Do you remember your first Neopet? Mine was a Gelert, a little dog-like critter with
fwippy ears and tail. I was a tween, and I just liked the design of the pets. I took
care of the lil guy for a bit, and then I forgot about Neopets….
...Until The Scandal.
While I was away, Neopets was brewing a stew of greed, obsession, and toxic nostalgia.
Hackers. Black markets. Coconut Jubjub. The bubble has ruptured and now The Neopets Team
is trying to keep the community from falling apart, without letting the site and its economy
crumble into the sea like King Haggard’s castle.
To understand why this happened, you need to understand the history of Neopets.
Neopets has humble origins: the site launched in 1999, and it was made by just two people:
Donna Williams and Adam Powell. The premise is: you adopt pets, take care of them, and
play games! Playing games lets you earn a currency called Neopoints, which you can use
to buy stuff for your pets.
Unsurprisingly, kids loved this. Neopets exploded: Within two months the site was getting 600,000
page views a day. The site quickly sold, with a majority stake going to a guy named Doug
Dohring, who was aaaaaAAAAAA— a marketing genius! Under Dohring’s leadership In the
early 2000s, Neopets grew to 21 million users under and Dohring he targeted them with “immersive
advertising.”
-BusinessWeek: NeoPet owners can feed their pets Kraft's
Capri Sun drinks, or play games in which they race Mattel Hot Wheels cars, or interact with
the Diva Starz dolls.
- Neopets landed sponsorships with Coca-Cola, Kraft, McDonalds, Procter & Gamble, Disney,
and Nickelodeon. And the advertising worked. But for the kids — and the adults, let’s
be real — playing it, Neopets wasn’t a business - it was a huge creative opportunity.
They were joining guilds, making friends, learning CSS, writing articles for the site
newspaper, and roleplaying as their pets on the forums…
they were also figuring out how to exploit their own economy, just like Dohring was exploiting
their impressionable eyeballs. Cheaters made bots, they exploited site glitches to get
rare items, created sockpuppet accounts, and sold fake in-game stuff.
Right from the beginning of the site’s history, there were basically three camps:
People who wanna play a beloved children’s pet game. People who want to exploit a beloved
children’s pet game. And The Neopets Team, who run the site, and have to tell the difference
between the two.
This whole thing has led to a “freeze accounts first, ask questions later” admin culture
at Neopets, which is controversial for the players, though probably necessary for the
sanity of the admins. It’s a system where no one wins — and it was about to be tested.
In 2005, Viacom bought the site for $160 million dollars, and it seemed like they were ready
to respectfully assume the mantle of creative guardians to the online home of everyone’s
beloved Neopets:
- Jeff Dunn: "We're committed to being everywhere our demographics
are, and they have them.”
-They literally say they want to put more banner ads on the site. And they’re going
to make “TV shows, movies and toys,” “kids’ books,” “an upcoming animated movie,”
“Neopets game for PlayStation 2,” “PSP handheld game.”
Shortly after Viacom stepped in, the founders left over creative differences. And in 2007,
two years after acquiring Neopets, the company made a decision that would change the way
people played the game, and fuel drama and chaos for the next decade.
Players call it “the conversion.”
Up until that point, Neopets made money from brand deals and banner ads. But what if players
could just give Viacom money directly? Wouldn’t that rule? So, they introduced a premium currency
called NeoCash, and customizations to buy with it. But for Neopets to wear clothes,
they had to have new art. If you’ve been on literally any social network
that’s just had a UI redesign, you understand how well most users react to change. Now imagine
if a Twitter update did this to your dog. So! this would have been upsetting enough
for a community this nostalgic, but it became so much worse, because not every pet was converted
equally. Remember how I said players did crimes to
get rare items? Some of those rare items were paintbrushes that could totally revamp your
pet. They’re expensive as hell, and some are random drops that are just plain difficult
to find. People work and save for a long time to get these brushes. So the Neopets Team
decided that converting those painted pets would be optional.
Wait, what’s this?
Suddenly even unconverted Pets like the Plushy Nimmo, which nobody wanted pre-conversion,
became desirable — because there were such a small, finite number of them in existence.
And this totally changed the way people played Neopets.
- People on the Neopian Pound board, where trading culture is centered, created their
own economy — one that the Neopets Team has no control over. They regularly vote on
the value of all Neopets, and rank them in ten tiers. So if you really want that UC Darigan
Wocky, but all you’ve got is a Tyrannian Quiggle — tough shit, my dude. You’ll
have to trade your way up.
And people will go spectacular lengths to make that happen. One way in is that no two
pets can have the same name. Since Neopets has been around for decades, that means lots
of names are complete gibberish. A Good Name is basically currency:
- choquis: Here is how I obtained one of my unconverted
neopets, so you can see exactly how I did it:
When I read a new book, and find a name that I like, I see if it is taken. [...] Another
user loved the name too, so she offered me an uncommon real word for my pet pwith a royal
custom.
I traded the royal custom + book character name for the uncommon real word.
A few months later, I traded my uncommon real word with a Draik morph […] for a very common
real name misspell, which also happened to be an uncommon real name.
I traded this guy for an unconverted Desert Poogle with a bad name
I then traded my Poogle for a fandom real name.
That lovebug then traded for an unconverted Coconut JubJub with a bad name.
Keep in mind; this trade sequence took about six months (but I am not as active in trading
as some traders).
- As confusing as this system is, its literally the only way you can legally get your hands
on a UC. The Neopets Team’s position was that generating new UCs couldn’t be done.
No matter how nicely you asked. TNT representative:
So there are a lot of ways that UCs just don't really jive with the system we have in place
now, we upload pets as a system of layers now … Unconverted pets were not created
that way, instead they are a single static image that doesn't change.
They'd need to be broken into layers... (speech quickens and jumbles)
And that's just scratching the surface of issues, but it comes down to that they weren't
drawn to work as separate assets the way the converted pets are, and trying to make them
fit in that way would be nearly impossible.
- But as long as there have been UCs… there have been people looking to profit off them.
Sometimes UCs are stolen from hacked accounts and traded away, but you can also just buy
one on a blackmarket website, for anywhere from 10 to 150 dollars. You risk getting your
Neopets account frozen, but [shrug] I’m not gonna tell you how to spend your stimulus
check. The blackmarket sites were around when Viacom
ran the show, and they stuck around when the Neopets IP was sold to JumpStart in 2014.
By then Neopets was 15 years old, and long past the glory days of 21 million users and
McDonalds’ sponsorships. It still had its core community of passionate,
creative, and hungry players. But there were problems: Right after the acquisition, in
2015 a lot of Neopets staff were laid off. In 2017 a hack compromised millions of accounts.
And as of 2020, the small staff is running the game while gradually re-doing the UI of
this enormous website. Lots of it still like it did when I first made my account over ten
years ago.
TNT thought they had more to worry about than UCs. Little did they know, the Lennys were
coming home to roost.
In December 2020, a player named Amanda logged in to find her unconverted Darigan Lupe, Klyko,
off joyriding on someone else’s account. She reported it, and uhhh set off a chain
of events that almost tore the community apart. When a stolen pet gets reported, it can’t
just be zapped straight back to the original account. Because of the UC gold rush, pets
get traded a lot. So if Klyko is stolen from here… and ends up here… every pet involved
in any trade that Klyko touched has to be restored to its owner. Usually this is a pretty
stressful event for a community that, again, is doing this.
Amanda’s situation was extra stressful... because it involved hundreds and hundreds
of pets. Reversals were still happening in March of 2021. And when the dust finally settled,
some UC pets were just straight up missing.
TNT said they were doing their best to fix things. But rumors spread via the boards that
something drastic was being done to repay the community. Something they’d insisted
was “nearly impossible” for over a decade.
Missing unconverted pets were being replaced...by creating new ones.
Some people treated this like a big AHA!! THEY WERE LYING! Which I don’t think is
fair. Nearly impossible in this case clearly means “really hard to do and definitely
not worth it, please stop asking” which like, fair. But a portion of the community
felt betrayed, like wait, what? You have a tool that can unconvert pets? Why and how
long have you had it?
But guess what: things were about to get even more complicated.
- BOOLANE
Youngest UC Ever! Check story on My First UC!
For those unaware, for over a year a certain website has generated (from nothing) Neopoints
items, NeoCash items, and Neopoints. [...]
While they can’t generate UCs from nothing, they just need an existing pet that is the
right color and species for the UC version to exist.
- This post revealed that the blackmarket sites weren’t just selling legitimately
obtained UCs: they were adopting abandoned pets from Neopets’ pound, and turning them
into NEW UCs, by exploiting a vulnerability in the website. But it got worse:
Boolane released a list of 3,542 names: pets that allegedly were fake UCs, purchased off
the blackmarket.
-Boolane: To give a certain “degree” of truth about
my statements and how serious it is…
After years I finally reached my goal of enough NP for a Tyrannian paint brush! This let me
paint my pretty pet and then make it UC!
-And there was the proof: a Tyrannian Quiggle, born March 10, age: 0 hours old. A brand new
UC. BUT WHY, WHY CAUSE THIS CHAOS? The very working theory of what happened is that allegedly,
the snitch had a falling out with the blackmarket sellers. They tried to sell the site out to
TNT, but didn’t get a response. They posted on Reddit, and it got taken down. The Pound
Chat post was their nuclear option. For the traders, this was potentially a waking
nightmare. They had just been through months of chain reversals because a stolen, real
UC — now there was a list of over THREE THOUSAND PETS that might be compromised. Would
TNT have to delete them? Would the pets get converted? Would people’s accounts get frozen
for having contraband? Nobody knew!
But some players decided to fuck around and find out, using the exploit to create even
more UC pets and then getting their accounts frozen just for the meme.
For TNT, this was also not fun. For one thing, this all went down on a weekend. And it meant
everyone knew that the blackmarket sites had, for years, been doing the exact thing that
TNT was telling players they couldn’t do. Unconverting pets.
The result is that now, after all the hubbub has died down, TNT is promising big changes.
They say they’re not going to touch the 3,500 cursed pets. And… they want to bring
back UCs, for everyone. I talked about it with Stephanie Lord, Neopets’ Brand Manager:
Stephanie Lord - I think one of the biggest things we've really
learned is, you know, a decision we made in 2000 to 2007, even like 2015 might not be
the same decision we would make today.
We are looking at bringing them back in some way that people can actually get them in a
safe way.
-TNT has their work cut out for them. This fall, a new Neopets cartoon is supposed to
come out, and JumpStart is poised to put out toys and plushes and trading cards. A whole
new generation of kids is supposed to fall in love with Neopets, the brand. But what
about Neopets, the website?
Players have stuck with it for 20 years, but we can all be honest that this doesn’t look
like the games kids these days are used to. And Stephanie said something that really surprised
me, which is that maybe it’s okay if most of the players on this website are adults.
Stephanie Lord - I'm not sure if the, you know, classic site
is ever going to be mainly kids again, as just the nature of gaming has changed...it'll
always be a welcoming place for kids for sure. But […] it is kind of tailored to our current
audience.
We still want to be the game that they remember and love. And you know, if that means giving
the kids that do come another avenue to enjoy Neopets, you know, we'll ...make something
that kind of has the spirit of Neopets, but in a more modern, kid-friendly way.
-It just so happens that a lot of these players remember and love a set of jpgs that were
discontinued 14 years ago. If TNT can bring UCs back, some people are excited to maybe,
finally get their dream pet. Others fear that the UC economy will tank, ruining their trading
game. But maybe that’s just what the site needs? If there’s no rarity and the tier
system doesn’t matter anymore, maybe people will just trade for what they love.
But this ain’t the only sad story from this crazy mixed up website. I reckon in the dark
backroom of some knockoff forum, there’s another bubble being born. If there’s a
way to exploit it, people will find it.
Forget it, Jake. It’s Neopets.