The long running virtual pet website Neopets is struggling to deal with widespread black market pet trading. Despite launching back in November of 1999, Neopets remains somewhat popular today thanks to many updates over the years and despite many issues that currently exist with the site now that Adobe stopped supporting Flash.

One addition to gameplay made by the developers was a feature that allowed players to trade their pets with one another. This soon sparked a user-created 10-tier value system that ranks all the creatures available in the game, with players voting twice to three times per year in order to decide the current value of the pets. Some of the pets that consistently remain the most valuable are a small group that kept their original artwork designs after a massive overhaul the game received in 2007. Unsurprisingly, these particular Neopets are some of the most sought after by black market traders and can easily be stolen due to the website’s bad security.

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Polygon reported on the site’s black market troubles by focusing on one particular instance involving a Neopets player named Amanda. After taking a year away from the game, Amanda logged back on to find that her Darigan Lupe named Klyko had been missing for about a month and was replaced by a bubblegum-striped tiger. A Darigan Lupe is a purple doglike creature with wings and red-eyes and it is one of the Neopets that kept its original art style post-overhaul. That made Klyko quite valuable and a target for black market sellers. The Darigan Lupe was stolen from Amanda during the time she was logged off and was subsequently traded multiple times. Luckily Neopets retain their original names when they are traded, so Amanda was able to track down and retrieve Klyko.

The Neopet retrieval process that fixes black market trades is by no means a simple or easy process. It is called “trade reversal” and it is something that the site’s support team tries to do discreetly. Every time a pet is illegally traded, however, the number of players involved in the “trade reversal” process grows, which makes things even more complicated. Amanda’s Darigan Lupe had been traded so many times that it seemed to be the catalyst that brought the whole black market ordeal to the forefront of the Neopets community.

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Players are understandably unhappy with the black market ordeal plaguing Neopets, and it seems that the majority of the blame is rightfully on the development team. With the combination of bad security, poor vigilance, and a complicated retrieval process, it seems like more could have been done to prevent a black market before it became what it is today. It is unlikely a legitimate solution will come any time soon, especially now that the game runs on unsupported software. That is a shame, because there is clearly still a lot of love for Neopets.

Update: A Neopets representative has provided the following official statement on the game’s black market pet trading:

“First and foremost, the safety of our users and their accounts and pets is our top priority. If we find a situation where a pet is removed from an account without the owners permission, we take that very seriously. We are looking into creating additional tools to help solve these situations faster as well as alternate solutions that will minimize impact on the majority of users involved. Additionally, we’re actively making sure that those who are affected will receive fair trade-offs.

“We have a support team that works on Neopets as well as other projects and when needed, can shift them to deal with high priority situations like this. A “Pet Trading” category has also been added to our support system for users to better flag these issues and get them resolved quickly.

“As for UC pets, they are desirable for many reasons with their rarity being the primary reason. For some, they’re seen as a status symbol. For others, it’s the unique artwork they love.

“We are always looking at improving the site and our customer support on it. As everyone is aware, Neopets is a 20 year old site that comes with 20 year old tech issues, economy changes, etc. that will always have its challenges. Preserving the site and moving away from Flash have been a huge undertaking for our team, but it’s one we’ve prioritized above all else to ensure Neopets continues. We are very grateful for our passionate and loyal userbase that has stuck by us throughout the years and will continually look at how we can improve and grow the site.”

Source: Polygon

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Blaise Deveney
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Blaise Deveney is a freelance gaming news writer for Screen Rant and a multimedia specialist with both amateur and professional experience in writing, editing, videography, animation, and more. Blaise is from the Philadelphia area, where he lives with his wife, and is an avid fan of gaming, movie and television scores, and football. He has a passion for storytelling and is thrilled to be writing about the latest in the world of gaming.

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