- Messages
- 999
- Reaction score
- 123
- Points
- 68
Neopets, which was once the peoples' choice for everything virtual pets, had their website launched in 1999. I had the opportunity of joining the site in 2002 after a friend, Mark, told me about virtual pets.
When I joined Neopets in 2002, we had nothing like Neocash or any of these premium subscriptions that we see today on their platform. It was simple and colourful, and the virtual pets had that colourful nice looks with its simple graphics. Again, I would say the community was all about having fun while spending less of real money as playing the game that we all came to enjoy playing back in those days on Neopets, sadly it didn't continue post 2005.
I left Neopets for some years, as a result of gaining admission to high-school, and on my return to playing the game, I noticed a whole lot of changes with ownership, Premium subscription, old players leaving the website and a lot more!
Here, we are going to discuss a couple of things that contributed to these changes that brought about Neopets’ downfall:
Change of Ownership in 2005 (Viacom Acquisition).
Viacom (now Paramount) won the bid to purchase Neopets in 2005, and this acquisition was initially welcomed by the community as it led to a boost in resources. This didn't last long as the attention moved towards flashed-based games and running ads. This move didn't sit well with the long-time players who used to have fun playing the virtual pet simulator game.
The Fall of Adobe Flash (2020)
Before the year 2020, there was an announcement that Adobe would discontinue its Flash services. This move heavily affected Neopets as the platform depended much on Flash for its games. When Adobe activated this plan in 2020, most of the activities on Neopets’ site became irrelevant and even moved to convert games to HTML5, which didn't achieve the desired success. This was one of the biggest factors that contributed to Neopets' downfall.
Less Focus on Key Features
Those running Neopets began neglecting some key features that made Neopets stand out during its glory days, such as pet customization, the economy having issues with inflated prices, and even the Neoboards. Most loyal players saw this move as a move away from free to play and depending more on pay to play site, and that made the majority of the loyal members abandon the site for other alternatives.
Poor Effort on Retaining Loyal Players
Let's be honest, no one can spend real money on a game and not wish to get the best experience or something near to a wonderful experience. This is where the Neopets Team failed because most of the loyal players that signed up on premium memberships, bought resources with real money, and sticked around during the tough times never got appreciated.
Their epileptic way of responding to complaints made it worse. I was fed up at one point when I had the experience of being logged out of one of my accounts as a premium member that pays approximately $8 every month playing the virtual pet simulator game and the support team couldn't respond to my email for days!
Why won't Neopets experience a downfall when they treat the loyal players as moneybags whom they aim to get money from without providing any value for money spent on Microtransactions. It is sad, disheartening, and awful management from their end.
When I go to conventions, I see Neopets merch around with claims that they are an active community and the best, but I would rather support a virtual pet startup like Wolvden than stick around with Neopets.
Frequent Change of Ownership
Since inception, Neopets has had more than 3 new owners. Viacom bought it from Adam and Donna Powell in 2005 for $160 million and later sold it to JumpStart in 2014. JumpStart, an educational game company, couldn't revive Neopets due to lack of experience in the industry , which resulted in selling the platform to NetDragon in 2017 through acquisition.
That acquisition even resulted in more mismanagement of Neopets as the new management was all focused on making money.
The latest owners, The Neopets Team(World of Neopia), who took over in 2023, made promises of big changes and exciting times ahead, but progress has been sluggish. You can watch this video on YouTube to see how far Neopets fared in 2023.
Conclusion
In your opinion, do you think Neopets has fallen from grace to grass?
For me, I would say that Neopets has experienced a lot of mismanagement all these years, and that has made the platform to be a shadow of its past. There is a need for major fixes, creation of new content, and a better site security before most virtual pets players who are active will begin to take them seriously again.
What do you think about Neopets downfall?
