its peak
What is Neopets?
A customizable ‘Neohome’ that allows players to build a home for their pets
Neopets is a virtual pet website launched in 1999.
It takes place in the fictional world, Neopia, where players adopt and care for their Neopets and play mini-games to earn money.
It peaked in popularity in the early 2000s, but has maintained a small but steady following in recent years.
Neopets is now owned by an independent company called World of Neopia Inc, which was part of Nickelodeon during its heyday.
“The Neopets team is equipped for the first time in more than a decade to make meaningful changes in the pursuit of a Neopic renaissance,” a blog post say.
“Financing from our management team and outside investors will enable us to revitalize the brand as a whole.
“We have a new round of investment and management buyout financing that will help us solve many of the community’s biggest problems, such as broken games, unconverted pages, and large files.”
Neopets was conceived in 1997 by Adam Powell, a Welsh computer programmer, the year the Tamagotchi craze took over the world.
The Neopets website was launched in November 1999 and the following month was seeing 600,000 pages daily.
The site allows users to create their own Neopets, which can be customized as different species with different colors and outfits.
Users could also feed, bathe and play with their Neopets, and even take them to the doctor if they got sick.
The site even let fans message other users by sending them a “NetMail,” in a precursor to what Facebook and Twitter would offer in the following decades.
The Neopets website was launched in November 1999 and the following month was seeing 600,000 pages daily. Pictured is an employee at Neopets headquarters in Glendale, California
The site allows users to create their own Neopets, which can be customized as different species with different colors and outfits
While praised for being educational, Neopets drew controversy for exposing children to heavy advertising and causing in-game expenses.
One of the virtual currencies in the game, Neocash, had to be bought with real money or won in the game by chance.
After two years of the Neopets website, a consortium of investors bought a majority stake in Neopets, and in 2005 it was bought by Viacom, the company that owns Nickelodeon.
In the mid-1990s, Neopets registered a peak of 25 million users, of which approximately 500,000 were children under the age of eight.
Neopets’ demise happened in March 2014 when it was sold to a California company called JumpStart Games, which was acquired by Chinese company NetDragon three years later.
By 2017, Neopets’ user base had dropped to just 100,000 daily users, JumpStart Games’ CEO at the time told Kotaku.
The staff tried to revive interest in the brand by launching a spin-off app in 2019, which was brought to smartphones for the first time.
In a disturbing moment for the passionate Neopets fan community, Jumpstart Games was shut down by NetDragon late last month.
Neopets took on a wave of interest in virtual pets in the late 1990s and 2000s caused by the Tamagotchi (pictured)
However, following a management buyout deal negotiated by fan Dominic Law, Neopets is now an independent company and free of ‘business baggage’.
A revamped and “unified” Neopets website launching Thursday will “serve as a one-stop shop” for brand announcements, links to games and products, a repository of Neopets articles and related links, and more.
“The newly unified Neopets team is now charged with the decision-making and overall brand strategy of Neopets, allowing them to work solely for the betterment of the entire Neopets game and community,” the post read.
The staff also plans to make Neopets compatible with mobile phone browsers, though the focus will initially be on desktop, as before.
However, despite pioneering digital currencies, the new project will be “not crypto-focused” and will not integrate crypto or non-fungible tokens (NFTs).