eopets is hoping to win again digital pet lovers by asserting a significant revamp to the tune of $4 million (£3.09m).
The brainchild of British builders, the positioning emerged as an early pioneer in web gaming and social media. Nevertheless it has since slipped into obscurity after a sequence of scandals, administration modifications, and common neglect of its platform.
In a bid to reboot its web site, Neopets introduced on Tuesday that it’ll revive 50 video games on July 25 utilizing funds raised from buyers.
Additionally it is planning a brand new cell sport, World of Neopets, which sounds so much like Nintendo’s Animal Crossing. Billed as a social-life simulation, the brand new sport helps you to embellish your Neohome, discover iconic lands, and get together and play mini-games along with your friends.
At its peak, Neopets was attracting 2.5 million customers and garnering greater than 2.2 billion web page views month-to-month by the mid-2000s. Gamers had been hooked on its cute mixture of gameplay and social components that noticed them caring for a digital pet, chatting in communities, and hoarding in-game forex.
Quick-forward to immediately, and Neopets is a damaged relic of a long-forgotten previous. After it was acquired by Viacom for $160 million (£122m) in 2005, many components of the positioning stopped working.
Through the years, customers complained that Neopets had change into overly commercialised by pushing extra content material you needed to pay for, as a substitute of counting on advertisements or sponsorships for income.
Now, Neopets says it’s being run by an impartial firm referred to as World of Neopia, Inc., created following a administration buyout take care of former proprietor NetDragon.
Additionally it is promising to revive its hottest video games, which run on a defunct animation software program referred to as Flash. Many web sites transitioned from Flash to HTML5 all through the 2010s, and standard smartphones usually don’t help it.
Regardless of the swap to cell gaming, Neopets says its web site will act as a central hub for its new merchandise, whereas nonetheless providing its authentic expertise.
As well as, Neopets says it’s employed new builders and artists to repair bugs, sort out mobile-browser compatibility points, and higher deal with buyer help requests.
The modifications have been met with cautious optimism on-line, with some customers worrying about neglecting their Neopets and others urging the positioning to take care of spammers.
Some even joked that the positioning might wind up changing Twitter as their go-to social media platform.
Whereas a Redditor summed up customers’ considerations by suggesting that Neopets tackle inflation and bots “if they need their superb comeback”.
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