Does it feel like Neopets is on its way out?

I've been an avid player for 24 years. In all my years playing Neopets, I never felt like the site was "going anywhere." I didn't feel that way when the user base started dwindling, I didn't feel that way when they started doing pay-to-play features such as the NC Mall or Premium, and I didn't feel that way when they were sold to Viacom or JumpStart.

However, lately... I am starting to feel a little worried that the site is on its last legs. I love the new TNT and the way that they are clearly very passionate about keeping the site alive, but the very noticible shift to prioritizing paid features lately is concerning. I know they are not doing it out of greed. They are likely doing it out of desperation, because it's no easy feat keeping an outdated game site running. The site has to make money in order for them to pay the bills.

This feeling of "desperation" seems almost palpable with some of the recent changes. For example, eliminating Neopian holidays, ending the User Lookup Spotlight, the plot going on hiatus twice, reducing the creative contests in general, and creating special pet day items that can only be obtained in the NC Mall. With the creative contests, I get it. They don't have the manpower to maintain those contests as efficiently as they used to. Even as someone who regularly participates in creative aspects of the site, I get it. That doesn't make it any less scary, though.

By April 2024, Neopets had tripled its active user base from 100k daily players to 300k daily players, and Dom announced that the site was "on its way" to being profitable again. I suppose it's possible that the creative contests had to be minimized because the player base is increasing, but it certainly doesn't feel that way. To me, the big Neopets boom in 2024 felt like a peak that has slowly been diminishing since because it wasn't sustainable.

Does anyone else feel this way? I really hope that the site remains profitable and that they can continue to run it. The only thing I can do to help is buy NC every once in a while and keep playing every day, but I just don't know if it's enough.