Hello everyone.

I know I’ve been quiet here about the whole NFT debacle, but I did want to take a second to just say thank you to the community as a whole for banding together on this.

Neopets is something that many of us have been invested in for decades, myself included, so to see something like this happening is painful. I won’t go into all the details & my strong opinions on this, but I haven’t seen our community come together this loudly in a very long time.

JellyNeo posted an update after their blackout protest over the weekend, & that showed that every active fansite that I know of supported & joined them. There are tons of people posting all over social media (Twitter, Tumblr, Discord, Reddit, Facebook, & probably more that I don’t know about) with the awareness growing every day. People who haven’t been on for years are seeing this & coming back just to fight with us.

We’ve fought many battles together over the years, & I know that this is a terrifying, horrible time, but this community is beautiful.

So thank you, every single one of you, for fighting so hard, for so long, to keep our beloved Neopia afloat.

-Britt

Hi all,

Last week Metaverse released a “roadmap” outlining the timeline of the NFT’s for the “Neopets” project. Lets just say the further this goes on the more embarassing and a mess it continues to show it is.

JellyNeo as of Friday NST, started a community boycot against the NFT’s.

We at Sketched Neo stand with the Neopets community against the implementation of NFTs and the Neopets Metaverse NFT project. 

An overall summary of the NFTs/Neopets Metaverse and why the community is against it is below:

• NFTs are digital slips of paper that name you as the owner of some digital asset. However, you don’t own the copyright to the material—the original creator still has rights over your asset. Accessing your NFT asset and maintaining its resale value is also dependent on several organizations remaining online, functional, and in business.

• No one from the Neopets community asked for them.

• You don’t own your NFT Neopet—despite the Metaverse claiming it’s yours.

• A Neopets crypto-collectible project was tried before, and failed.

• There are reasons to believe The Neopets Team was not involved with the decision to license this project and it is purely a JumpStart

We we suggest players read through JellyNeo’s article for an in-depth analysis of the current situation surrounding how NFTs work and how it affects the Neopets now and into the future

#NoNeoNFTs

Hi all,

As you are well aware the NFT topic has been a big one within the Neo community the last few weeks.

JellyNeo  reported that a comment in the Neopets NFT Discord that was an anti-gay slur, was left on the server and not moderated. Today, TNT has addressed the issue on the Neoboards as an official statement on the topic as well as their affiliation on the NFT project, which was located HERE:

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. We are aware of the communication issues with our NFT partner companies and are working to address them as soon as possible. The Neopets Team stands with and supports the LGBTQIA+ community; as such, we’ve taken note of your concerns internally and we sincerely apologize for any frustration this situation may have caused. We will be sure to pass your thoughts along to the appropriate/responsible parties and want to let you know that the moderator at the center of the controversy has been removed from their position. We also wish to clarify that the “Neopets Metaverse Discord” is not owned nor managed by the Neopets Team or JumpStart Games.

Additionally, we appreciate the time taken to share your concerns with us regarding NFTs.

We’d like to reiterate that the NFT’s in question are being created by a partner company, and not by the Neopets team directly, allowing our development plans to remain uninterrupted. Please know we remain dedicated to improving the Neopets site and will have more site conversions, updates, and new features for you in the near future.

Thanks everyone,
Petra, Gutterfoot, Scrappy & The Neopets Team

It is also important to highlight the below, which appears to make a clear statement that Neopets is in no way involved in managing or moderating the project.

We also wish to clarify that the “Neopets Metaverse Discord” is not owned nor managed by the Neopets Team or JumpStart Games.

There has been a lot of confusion surrounding the NFT’s since they were announced. Initally the Neopets official Twitter account claimed that the project was false and a scam when users started directing tweets to them about the announcement. It was later advised that the project was indeed a legitmate sanctioned project (although not managed internally by TNT) and that there was a communication error interally where the TNT weren’t aware….

On the /r/Neopets Discord server today Neo Community Manager Perra posted:

I actually want to thank you all for the ping. We have been limited on what we are allowed to say, but we’ve been reading everything and sharing your thoughts with the appropriate people.

The above suggests that the upper levels of management appear to be holding some constraints around what the Neopets team are able to communicate aurrounding the project. Which would then indeed explain the latest developemnt:

UPDATE 6:43PM NST:

It appears the initial post on the Neoboards has been deleted and a revised and shorter version of the statement has been issued.

The below line has been removed from the reissued post:

We are aware of the communication issues with our NFT partner companies and are working to address them as soon as possible

It is not clear why this is the case, but one would suggest there was a request from upper management to amend / make clear the position from Neopets – which aligns with what Petra has commented on..

You can read it below or on the direct Neoboards

(Click for full size preview)

One point to note here, is that Metaverse hasn’t even started to sell NFT’s however this is another controversy in the evergowing line of backlash and incidents surrounding the project.

We will continue to keep you updated on this topic of NFT’s.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

-Matt