A History Of Neopets Controversies

[Music] neopets one of the web's earliest pet sites in the virtual world that launched a thousand virtual worlds there's a good chance that any young adult you ask will have many fond memories of neopets and will be able to talk for hours on end about their beloved job job or the time they accrued millions of neopoints through illicit trading and became a tycoon you know typical kid stuff but it wasn't all rainbows and fairies on neopets and the site is infamous for the many scandals that it's gotten itself into over the years today let me take you on a journey an exploration of the many strange scandals that our beloved neopets has gotten itself into over the years [Music] before we get on with the video i'd just like to give a massive thank you today's sponsor honey i'm sure that these days most of the shopping you do is probably online that's where honey comes in honey will become your dearest most beloved friend when it comes to online shopping it's a free online shopping tool that 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site in november of 1999. in the beginning the goal of the site was to quote keep university students entertained and possibly make some cash from banner advertising the site was fairly simple users would look after their own virtual pets play mini-games and chat to others on the forum the original site was extremely rough around the edges littered with pop culture references and half-baked creature designs but the ideas were all there the creature designs were strange yet lovable the games were simple yet addictive and a system where neopets had to be cared for regularly kept players coming back for more by christmas of 1999 the site was logging over 600 000 views daily and the developers were struggling to keep up with the server costs and surge of popularity powell and williams had no idea that the site would blow up so much in just a little under a month and so they began looking for investors who could help them manage their newly viral site and this is where we reach controversy number one [Music] in late december of 1999 adam and donna met doug during who agreed to invest in neopets alongside several other investors they all brought shares in early january of 2000 presumably waiting until after the turn of the century just in case y2k wiped out the entire neopets website you know it's always good to be on the safe side during himself founded neopets inc just a month later turning the once unknown website into a bonafide brand in just a few months so neopits was saved they were able to upgrade their servers and now work full time on the bustling website the artwork was upgraded and the features were piling up from battling pets to trading items to investing in the endgame stock market the site became a place for kids to explore and express themselves many have even cited the website as a sort of safe haven for kids in the early 2000s during a time where the internet could be openly unfriendly beyond your small web ring of friends so neopets was the hottest new trend and despite its original demographic of college students and young adults it's a big hit with kids and tweens it seemed like everything was going great and at the time it very much was but it would come out years later that doug during and his team were scientologists now for legal reasons all of this is completely alleged and this is all in the context of education and entertainment in the form of recounting a series of events that happened according to publicly available sources okay with that out of the way let's continue for a period of about five years in the early 2000s doug during was the ceo and primary investor in neopets and also happened to be a scientologist this has become something of an urban legend in modern times with rumors of brainwashing and subliminal messages being spread around some claim that one of the pets the zooey talk was actually named after the scientologist figure zenu and in a now deleted article kotaku claimed that employees were pressured into joining scientology however none of this was actually true and would be debunked by the creators themselves scientology actually made much less of an impact on the site than many people have claimed in a redder ama from 2015 donna williams wrote about the role of scientology on neopets in the early years quote the company was structured like a scientology org it didn't really change anything that i noticed apart from some odd tests that interviewees had to take consisting of questions like which straight line seemed friendlier and stuff like that we also had a lot of obscure celebrities coming around the office for tours at one time there was some talk about putting scientology education on the site but we killed that idea pretty sharpish adam and i made sure that it never made its way onto anything sight related religion and politics were two big no-nos for us as far as site content went can't say the discussions we had to keep it that way were much fun though tom cruise totally came around the office didn't he the reason that the company was quote structured like a scientology orc has been attributed to the claim that during was using the org board a scientologist business model to run the company while adam and donna felt that this didn't heavily impact the company others felt differently about this business model patricia illingworth a senior fellow at the kennedy school of government's car center for human rights at harvard was quoted in an outline article calling the business model morally unethical for a variety of reasons regardless aside from a lot of fear-mongering and childhood ruined posts about scientology's involvement the organization itself had little bearing on the website due to adam and donna's refusal to add politics or religion to the game it remained largely unchanged in that regard it turns out that the most interesting thing that doug during brought to the table wasn't scientology but something called immersive advertising during the early days of the site adam and donna had been making money from pop-up and banner ads which were commonplace on the internet at the time however doug during was a businessman first and foremost and putting that business acumen to work he created something that he called immersive advertising instead of advertising brands and products through explicit ads why not incorporate the advertising into the game this may not seem that egregious these days product placement is pretty common with everything from movies to tv shows to music videos having those shots that linger just a little bit too long on a pair of beats headphones or a coke can back in the early 2000s though for a game like neopets this was virtually unheard of from a 2002 time magazine article quote at the neopia food shop ooh oreo cookies nestle sweethearts and laffy taffy candy along with unprocessed foods have occasionally been available to buy with neopoints to feed virtual pets kids can also win points by watching serial ads or movie trailers in the disney theater the neopets team were adding branded items and mini games onto the site covertly advertising to their young user base under the guise of simple gameplay with banner ads it's easy to tell that what you're seeing is in fact an advertisement but children had a much harder time identifying this immersive advertising neopets worked with a huge number of brands including mcdonald's general mills cereal zazzle disney coca-cola craft heinz mattel capri sun nickelodeon and more to be fair it was an extremely effective form of advertising that would only gain popularity over the years but at the time it was very controversial articles and think pieces on the ethics of immersive advertising were constantly coming out with many parents critical of neopets and their associated brands and it prompted many people to raise the question how young is too young to start being targeted with advertising 80 of neopit's players were under 18 with the average age being about 14 but it wasn't uncommon for seven and eight year olds to have accounts nowadays though copper would have you believe otherwise online content targets young children more than ever but like i said earlier this was pretty unheard of at the time for most kids this immersive advertising flew under their radar as they plied their neopets with mcdonald's and coke but it was so egregious at times that even young kids could feel that something was off in a vice article on the topic one 30 year old player wrote quote as a 10 year old it felt weird and inappropriate to me that i was being so aggressively targeted with advertising despite the controversy that during's immersive advertising would bring about it would go on to become an extremely profitable and popular form of advertising for online games titans like club penguin and heber hotel would integrate brands into their game and as the years went on this style of invasive yet covert advertising would become the norm so thank you neopets for pioneering capitalism for children it turns out that it wasn't just targeted advertising that was raising concerns on neopets.com many parents had begun to worry about the normalization of gambling on the website neopets had a whole host of addictive gambling games from bruce b slots to bilge dice to wheel of excitement and even had casino games like blackjack and poker there was also of course the neopean stock market where kids could put together their very own portfolio of fictional investments and watch haplessly as all their stocks plummeted also fun fact apparently shortly before viacom purchased neopets doug during admitted that he purposely messed with the european stock market to bankrupt the in-game companies such a [ __ ] troll of course these games were played with neo points a virtual currency it's not like neopets was getting all these kids into real debt over jubjub blackjack but the fact that there were so many games based upon real life gambling on this kids site did raise concerns some may see this as an overreaction but the media that kids consume does have an impact on them and kind of shapes their worldview so gamifying and normalizing gambling it's a little off these rising concerns came to a head in 2004 when neopets partnered with mcdonald's to include neopets plushies with every happy meal damn mcdonald's toys used to actually be good these are some sweet pieces of merch anyway every neopet plushie came with a tag which directed kids to the neopets website and when one mother discovered her nine-year-old playing online poker to feed his virtual pet she went to the media because of course she did she contacted australian current affairs show today tonight who aired the story parents not mchappy over pokey toy for those outside of australia and new zealand the pokey is another word for a fruit machine poker machine i couldn't for the life of me find any videos of this segment from today tonight but a transcript of the broadcast reads among the activities the site offers are virtual pokies roulette games and card games where one of the cute characters teaches children the rules of poker and blackjack as michelle's son harley explains you need to gamble to raise points to feed your virtual neopets he says if you don't gamble up enough points to feed your pet it goes to the orphanage players who don't win enough points gambling to buy food actually have to send their neopets to a virtual soup kitchen a nine-year-old boy doesn't have the ability to question michelle said he doesn't even know what a virtual soup kitchen is child psychologist michael cargrigg says that this is a sure-fire way to turn our kids into gambling addicts he says children just don't have the critical facilities needed to understand the dangers of adult style gambling as far as i'm concerned this is sanitizing normalizing and glamorizing gambling mr cargreg said i don't necessarily disagree in terms of the ethics of adding gambling to a kid's game but this news article was blatantly wrong yes neopets did have gambling games but they were optional and neopets never had a system where pets would be taken to an orphanage if they weren't feared there were plenty of non-gambling games on the site that you could earn neo points on and the worst thing that would happen to your pet if you stabbed it was that they would look a bit sad and you'd feel guilty for the crime of virtual pet neglect also it's called the pound not the orphanage get it together harley the kid was only nine so it's possible that he misunderstood the site or didn't know how to properly explain it or maybe his mother took it out of context i don't know regardless of the fact that all of this information could have been debunked if the producers of today tonight had spent five minutes on the website they obviously weren't gonna do that so the story aired it caused a huge amount of controversy and drew the attention of multiple anti-gambling groups and of course flocks of worried parents eventually resulting in the banning of all gambling games for australian players yes every chance-based game from blackjack to crabs or sorry crops was disabled for players in australia due to this little debacle this was only a temporary ban as mcdonald's had pressured the neopets team into disabling these games for the duration of the happy meal promotion after all the games weren't just disabled for kids in australia but adults too meaning that even legal adults who could actually gamble in real life couldn't play virtual coconut shy the outrage eventually died down when users found out that they could change their country settings to work around this band and i believe that it was eventually lifted but the ban would have a more permanent impact on the site than originally thought because of this debacle neopets ended up restricting gambling games to kids 13 or over which many people found pretty ridiculous and arbitrary like a 12 year old isn't allowed to gamble but a 13 year old is thankfully for fans of bilge dice these games were here to stay even if the 10 year old gambling addict demographic was cut off in 2005 viacom purchased neopets for 160 million dollars and shortly after this original creators adam powell and donna williams left neopets inc due to creative differences by this point neopets had over 35 million players and was one of the most popular or sticky websites on the internet yes that's the real term so things were going well for neopets and as is typical with small projects that get large in corporate viacom decided that they wanted to overhaul the website a bit see the original neopets art was rudimentary and over the years many different artists had been brought on board to do various bits and pieces this resulted in a patchwork of art styles all of varying quality making the site look very rough and kind of mashed together which in my opinion is honestly what gave it a lot of charm however like i said neopets was going corporate and so all of the pets were given brand new art this wasn't just for aesthetic purposes though the previous artwork was basically just a flat png while the new artwork was layered and would allow for the pets to be dressed up and accessorized so most pets on the site were given new artwork and were called converted pets because they were converted from the old art style into the new art style however some pets were allowed to remain in the old art style and were called unconverted pets the thing that determined whether pets would be converted or left unconverted was their color for the uninformed before you could dress pets up using clothes the main way to customize them was by recoloring them using an item called the paintbrush paint brushes came in basic colors which would simply change the colour of the pet but also came in more uncommon colours which were themed and would change the pet's entire pose and base most basic colours were converted but a select few remained unconverted for example plushy fairy grey darrigan royal sponge and marquin were a few colours that remained unconverted unconverted pits or ucs for short were able to be converted if the user wanted to dress them up but once converted they could not go back to being unconverted this made uses very very rare and highly valued both because the old artwork was way more charming and expressive and also because as soon as you make something rare it becomes 10 times as appealing and suddenly everyone wants it especially on a kids site where as a 10 year old having a uc was the only crumb of clout you could get when the art overhaul first happened a lot of kids ended up converting their uses because they wanted to try out the dress up feature not knowing that they were slimming the numbers even further so it all sounds simple enough right the website gets new art some pets get to keep their older and because of this they become rare and sought after and the economy gets a boost well it wouldn't stay simple for long because it turns out that ucs would cause problem after problem for neopets and its community the neopets economy was extremely volatile it was essentially run by the players so there are countless stories of sudden market crashes players manipulating and gaming the system and the economy just straight up being broken naturally uc's increased this volatility tenfold creating an economy infested with hackers scammers and illegitimate sellers so let's get into it and keep in mind this can get a little bit confusing at times but i've done my best to kind of put it into layman's terms and make it as understandable as possible so according to the neopets terms of service you're not supposed to trade pets for neopoints items or real currency you're only meant to trade pets with other pets but rules were made to be broken and since the dawn of the site and underground black market of neopets has existed after the 2007 art change however this black market would become far more prominent because of ucs for the average user it was impossible to trade for a uc with a normal converted pair unless that pet was well named the neopets naming system is kind of odd as it requires every pet in the game to have a unique name for example there can't be two pets named timmy in the game only one and since there's over 285 million pets names became pretty scarce most pets had names like xxx sakura underscore anime underscore flower one two three or as difficult four five eight nine seven eight five ten if you had a pet with a simple one or two word name that was capitalized and spelt correctly that was a very highly valued pair so essentially unless you were one of the very slim few who got into neopets early enough to snag a coherent name you were out of luck and you wouldn't be able to trade for a uc that is unless you have a little bit of cash on the side and are willing to go against terms of service to do an illicit deal ucs were going for hundreds of dollars on these black market sites with rumors that some especially rare or well named ucs were going for thousands and while this was a reliable method to obtain ucs a lot of players didn't want to go against terms of service so they had to turn to other methods so fun fact a lot of ucs on the website today are the product of hacking in 2013 and 2016 respectively there were two huge database breaches which leaked the usernames emails and passwords of thousands of accounts fun fact too if you had a neopets account there's a good chance that your information is floating around out there somewhere so let that lull you to sleep tonight anyway neopets users would take these leaks and categorically log into all of the accounts rating them for good items with ucs being the most prized loot there was however one more method to obtain a uc basically the only legitimate method but it was painfully slow incredibly unreliable and exhaustively boring in neopets there's a place called the pound where you have the option to abandon any pets you don't want anymore and you can also adopt pets from the pound neopets code is infamously broken the pound is very broken certain pet's names would scramble the code and they would become stuck meaning that they weren't visible in the pound like they were in there but you couldn't see them the only way to see them was by typing their names into the search bar and with names like homer simpson 827985 and ebony darkness dementia ravenway 16 this wasn't really a viable method so there were thousands upon thousands of hidden pets and there was a good chance that there were some rare ucs in there some users made bots to manually search the pound for stuck ucs but they were usually banned due to the site's bot detection so this is where our incredibly unreliable painfully slow and exhaustively boring method comes into play using an excel spreadsheet users could generate hundreds of urls which could be viewed in an html file this was essentially what the bots did but manually and therefore much much slower and more tedious since this file showed each pet using its image players could quickly look through the page and easily identify any unconverted pets by their image so many users spent long nights painstakingly searching for pets using this method and the returns were ridiculously low despite some users spending weeks on end trolling through hundreds of sheets supposedly only about 10 uc's were found because let's be real here it was very much a needle in a haystack situation but the discovery of the spreadsheet method was a big revelation and the first time many users felt that a uc was within their grasp so they dedicated hours upon hours to this tedious task little did they know they wouldn't have to search for much longer on friday the 22nd of november 2019 a post appeared on the neo boards in the pound chat it was a list of over 700 unconverted neopit stuck in the pound you don't understand people had collectively been searching for hundreds of hours using this method and had turned up maybe a handful 700 uc's were just posted it was carnage this occurred during the early hours of the morning around 6 am pst so not too many people were on the boards and yet at one of neopit's emptiest hours the pound chat became a flurry of frantic activity with users scrambling to claim these ucs most users rushed to claim the ucs with the highest value but upon finding that they had already been claimed they scrambled to take whatever was left the original poster dubbed uc santa for their generous spirit was banned for an appropriate language later that same day after cussing out greedy players but not before making one last post i've actually seen conflicting reports about whether you see santa posted this on the same day or whether they posted it a few weeks later in early december but this screenshot seems to indicate that it was posted on the same day so we'll go with that 28th december 2019 8 p.m nst and then they were gone disappearing just as abruptly as they had come users were both bewildered and excited over this prophetic post a few days later on the 27th of november uc santa supposedly re-emerged claiming that they would pick 5 random users to send a uc pair users made a list and added their name alongside the pets they wanted and after only 30 minutes this list had over 200 users on it uc santa then selected these lucky few sent them their ucs and was promptly banned obviously by this point the community was in shambles and news had spread far and wide about uc santa and their prophetic post the neo boards were the busiest they had ever been with threat after threat of bewilderment shock and speculation some users were ecstatic and bragged about how many ucs they had picked up with some greedy little fellas claiming upwards of 10 ucs from the list others who had come out of uc get empty-handed plan their tactics for the next drop coming at 8pm on the 28th of december in the month between uc santa's drops the community became progressively more tense and aggressive while some groups memed about it other corners of the board broke out into fights and arguments the boards had been pretty empty when the original list was posted but by the evening of the 28th players across the globe were tuning in even those who hadn't played in years logged back on for this exciting event people were live posting waiting and discord calls the entire forum was busier than it had been in years and everyone was waiting with baited breath at 5 45 pm a few hours before uc santa was set to arrive a strange post appeared on the pound chat posted by a user called joanna barker hi your master is here users have speculated over whether this was the original uc santa or an imitator they did end up dropping a few ucps to prove that it was them but people doubt their legitimacy and you'll soon understand why joanna barker told the pound chat that they would update their pet page with a new list at 6 pm only 15 minutes away and two full hours before they said that the list would be posted this of course sent the community into a panic users had spent weeks planning for this and suddenly the new drop was being sprung on them in a matter of minutes from tumblr user mirollo's post on the debacle quote the board is moving more quickly than i have ever seen a neo board move there was a new message practically every single time i refreshed like once per second people were going [ __ ] wild the anon posted how many pages the pet page had and it got up to about 18k for neopets in 2019 which had long been considered dead slash dying 18 000 views was pretty insane everyone was waiting with baited breath for the uc drop refreshing the page over and over and then on the 28th of december 2019 a day which has come to be known as savage saturday you see santa's page updated mwahahahaha psych you bunch of beggars if you want your dream you say just buy it with usd and below was a list of cheap websites that sold ucs for real currency yep it was all a troll naturally the boards devolved into pure madness with the boards moving at 100 miles a minute the fallout was immense users were very very angry and very very upset and you just can't imagine the chaos that ensued in those following hours 602 two minutes after the update thanks i'm in the bathroom having explosive you know what now thanks according to tumblr user you are sacred quote also the filters just went down the most active post on the pc right now contains the word suck dick and eat bud by the 15 minute mark the board had so many posts that it had reached capacity and another board had to be made posts were still flooding through at high speed but a few users got to ask uc santa slash joanna barker some questions they revealed that they supposedly worked for one of these black market neopet sites bankofniopia.com their reasoning for the baiden switch was flimsy at best guys this is marketing give some free and those who got nothing have an excuse to go buy some and pass them off as legit needless to say it didn't really work this was about as much useful information as users got before joanna barker's post began devolving they would soon disappear forever leaving as abruptly as they had come but not before gracing the boards with one final post big brain small peepee or not at all stonks never changed joanna barker never change so let's talk theories naturally after all this had gone down and joanna barker left the boards and the subreddit filled up with questions bewilderment and speculation some proposed that the original uc santa was a different person than joanna barker original uc santa had been generous with their gifting while joanna barker was clearly just a grifter plus uc santa had been banned multiple times and had been bouncing from shell account to shell account so they didn't really go by just one username the theory was that the original uc santa leaked the 700 names out of generosity or to see the pound check go crazy i guess and then disappeared joanna barker who worked at the cheat setback of neopia.com saw how crazy the community got and saw an advertising opportunity they swooped in pretending to be uc santa and used all of the hype to advertise their website just like they explained the validity of this theory really hinges on when you see santa's prophetic post was made one write-up i read said that the post was made weeks after the original drop using the joanna barker username while this screenshot seems to show that it was made on the day a few hours after the original drop if it was made on the same day by the original uc santa poster they are likely just one person and the fact that in their december post they were able to drop multiple ucs lends credibility to this if it was made weeks later under a different username it's far more likely that they were just an imitator some believe that after the original drop owners of these cheat sites had somehow reached out to joanna barker and paid them to kind of build up hype and advertise their websites others believe that you see santa became jaded after seeing how greedy and selfish neopit's users could be after the original drop throughout the ordeal you see santa had to repeatedly ask users to stop begging and fighting to no avail and the reason that they were originally banned was because they went off on users who took too many ucs from the list the greediness that they witnessed really seemed to set them off so maybe it opened their eyes to the harsh reality of the world and made them go joker mode neopit's users still have no idea who uc santa or joanna barker was or what their motives were but savage saturday would go down in neopit's history as the day that one troll baited the entire community and left it in utter chaos so ucs were clearly in high demand i mean i just told you a story about how these unconverted pets caused the entire community to have a meltdown well because of how badly everyone wanted a uc players were constantly begging the neopit's team to allow players to unconvert their pets after all it had been pretty unfair if the team had converted every single pet yes some people would be annoyed but it would be fair to everyone instead they had this weird system where only randomly chosen specific colours were preserved for unknown reasons and everyone else had their pits converted with no notice many players liked the old designs better i don't blame them and they were angry that they weren't given the option to un-convert their pits or make new uc's time and time again staff told the player base that this was impossible within the game's code they weren't making any new uc's because it simply couldn't be done but they were lying back in around november of 2020 one of the neopet staff members was found to have an unconverted darrigan bruce called jungle boo the problem jungle boo was 2 630 days old meaning that it was born in 2013 around six years after the conversion the neopets team said that they could not and would not make any new ucs and yet here jungle boo was a uc born years after the conversion the community flipped their [ __ ] on the boards when they noticed this most players had become vitriolic towards the neopets team over the years for a variety of reasons and to them this was another example of their lies and poor conduct and while the boards were going crazy jungle boo was doing a benjamin button on their ass because suddenly his age went from 2630 days old to 7625 days old this meant that jungle boo was now born on the literal day neopit's launched it was clear that the neopit's team was scrambling to save face jungle boo's very existence proved that they had been lying about making new uc pets and they knew that left unchecked he could spark the very end of neopets as we know it okay maybe not that far but it made them look bad once again the boards were going crazy and once again jungle boo's age changed this time to minus 15 653 hours meaning that he was now unborn and would be born in the year 2038. tumblr use a damn skippy gf explain this phenomenon quote turns out that this is the maximum time the neopets computer clock can count to sometime around january 19 2038 so like something about this neopit got corrupted so that this neopit will only be born at the last second before the neopets time counter collapses jungle boo was also converted which is basically a sin within the community considering how rare ucs are and how much they're worth converting one is basically increasing the rarity even more so it pisses people off it's fair to say that poor jungle boo had been corrupted and broken beyond repair all in the name of saving face and avoiding backlash for lying about new uc's but this was just the tip of the iceberg as neopets was about to face a chain of events that would break the economy entirely [Music] so when you think about it the whole black market is basically entirely the fault of the neopets team most sites might have a few hacked accounts here and there but neopets had not one but two huge data breaches that compromised thousands of accounts because of the site's poor security people were able to go online and find lists of thousands of usernames and passwords turning neopits into a haven for account theft like it was rampant by 2020 most of the uses in circulation were obtained through account hacking and then either kept on the hacker's account or sold on the black market basically what i'm trying to say is there were a lot of illegitimate uc circulating throughout the economy and the neopets team despite causing it themselves did not like this one bit in 2020 they began cracking down on illegal ucs and users accounts would be frozen or iced if they were found to have hacked pets seems fair enough you break the terms of service you lose your account that's generally how websites work but the thing was most players who owned illegal ucs didn't know they were illegal like i said illegal ucs had been circulating throughout the economy being traded from hacker to player to 10 more players after that due to their rarity ucs were very hard to trade for you'd have to trade pits for months on end in what is called a trading chain in order to obtain one a trading chain in simple terms is where you take a pair trade it for a slightly higher value pair and repeat for months on end until you get a pit that's valuable enough to trade for a uc it's a very slow and frustrating process and users may have to trade tens of times to finally get a uc if the neopets team found out that a pit was illegal or a user found out that the old account had ucs hacked off at nc antenna ticket the neopets team would return their pet to them to do this they would reverse the entire trading chain meaning that throughout the community hundreds of traded pets were being taken off people's accounts and returned to their old owners and this was best case scenario there are plenty of posts out there by people who had their accounts iced for unknowingly being a part of illegal trading chains losing their entire account with no way to appeal it years of work and years of memories and nostalgia all gone obviously this sent the community into a panic with neopians across the boards worrying about their accounts getting iced or their pets getting taken off them most of these folks thought that they had legitimately traded for their pets and were rightfully upset when they realized that a they were illegal and b months of painstaking trading had gone to waste when the uc was taken off them to quell the rising anger within the community the neopets team made an unprecedented decision they decided to selectively start making new uc pets neopets users had long been suspicious that the team had the ability to make ucs but chose not to the jungle booth situation had hinted at this but now the neopets team had completely confirmed it players who had been left in the lurch without a uc after the tray chains had been reversed were contacted by the neopit's team and given the option to pick any neopith they wanted out of the pound and have it unconverted it was the first time that neopith had ever openly unconverted piers and the first time that the uc population had ever increased instead of decreased some were angry after all it revealed that neopets had really been lying about being able to unconvert pets the entire time and some felt that it was very unfair while others especially those receiving the ucs were just relieved that they'd be getting their pets back after all they didn't ask to be involved in the black market they just kind of accidentally stumbled into it so happy ending the original owners get their pets back after being hacked the people who traded for their pets also get their ucs the population of ucs has increased the neo versus healing everything is tied up in a neat little bow sure a few gabagols got iced along the way but all in all it seems like neopets was finally fixing the mess they had made and putting an end to the black market once and for all but buckle up bucko because the neopets economy and the staff's reputation were about to take the worst hit in neopets history when it was revealed that hackers had obtained a tool that could unconvert any pair on the website it was the biggest black market scandal in neopets history even bigger than savage saturday even bigger than jungle boo even bigger than the 2020 crackdowns and was an event that would break the site entirely march 2021 yes this happened this year neopets drama is still very much alive and well it's around 8 p.m on the pound chat when someone makes a post claiming they can unconvert pets and make new uc something which as we know is supposedly impossible they claim that they have access to a link which allows players to access the site's administrator tools including the ability to unconvert pets and keep in mind that at this point the only way to obtain ucs was to trade or hack into someone's old unused account the user claimed to be able to hack brand new uc's just like jungle boo but on a mass scale these kinds of bait posts aren't uncommon in town chat plenty of people make wild claims about hacks and exploits and cheats but don't have any real proof for it but this was different they could prove it the user had a three-day old tyranny in quiggle uc on their account and not only that but they posted a list of over 3 000 ucs which had been illegally hacked using this method i just told you about how players were getting iced for unknowingly being a part of these chains so people were naturally freaking out turns out that these hackers had been using this link for quite a while before it was made public users frantically asked if any of their pets were on the list fearful that they would lose their ucs or worse their entire account the original poster was quickly iced and their quigga was converted but the damage was done and once again the site broke out into chaos meanwhile over on arslash neopets the op made a post explaining their reasoning they claimed that they didn't want to cause trouble but had leaked the link as a way to force jumpstart the company running neopets at the time to fix the exploit by making it public the op spoke to polygon in an article on the situation quote i just wanted to prove to everyone that one this was a real backdoor in the website too this website is not secure three the neopits team has no clue how to fix anything the neopets team on the other hand completely denied that the op had legitimate access to administrator tools and instead accused them of using third party hacking software it makes sense that neopets would deny this if it was true that their code was so shoddy that multiple users were able to access the game's admin tools it could spell disaster for their already poor reputation those multiple data breaches from years back add a lot of credibility to the theory that yeah neopets was just run on such ramshackle spaghetti code that the users were able to hack into the game and give themselves admin permissions on the other hand op could have just been a hacker who was using a bot or other software to unconvert pets either way with jungle boo the team unconverting pets and now players hacking and unconverting pets themselves the uc economy was falling apart in real time everything was coming to a head the neoverse was in shambles and it felt like everything was falling apart i mean at least for the pound chat players all the other players are probably just chilling and playing hot dog hero and then a post went up hey neopians as we're sure some of you are aware a sight issue has surfaced involving unconverted pets our team is aware of the situation and are actively finding solutions for it as a reminder there are no official channels for the creation of new unconverted pets any pets directly tied to this recent issue that have been illegally unconverted will be returned to their original states once the issue has been resolved additionally any user found to be tampering with pet conversion in their own or other users accounts will be banned and frozen we've implemented a fix for the issue and we'll be continuing to patch and monitor the situation over the next few days we appreciate your patience as we get everything sorted out we're also aware of the high demand for unconverted pets and have been looking into solutions to properly implementing them back into the game while keeping things fair for the existing community we'll circle back with more news later this year tnt that's right the neopets team will finally finally acknowledging the demand for ucs and for the first time in 20 years they said they were considering bringing them back they had pretended for years that this was impossible no new ucs ever but after they came to realize how extensive and far-reaching the black market was and how close hackers were to completely wrecking the economy by flooding it with hacked ucs they had to give in some laughed some cried some rage quit most of you see owners rush to the pound chat to try and trade their ucs for pets with valuable names instead fearing that uses would plummet in value because as tumblr user switch wrote poundchat never changes that about sums up the entire unconverted pet saga who knew that just a simple art style change would cause years of economical strife within the community it's bizarre how far players are willing to go just to get a neopet with slightly different art than the others and it's clear that a lot of these veteran uc collectors were entrenched in the world and the economy of neopets to the point where it was very real to them one player wrote in a polygon article quote we've put years of our lives and a lot of serious negotiation and effort into working our way up this weird ladder that doesn't really exist the neopets team later admitted that choosing to keep some pits unconverted was a contentious decision within the company that they predicted would cause problems and they were right many users have echoed the sentiment that they should have just bit the bullet and converted all pets sure some people would have been annoyed but it would have saved them from years of black market scandals that lowered the reputation of the site and gradually turned the neopit's community against its creators the general vibe these days is one of antagonism towards the neopets team users have had to put up with years of lies cover-ups unfair suspensions lack of communication poor website design unsafe security and bad business decisions who knows whether the neopets team will be able to mend this relationship and fix the uc economy or whether it's a lost cause okay i promise we're done with unconverted pets there was a lot of drama the neopets economy is a wild place so let's jump back in time a bit back to 2014. as we discussed at the start of this video ownership of neopets inc went from doug during in 2000 to viacom in 2005 and was eventually sold to jumpstart games in 2014. after the changeover the site almost immediately broke down characterized by horrendous sight lag bugs and glitches many players felt that jumpstart was letting the site fall into disrepair and the general feeling was that they didn't seem to really get neopets this lack of sight upkeep came to a hit in june 2015 on sunday the 28th sunday the lord's day a day of reverent prayer and holy worship a day which has come to be known is the day of sin the neopocalypse if you need any indication of the insanity that we're about to discuss kotaku wrote an article on the topic titled neopets community melts down eat my hobart so you know we're in for a ride so neopets is a game for kids obviously adults play it but it's always been marketed as a family-friendly game that's safe for kids because of this neopets has very restrictive filters in place on the forum boards no hell no damn no [ __ ] no ass and no avril lavigne okay basically there's no swearing on neopets and the team has even been under fire for blocking out words related to the lgbtq community such as gay bi lesbian etc their reasoning was because gender identity and sexuality was on a list of hot topics alongside politics and religion that they didn't want to allow on the site so yikes they recently changed this so now your quiggles can be as gay as they want but back to my original point neopit's chat was always heavily restricted by the built-in filter system as well as the moderators users did occasionally swear but they would usually be rip-rounded or even iced for doing so however everything changed on the weekend of the 27th to the 28th the filters went down the mods didn't seem to be active or maybe there just weren't enough working that weekend no filters no mods i'm about to get so [ __ ] trapped satan's neo-gold confuses everyone sexism how do i make crystal meth that night neopets went offline users were left to ponder the events of that day many would be iced in the following days but it had all been worth it europeans from all corners of the internet came together to share their favorite moments of chaos discourse was started about how it was inappropriate to post such crass things on a website for children and during the new apocalypse many parents echoed this sentiment eventually the neopets team fixed the filters took down all the offending posts and changed those poor neopets names back rest in peace tampon [ __ ] rumors flew around that the neopocalypse was caused by jumpstart firing all their employees before the weekend but this wasn't true they issued a statement when the site went back up explaining what had happened at some point over the weekend as a result of a facility move the neopets moderation and filter system went offline during this period our moderation team was not able to access and appropriately manage the neopets community and inappropriate comments that were being made jumpstart has since taken down the boards and other areas affected as we work to get the moderation teams and filters functioning properly this was an unfortunate incident due to the facility move related to our servers and not the result of any changes to our moderation teams and we apologize to the users that were affected we will keep all users updated during the day this was not a staffing issue but a technology issue related to the move in facilities and our servers that control our moderation rest assured that we are taking this seriously and putting fail-safe solutions in for the future quick update we have since writing this reconnected all servers associated with moderation filtering on neopets so it seems that a facility moves shuffled some networks around and disconnected neopit's filtering system some saw this is indicative of jumpstart's lack of care or interest in maintaining the site while others saw it as just a simple mistake neopets gradually got better with time with the lag and glitches being fixed and jumpstart adding new events and storylines for players to enjoy still the neopocalypse has gone down in history as the day that the kid-friendly and sanitized denizens of neopets showed their true colours [Music] neopets has had a long and tumultuous history from shady advertising to black markets to bad business practices it's fair to say that the relationship between the neopets team and the players has always been pretty rocky but regardless of this neopets players keep coming back a lot of them are completely immersed in this world having invested hundreds of hours to work their way up the new european ladder i can't blame them the site was like a second home for a lot of kids on the early internet and many of these die hard players are so attached to the site because of this nostalgia i don't want anyone coming away from this video thinking that neopets sucks or is bad or anything despite all the scandals the neopets community has remained as funny creative and smart as ever despite the death of flash and the site's slow decline in popularity the die hard fans are still there ready to follow neopets wherever it goes i'm pretty sure the site is turning into an app now and while it'll be nice for everything to be updated and modernized many feel that neopets will inevitably lose its charm no matter how many times the site changed hands over the years and how much money it was generating it was clear that the site was a labor of love by many programmers artists designers and fans it's a shame that all of this might be ironed out in the new version but hey it's been 20 years it's had a pretty damn good run and hopefully if they know what's good for them they'll find a way to avoid the decades of drama that plagued the website or maybe it'll be new apocalypse 2.0 either way it's fine with me thank you guys so much for watching this video i really appreciate it um i really hope you enjoyed that topic if you ever have any suggestions for things you want me to cover in the future definitely let me know in the comments below thank you so much to honey for sponsoring it thank you to you guys for watching it and i'll see you in the next one bye a massive thank you to my garfield overlords on patreon charlie b simon sir jaylen iii john leech missy robin pom agarophan xavier arajo vampiric misfit icarus ryan w general charles davey finley american guild helm hamburger hand lady cerebellum derzo blind sheriff whiskey the furby librarian princess bossy boots red meth astrium vortex jesse chisholm curbicon sophie skidder x17 shawn kendall petallick grip gunderson tyson ayden mcfann gyro gyro bradito joe bradshaw aaron and arcantalis thank you guys so much for the support it means the world to me and if you want to join these guys on patreon the link will be in the description once again thank you for the support love you guys and i'll see you in the next one bye

Channel: Izzzyzzz

Views: 2,220,302

Keywords: Neopets, Deep dive, Video essay, Longform

Id: gytCVFQ7RYw

Length: 46min 57sec (2817 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021