by Lydia Ludmila 
Despite $4 million in funding from crypto firms, Neopets is ditching NFTs—and making a game that can “better reflect our values and vision.”
Just a few months ago, Neopets Meta CEO Dominic Law publicly promoted the concept of “play-and-earn” Web3 gaming and told Forbes that the cutesy Neopets franchise offered “all the right ingredients” for an NFT game. But now it’s been abruptly canceled—and it’s not entirely clear why.
Neopets Metaverse, a free-to-play title based on the 1999 virtual pet simulator web game, was in its alpha stage of development and the team had already sold over 9,000 Solana NFTs across multiple collections—plus it raised millions from backers including Polygon Ventures and Avalanche’s ecosystem fund.
On Monday, the Neopets Team—which refers to itself as the acronym TNT—published a blog post explaining the Neopets Metaverse shutdown and its pivot to a non-crypto mobile game in development called World of Neopets
“TNT has taken a close look at every nook and cranny of Neopets, and after doing so, the decision has been made to transition away from the Neopets Metaverse game and redistribute those resources to the development of a game that we feel can better reflect our values and vision,” the company said.
“This decision was not made lightly,” TNT added, “but it was made for the best reason: we want to design a game that’s more in line with what the community has been asking for!”
Neopets is now also under “a brand new leadership team,” per the post. Does this mean that Law, its Hong Kong-based Web3 advocate who previously worked at various financial firms, is out?
It actually appears that he’s staying at the company. Law’s Linkedin profile still shows him at Neopets, and his title shifted this month from “Chief Metaverse Officer” to CEO. That said, it’s unclear whether it was his decision to move Neopets away from NFTs.
