Neopets has canceled its licensed tabletop RPG after a playtest saw widespread criticism from its fanbase. A blog post from March 10 says Neopets has terminated its license agreement with Geekify, the developer behind the controversial game, “effective immediately”. The Neopets TTRPG raised $427,109 on Kickstarter in August 2024, but with the project cancelled and development still incomplete, it looks like backers won’t be receiving the product they funded.
The playtest shared in February 2026 was accused of many things. Many fans were disappointed that it seemed to be a combat-focused system that lifted most of its content directly from D&D. Others accused it of being anachronistic with the Neopets canon, introducing sexual content, or being homophobic.
“We determined that it is in the best interest of the Neopets brand and our community to cease this specific project and ongoing license agreement”, Neopets says. The company is apparently “implementing more robust processes to carefully assess licensees and evaluate merchandise projects”.
Neopets’ statement doesn’t address the details of the backlash, but Geekify’s final Kickstarter update does at length. While Geekify acknowledges many of its missteps, it also defends the playtest’s status as a work-in-progress draft – and one that reportedly saw little support from the Neopets team.
“Last month, we circulated a document that wasn’t ready for distribution for a number of reasons, and we apologize for the confusion this has generated”, Geekify says. “This document was not submitted for review by Neopets prior to our releasing it, and did not reflect either their views or our usual approval process”. “We apologize as well, both to Neopets and to the fans that we did not follow our usual submission procedures.”
Geekify says its beta playtest was intended to be “a draft of a draft, undergoing constant revision, focus testing things that worked and getting vibe checks to finalize the things we had decided on”. However, it says calling it a ‘beta’ may have mistakenly given fans the impression that the game was close to being finished. Features that many fans critiqued the system for leaving out, such as Pacifism and Crafting, “were intended to be added to the document over the following weeks”.
“We did not do a great job of setting expectations of our intent with the playtest document, relative to how it was interpreted by the community, and unfortunately did not get a chance to rectify it”, Geekify says. Additionally, “we mis-stepped by not considering the ongoing drafting and editing occurring in a public setting as needing review from Neopets, since they had approved several key components of the mechanics being explored and been largely hands-off with regards to mechanics development”.
Geekify asserts that its game was not a “5e re-skin”, but legacy components left in the document may have given this impression. It has also addressed claims of homophobia, saying “about 80% of our staff is representative of the LGBQTIA+ community, and we staunchly believe in having those voices heard and supporting the community”. “There were some insinuations about one of the phrases in the playtest scenario that didn’t really hold up to either the intended sentiment, the phrasing, or the heart of the project.”
The Kickstarter update from March 12 claims that Geekify “have not issued a statement until now because, though we have reached out on numerous occasions to Neopets over the past month, and despite repeated attempts to have a discussion, offer input, clear the air, and hopefully to move forward, we have received no response for discussion and been given no information or guidance on how to proceed”.
Wargamer reached out to Neopets on March 12 to confirm Geekify’s claims about communication issues. This story will be updated if we receive a reply.
Geekify’s statements allege that Neopets’ involvement in the development of the TTRPG has been consistently lacking. “They have been asked and invited continuously throughout the entirety of the project to review documents and check in, as well as be included in our weekly meetings”, Geekify claims.
“We were told frequently that they were too busy to review work, and we were explicitly told only to submit things that were finalized, which often needed a lengthy feedback cycle directly requiring their input to get to that finalized level, and even as recently as meetings in January, we were being told for the first time what should and shouldn’t be considered canonical to include in the lore portions of the book.”
“Neopets themselves have their own contractual obligations to review and approve materials in a timely manner, and after submitting four chapters for review in September 2025, they had, as of mid January 2026, still not completed full review of the first chapter, and made no commentary or review on the other chapters.” “We prepared lists of essential questions for writing the world guide, were told it was too long to answer, and were asked to trim down to make more manageable for Neopets to answer, yet still went unanswered for over a year”, Geekify adds.
“Throughout this project, we have been promised, among other things, support in marketing and promotion, editing, lore review, and art asset procurement”, Geekify continues. “The lack of followup of the past month and the legal documents we were served have given the sense of the Neopets team relying on social media comments and reactions as facts as a means to exit, while not seeking out context from our team or directing us to implement changes that would have been simple to do.” “Instead, all meetings were immediately canceled and we were stonewalled henceforth.”
“We fully acknowledge that releasing the document unreviewed was wrong”, Geekify says, “but it was done so from a place of trying to help continue moving the work forward alongside the workload that was already dragging out and overworking the Neopets team”. “In light of the fact that they had expressed an inability to review the current workload at a tenable release for 2026, we perceived the playtest document as a tool for continuing development in doing the fine-tuning of rule sets in view of the backers, in preparation to have the book-ready mechanics ready for submission, not as releasing something considered to be official and final.”
“A little more patience both from the fanbase and from Neopets, and some communication on either side, could have fixed instead of escalated it”, Geekify says. Patience, from either Neopets or the backers, now seems to be in short supply. While some comments on Geekify’s post commend its transparency, many others are demanding refunds.
Neopets says it’s “stepping in to ensure every backer receives their exclusive in-game avatar”. However, Geekify says: “We are not in a position to refund the entire project, as huge parts were already spent on game and asset development, paid out to royalties, and for project overhead, but we do want to do what we can to make things right, in whatever way we tenably can”.
Wargamer reached out to Geekify to ask for more detail on refund plans. Head of project John Taylor says the project’s incurred costs already include “Kickstarter and platform fees, marketing, advertising, licensing fees and royalties, development and staffing costs, asset development, proofing and editing, taxes, and a plethora of other things”.
However, “Funds were specifically earmarked for physical production, and the hope is to return what can be returned, though working through the logistics of that will take some time”. Taylor says that assets had been designed for production and manufacturing, but these processes hadn’t started.
Regarding backer compensation, Taylor says “we’re evaluating what the best path forward is”. “We want to do what we tenably can to make it up to the backers, who are ultimately the ones who suffer most from the dissolution of the partnership, and seeing what we can do from our side.”
“We’re disappointed in the recent turn of events and apologize for all of the frustration surrounding the project”, he adds. “We are dedicated fans and members of the community, and It was never our intent or wish to break the faith placed in us.”
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