Neopets’ 25th anniversary in 2024 was more than a birthday celebration: the company presented it as the start of a renewed relationship with players and a wider effort to revive the brand. Its plans paired repairs to the classic browser site with new games, community engagement and licensed products. Neopets later reported audience growth, while acknowledging that the business remained loss-making and that technical work was ongoing.
Why Neopets called its 25th year a revival
Neopets dates its launch to 1999, making 2024 its 25th anniversary. The company’s public case for a revival began earlier: in 2023, it described a management buyout after JumpStart’s closure and the consolidation of two Neopets teams under a unified organization with control over brand strategy. That is Neopets’ account of the transition.
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Multipet 7" NEOPETS - Plush KAU Plush Filled Dog Toy that squeaks | Buy on Amazon |
Neopets said it raised $4 million from investors in early 2023 and received additional funding connected to the buyout. In its 2023 announcement, the company framed the change as a chance to refocus on the franchise and its players. The team wrote, “We want to create games that the Neopets community will love, and that means listening closely to what users have to say.” Neopets’ 2023 announcement described community feedback as a reason to reassess its plans.
What the company said it would fix and change
Repairing the classic browser site
The 2023 plan prioritized the longstanding website: converting pages, fixing bugs, improving compatibility with mobile browsers, and upgrading customer support. Neopets also said it was exploring Ruffle, an emulator intended to restore functions affected by Adobe Flash’s end of support. The company reported that the customer-support ticket backlog had fallen by more than 80%; that was a company-reported figure, not an independently audited measure.
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Neopets’ anniversary preview said Ruffle had brought back more than 100 mini games. In the same 2023 article, the company said the site had reached a peak of 35 million monthly active users in 2005. Those historical figures provide context for the scale of the franchise, but they are not directly comparable to the later audience measures the company reported for 2024. The 2023 anniversary preview also quoted CEO Dominic Law saying Neopets is “about so much more than simply raising a virtual pet online.”
Moving away from Neopets Metaverse
Neopets said player feedback indicated that Neopets Metaverse did not reflect what many users valued about the franchise. The company said it would rebuild that concept as World of Neopets, a mobile social life-simulation game. It also previewed an Island Builders relaunch, a concert and a new plot in 2023. These were plans announced at the time; the available company updates do not establish that every item was completed.
What Neopets reported for its anniversary year
In a February 5, 2025 review of 2024, Neopets said daily active users reached nearly 250,000 and monthly active users exceeded 400,000. The company described this as more than three times growth since it became a small independent studio and its highest audience in a decade. The cited passage does not explain the measurement methodology, so the figures should be read as company-reported metrics rather than independently verified counts.
Neopets also reported that its Instagram followers grew 123% and video views grew 150% in 2024. It said it worked with more than 30 partners, and that its global 25th-birthday event reached 8,000 attendees across 41 cities and 13 countries. The company said it appeared at 13 events worldwide. These figures describe Neopets’ own account of its anniversary year.
CEO Dominic Law called 2024 “the beginning of our transformative journey to revive Neopets,” adding that the company was seeing meaningful player-base growth for the first time in a decade. The statement and metrics appear in Neopets’ February 2025 review of 2024.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How the revival reached beyond the browser game
Neopets’ 2024 review pointed to licensed products as another part of its effort to reconnect with fans. It named Upper Deck’s Neopets Trading Card Game and PhatMojo blind-box plushies; the company described the plush release as the brand’s first in more than a decade. At the time of that review, the plushies were sold through Hot Topic, GameStop, BoxLunch and Claire’s. That listing does not establish present-day stock.
The company also previewed a March 2025 Monopoly: Neopets 25th Anniversary Limited Edition, an Upper Deck Battle for Meridell expansion, card-game accessories, a second graphic novel and an official coloring book. These were plans described in the review, not evidence of current release or availability.
For readers curious about the tabletop game, Upper Deck’s version 1.2 Battledome Trading Card Game rulebook, published in 2024, describes a 50-card deck built around Neopet cards, a Rainbow Pool, equipment and dice. It lists card types including Codestones, Equipment, Food, Faeries, Legends, Map Pieces, Paint Brushes and Potions, and identifies the game as suitable for ages 6 and up. The Upper Deck rulebook is a reference for the game’s format, not a guide to current product stock.
What the May 2025 update says about progress and risk
In a May 22, 2025 community Q&A, Neopets addressed whether it might abandon the game or its players by asking, “Is Neopets planning a ‘Rugpull’?” Its answer emphasized continued work on the classic site. The company said the Classic team had more than doubled in size over two years and that site loading speed had improved by 35%. Those are company claims; the update does not provide an independent performance test or measurement method.
The same update acknowledged a limit to the comeback story: Neopets said it remained loss-making despite having had two break-even months. It also said its engineering and site-improvement team was larger than its NC releases team. The Q&A offers a useful view of the company’s stated priorities, but it is not an audited financial statement. Neopets’ May 2025 update sets out both the continuing investment and the financial challenge.
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