Closing the Value Gap: How We Rebuilt the Neopets Subscription Strategy

Hi hi! Today I’ll be touching on the Neopets Premium Subscription Membership. The Neopets Premium membership is a great way to bring in steady monthly revenue. In late 2024, we started an initiative to give it a long needed update to ensure we retain subscribers and grow our subscriber user base. 

Introduction: The Value Gap

In late 2024, we did a deep dive looking at user feedback and data. We identified a recurring trend, players were purchasing the subscription occasionally and churning. Looking at feedback, the pricing was too high for the value and it didn’t seem ‘worth it’ to users to get the membership. 

We wanted to transform the subscription from a ‘nice to have’ to an essential part of enhancing the player experience. 

The Strategy

We launched a slew of premium perks for show we were serious about adding value to the membership. Our goal was to touch every corner of the site, from customization and collection to the Battledome and daily gameplay. What we added in the initial premium perks rollout:

• Extra Event Prizes

• Free monthly random fortune cookie

• Extra Game Score Submissions

• Streak Save Tickets for Quest Log and Trudy’s Suprise 

• Retired Battledome Challengers

• Premium Dropdown, improvement of the bank widget

The Persona Framework

To ensure we were going beyond just customization and targeting a wide range of player types we categorized our new features by player personas:

The Challenge

Executing this wasn’t just a design challenge, it was a production hurdle. Returning from our studio holiday break in the new year in 2025, we had multiple priorities we were focusing on besides this initiative. It took a detailed look into resource allocation and prioritization to get this out the door. 

This was a massive cross-functional effort. As a producer, my focus was on projections for revenue and subscription numbers, resource allocation, prioritization balancing Art, Dev, QA, and Customer Support to ensure we could hit our releases without burning out the team.

What worked (and What Didn’t)

The Wins:

The Premium Bar: We brought back a legacy "Premium Bar" dropdown in the main navigation. We improved the bankroll widget and dailies, making the membership feel integrated rather than tucked away.

Live Ops Integration: We tied Premium into our annual events and the The Void Within plot, offering separate prize pools with exclusive prizes for premium members. Offering this in events was our most successful conversion driver to date. 

The Varwolf: Offering early access to a brand-new Neopet. 

The Lessons:

Not everything landed. The Extra Score Submission and Quest Double Time perks didn't see the adoption we hoped for. We’ve since started pivoting these, for example, using the extra score submissions to fuel specific events like our Solitaire Soiree challenge.

Metrics

To track the success we had several metrics we were monitoring. We tracked retention on a monthly basis and year over year. Along with churn and conversion rate. By tying in Premium Perks into events we saw a jump of monthly subscriptions during event months. Overall we saw a 72% growth in 2024 and an additional 11% growth in premium membership in 2025.

While our Neocash sales fluctuated, the Premium membership provided a stable, growing revenue stream that now accounts for roughly a quarter of our revenue. 

Conclusion

We went from having a handful of perks to a robust ecosystem of over 20+ perks. By targeting various play styles and personas, we didn’t just grow the subscriber base, we built a more sustainable product. 

I hope you enjoyed the read! Thanks for tuning in.