The real reason behind Neopets controversial NFT decision.
Read Time:2 Minute, 23 Second
If you’re one of the few loyal regulars of Neopets you’ve probably caught the news about Neopets launching NFT’s (Non-Fungable Tokens) and the drama that accompanied it on the Neoboards and other social spaces like Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr. So Why did Neopets jump in on the NFT fad despite it backfiring harder than a blumaroo bashing a Lord Kass plushie?
Obviously, the answer is money but if you want to know about it in more depth and detail continue reading.
The truth is, Neopets has drastically declined in popularity and profitability. The website used to gather 5 billion pageviews a month back in 2005 which was very attractive to advertisers at the time, hence why Viacom bought the site. Nowadays the website can barely muster 4 million unique visitors a month according to Traffic ranking website Semrush.
Now I don’t have to tell any Neopian the cause of this decline but it does factor in why Neopets is so poorly managed these days.
To put it simply, the reason why Neopets turned to NFT’s is that the current owners of Neopets don’t believe in the site anymore. Gone are the days of free-flowing advertising-income, as of right now the website is more of a liability than an asset to the owners. So if the website isn’t profitable anymore, what’s the best way to squeeze out the last amount of money before shutting down?
Yeah, you guessed it, the crypto hype and don’t be mistaken, this isn’t some decision by some old ass management folks who have no clue what they’re doing, this is all carefully calculated. The potential money that they can grab with the launch of their NFT’s is far larger than any amount of money they can get by continuing to operate the site. To prove my case, a couple of days ago Sulake, the company behind Habbo Hotel launched their NFT’s generating 14 million dollars in trading volume.
Since NFT buyers are notorious suckers for wasting money on worthless tokens – in the hopes of it increasing in value and being able to sell it to another sucker – Neopets will likely be able to raise a couple of millions despite the massive backlash of their actual community.
Basically what Jumpstart is doing right now is the equivalent of throwing a party and inviting over the cool kids with lots of money rather than your actual friends in the hopes of getting clout. Jumpstart is trading their loyal and relatively stable paying fanbase who know the site by heart in for a bunch of crypto fanatics who probably couldn’t care less about Neopets itself and just are here for the free booze opportunity to make money of NFT’s.
In conclusion, this might not be the end of the Neopets brand but this definitely might be the end of the Neopets community.
Happy
0 %
Sad
59 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
41 %
Surprise
0 %
19
2
Average Rating