Polygon article "Neopets is reckoning with black market pet trading"

[Goddammit]

Why hasn't Polygon reached out to CK is the real question??

Also colour me shocked to see a longform article on Polygon that isn't complete shit, after their stupid Animal Crossing articles with incorrect information for new players when they were trying to ride the hype of AC New Horizons.
- Signed, a salty, longtime AC fan

PS. There was a similar "article" I read a while back either on a personal blog or a Reddit post talking about the black market and the Neopets economy in general, from a past player. I wish I could find it again.

--

Another interesting article I'm in the process of reading. Found it while looking for the post I mentioned above:
(you need an account to see links)

Excerpt from How Neopets Predicted the Future of the Social Internet

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I haven't read this whole board yet but after reading what @(you need an account to see links) had to say, that was my thought too, "wouldn't it be great for someone actually from and well versed in this dreaded black market to actually speak up?"

[kittyray]

I tweeted the author asking if they'd ever consider a follow-up talking to us, no idea if I'll get a reply, but I've got this kitty-fronted twitter account, might as well make use of it.


[ID:
Tweet from kitty ray @ckittyray

@(you need an account to see links)potatoes I really enjoyed this piece as did a lot of my friends. Would you ever consider a follow-up where you talked to folks more involved in the UC Black Market scene? ]

[Skellington]

(you need an account to see links)

I'm doing the biggest eye roll

[Buizel]

I'd honestly be surprised if they took you up on that offer kitty. The only lesson that seemed to be learned from all this is "cheating sites are bad. They caused all the problems." Yet, ironically, TNT hurt legitimate players more than any cheater ever did.

And we still have users who report pets on site they haven't seen before or even out of jealously.

And staff members that take weeks to years to resolve disputes.

And multiple tickets that pertain to money being taken from users and no response from support.

And a security exploit supposedly laying dormant for months that took external hackers to pinpoint out to TNT.

I could go on, but *maybe* if effort was put in to fix and moderate this shamble of a site, things of this degree would happen less. And, you know, taking some sort of responsibility instead of just blaming another party.

[Using My Pass]

Honestly, Polygon just took a bunch of snippets from Twitter and possibly an email and tried to play it off as an article.

I shouldn't expect anything less from Polygon but this is the typical piss-poor sensationalist garbage we see everywhere.

Imagine *exposing* this black market and making zero effort to report on it.

This whole article is just "Klyko got stolen, then they made a new pet. Here's a bunch of filler about customising neopets"

[Double.Trouble]

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[Mama Bear]

That's some shitty quality 'journalism' right there. Perhaps rather than just jumping on a sob story they should have actually investigated the underlying issues with Neopets. They have the capability to have UCs. They know they are desired. But UCs make less money from NC, and it's all about those sweet Benjamins at the end of the day.

[whatsupb]

Super low grade journalism. No attempt to see both sides of the story. This is basically an opinion piece from someone who had a pet stolen and is a big circle jerk of similar stories. Yawn yawn yawn. Someone make a technical article about all the ways neopets has been broken over the years, that's the true gold content

[Zorara]

Amanda has had her account compromised multiple times.

It is also neglect on her part to keep her accounts and information safe.
Emails have two factor loggins for a reason and you should update your password every/few months.

Or they traded off their pet, regretted it and said her pet was stolen.
Multiple PCers do this.

[yesnt]

Gonna go ahead and re-post this...

Wow, I'd never seen this before. I've had the displeasure of having to open a few tickets with TNT in the past and they're always so accusatory, it's like they approach every situation assuming everyone is in the wrong.

Most recently I got in touch because I'd forgotten the password to one of my accounts and the reset email wasn't arriving (which, from what I can understand, happens because the site blacklists your email permanently if it ever sends an email that bounces, no matter the reason... but that's a different topic) and, as I was sending the ticket from the email to which the account was registered, I had the DOB and some other info on the account, I assumed they would 'push' the reset email through or something, but no.

I was told in order to 'return the account' I'd need to provide the original email address as well as any email changes, NC purchase history, the direction I was facing when I created the account and the exact age of the account in microseconds divided by the number of times I'd played Kass Basher on Tuesdays.

I explained that I didn't need the account 'returning' as (as far as I was aware) no one had accessed it since the last time I did and it wasn't frozen or anything, I simply couldn't remember the password and couldn't receive the reset email thanks to their broken system. And that even if I could remember the original email address, the account was 20 years old and I'm sure I'd have no way of accessing said email. But no, I was basically treated like dirt and told I wouldn't be getting my account back if I couldn't provide them with the information they asked for. I'm honestly surprised they didn't freeze the account for good measure.

Like, ok, I know I am a cheater, so in one sense I can't complain too much, but at the same time the account in question hadn't been logged into in a "very long time" and therefore was in no way linked to any cheating activity, so it's not like they had a reason to say I was cheating. To them I was just a random person asking why my password reset email wasn't coming through and was spoken to like a criminal and was told in no uncertain terms that I "wouldn't be getting my account back" for the simple crime of forgetting the password. If the site wasn't so broken it wouldn't have been an issue in the first place.

...Apologies, I don't think I realised how annoyed by that I was until I started to type haha.

But, regardless, my point is that I've never seen a site treat its users like TNT does, cheaters or not, and there's only so long that 'nostalgia' will keep us all putting up with it.