From the sounds of it, the virtual pet sim is not going to shut down any time soon, in spite of the layoffs. What this means for the future of Neopets, however, is unclear, and whether the creation of further content will continue is unknown. We have tried pinging Neopets website using our server and the website returned the above results. If neopets.com is down for us too there is nothing you can do except waiting. Probably the server is overloaded, down or unreachable because of a network problem, outage or a website maintenance is in progress.

Jumpstart, the company that bought Neopets a while back, has been doing such an abysmal job at running the game site that it's very likely it won't last much longer. Yes, Nepets may actually be shutting down, closing forever. Neopets has been mishandled in the past, but never so badly as it's being run right now. In fact, it seems like all they know how to do is lose players. Where there were once hundreds of thousands of players, last time I saw their counter showing the number of players it was in the 4 digits. They've since removed the counter, presumably to avoid embarrassment. There hasn't been an 'event' in almost a year, where there used to be something happening almost non-stop. Since the first thing they did after buying the site was to fire almost the entire creative staff, this isn't surprising.
One thing they're still very good at, however, is throwing around warnings and threatening to freeze accounts over the smallest, and sometimes even no infraction. People in glass houses, Jumpstart. You really want to piss off the handful of players you have left? If you're new to the game and got one of these warnings and are reading this, take my advice and leave now. You're not going to be missing much except more lame warnings for having done nothing, and there's nothing they're going to change about the game to make it worth your while.
The only thing I've seen Jumpstart do is make this site worse. I started playing a VERY long time ago, and I do very little there now. There are a few tricks I've learned over the years for making neopoints, and all I ever do is stop by once in a while to do them, and every 28 days put my pets back in the lodge so I don't have to waste time feeding them. The games get old, fast, and Jumpstart doesn't seem to see the very simple fact that they need new content to bring in and hold onto new players, and to keep the older players from doing what I'm doing right now.
'Official Warning' my ass. FUCK YOU, Jumpstart. Here's what your 'Official Warning' got you. I'll be happy to post something that says you're the lamest thing the game of Neopets has seen in its entire history any time you feel like fucking with me for no reason. Have a nice fucking day.
I have some sad news to report. Early Friday afternoon, most of The Neopets Team was laid off. According to our source, there are only a handful of programmers left, along with the support team and the monitor team. This is why we did not get news on Friday, and why the NC items released over this weekend do not have images.
We are unsure what Jumpstart's plans are going forward, especially with the app they just released, but the TNTers that have made Neopets what it was over the past 15 years will not all be part of it.
The JN Staff would like to give all of TNT a big thank you and congratulations on an amazing 15 year run. Despite a little complaining along the way, Neopets shaped a lot of us. (Who knew a web game from 1999 would be online in its original form in 2015??) Best of luck to all of the TNTers looking for new jobs!
Edit: To clarify, no, Neopets is not closing anytime soon that we have heard. However, with all of the people who were creating the content gone, it likely will not be the same Neopets we've all come to know and love (and complain about :P). You can't simply have new employees come into the mix and expect them to know how the Altador Cup works or who Dr. Sloth is without a lot of prep and training.
That being said, this post was made so that the Neopian public could be made aware of what is happening and decide on what they would like to do going forward. We thought that the paying customers in particular (Premium subscribers and NC buyers) should know this information and decide on what purchases they would like to make in the future.
UPDATE: Statement from Jumpstart: (9 Mar 2015 - 12:35 pm)
The CEO of Jumpstart, David Lord, has released a statement relating to the current state of Neopets. This has been posted in TNT's Official Message Board, as well as on Facebook.

He is adamant that Neopets is NOT

Will Neopets Shut Down

closing, and that resources will be spent improving site stability (the lag), as well as creating new content. While this unfortunately means we have lost The Neopets Team as we once knew them, Jumpstart will hopefully be working tirelessly over the coming weeks and months to produce new and exciting ways to keep the Neopets we love alive.

Did Neopets Shut Down