Neopets are hoping to revive the game's popularity by updating the site with new features and games, and by making it more accessible on mobile devices. They are also planning to introduce a new NFT-based trading card game.
Neopets is making a comeback! The nostalgic virtual pet game will be re-released tomorrow, 24 years after the original game launched. 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 following has dwindled in the years since its prime, and it has been plagued by bugs due to underfunding.
Now, a team of developers is promising a 'new era' for Neopets, with $4 million of funding from various investors to 'to breathe fresh life' into the game. A revamped version of the site is relaunching tomorrow, followed by more than 50 'revived' games on July 25.
Neopets was devised in 1997 by Adam Powell, a Welsh computer programmer, in the year the Tamagotchi craze took over the world. The Neopets website launched in November 1999 and by the following month it was registering 600,000 page views daily.
The site let users create their own Neopets, which could be customised as different species with different colours 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 of what Facebook and Twitter would offer in the following decades.
Although it was praised for being educational, Neopets courted controversy for exposing children to heavy advertising and triggering in-game spending. One of the virtual currencies in the game, Neocash, had to either be purchased with real-world money or won by chance in-game.
After two years of the Neopets website, a consortium of investors bought a controlling interest in Neopets and in 2005 it was purchased by Viacom, the company that owns Nickelodeon. By the mid noughties, Neopets was registering a peak of 25 million users, around 500,000 of whom were children under the age of eight.
The Neopets downfall was triggered in March 2014 when it was sold to a California firm called JumpStart Games, which three years later was acquired by Chinese company NetDragon.
The new owners of Neopets are hoping to revive the game's popularity by updating the site with new features and games, and by making it more accessible on mobile devices. They are also planning to introduce a new NFT-based trading card game.
Only time will tell if the new Neopets will be able to recapture the magic of the original game. But for now, fans of the nostalgic virtual pet game are excited to see what the future holds.
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