Neopets was one of the hottest destinations on the World Wide Web in the early 2000s, but its virtual pet audience has been declining for years. Neopets itself is also in decline, and its developers admit that they have "had to work sleepless nights to keep the site barely afloat," while operating at a loss for the past decade. The company's developers admit that they "had to work tirelessly to barely maintain the site," while operating at a loss for the past 10 years.

Viacom acquired Neopets at its peak in 2005 for $160 million and sold it to US edutainment company JumpStart in 2014. According to a blog post by the newly reorganized Neopets development team, NetDragon closed JumpStart last month for undisclosed reasons, and Neopets might have gone along had it not been saved by a "management buyout deal." [The team is part of a new company called World of Neopia, led by Dominic Law, who was previously in charge of NetDragon's Neopets Metaverse NFT project (the Neopets NFT collection and blockchain game in development). According to the blog post, Law led the effort to save Neopets from JumpStart's closure, which resulted in JumpStart's former Neopets team and NetDragon's Neopets Metaverse team "joining forces and becoming an independent company with Law as CEO"

"In the past, the buyout was completed in order to allow Law to become the CEO of the company.

"Freed from the corporate baggage of the past, the newly united [Neopets team] is now charged with decision-making and overall brand strategy for Neopets and can only work to improve the Neopets game and community as a whole," the announcement states.

Low was previously responsible for Neopets NFT games, despite the fact that just a few months ago he stated that Neopets had "all the right elements for a Web3 game," and despite the $4 million in funding Neopets received from a crypto company earlier this year. Notwithstanding, the now independent studio has stated that it will "move on" from the Neopets Metaverse NFT game immediately. Instead, it plans to repurpose some of the game's assets in a new mobile game called World of Neopets, "a social life simulation game where you live the ideal Neopets life from a Neopets perspective." At least for now, World of Neopets will not include NFTs or cryptocurrencies.

"After scrutinizing every inch of Neopets, the Neopets team has decided to move on from the Neopets Metaverse game and reallocate its resources to developing a game we believe will better reflect Neopets' values and vision." The announcement on the Neopets Metaverse website states.

The company adds that all existing Neopets Metaverse NFTs "will continue to be available in the open marketplace" and "will continue to support the Web3 community in accepting ownership of these collections," but Discord does not indicate what support will be provided other than keeping the servers open. For example, they do not tell us that NFT owners will receive some kind of sympathy bonus award in the upcoming "World of Neopets" game.

World of Neopia has stated that in addition to working on the new mobile game, it will also work on the original Neopets website, which already seems to be fixing bugs and reviving games that were broken by the end of Adobe Flash support. Don't worry," he said, "we'll be working on the original Neopets website as well. Neopets.com as you know and love it is not going anywhere. In fact, great things lie ahead for the classic virtual pet site where it all began," the announcement reads.

On July 20, a new Neopets homepage will be launched, which will include a detailed roadmap for the future of the nearly 25-year-old virtual pet game. Today's big blog post also has quite a lot to say about the future of Neopets, including news of an "exclusive virtual concert," a "whole new plot," and a giveaway celebrating this "new era" of Neopets.