Neopets tries to launch comeback as web site guarantees a ‘new period’

Neopets is launching a comeback that it says will begin a “new period” for the digital pet web site.

The location was launched in 1999 and have become one of the crucial common and beloved elements of the early web. Gamers have been capable of take care of cartoon pets in addition to taking part in video games and chatting with different customers.

Its reputation led it to boast some 25 million customers within the 2000s, at a time earlier than the launch of main social networks. Since then it has fallen dramatically, and lots of elements of the location have damaged as expertise has moved on.

Now the sport is beneath the administration of a brand new management workforce that has promised to “breathe recent life into Neopia”, the digital world wherein the sport’s characters stay.

“For a lot of the final decade, the The Neopets Staff [TNT] has been beneath the administration of JumpStart Video games, which, over time, has struggled to search out success for Neopets,” the workforce wrote in an extended weblog put up. “Beset by ageing web site options, a waning person base, and an absence of assets, TNT needed to work tirelessly simply to barely hold the location afloat.

“The assets accessible to us merely weren’t substantial sufficient to maintain the extent of development and growth that the location wanted to maintain up with the occasions, leading to bugs, unconverted pages, damaged video games, and an absence of recent content material. Regardless of these challenges, TNT pushed onward, guided by an unwavering perception that this iconic model that has meant a lot to so many really deserved higher.”

The brand new model of the location will launch this week, the workforce mentioned. It wil included up to date video games: most of the playable elements of the location broke with the demise of Adobe Flash, however the workforce has dedicated to updating them and bringing them again to be performed.

The workforce additionally mentioned that they’d be introducing new video games, together with a cell recreation known as World of Neopets. That could be a “social life-simulation recreation”, the workforce mentioned, and will probably be distinct from the crypto, metaverse and NFT-focus that has come to the location in current occasions.

Story continues

By way of the 2000s, Neopets was one of many web’s hottest web sites, and in 2005 it was purchased by Viacom for $160 million. However within the years that adopted it was beset by issues, and was offered once more to JumpStart Video games in 2014.

That period was marked by a spread of issues, together with technical points and information breaches that led to folks’s passwords being stolen. In recent times, many elements of the location have been left damaged.

JumpStart Video games shut down on the finish of June. However a brand new administration workforce has struck a deal to purchase the web site and its contents and the brand new workforce might be led by Dominic Regulation, who performed the video games within the 2000s.