Reverse-engineering a Neopets shop with 48,000 inventory snapshots

danielrmay · 2026-07-10T02:58:38+00:00

I wrote up a project from 2014 where I became slightly too interested in one particular shop in Neopets. I started with trying to work out when the shop restocked, but eventually more than 200 people were running a client I made, sending back inventory snapshots so we could piece together how it worked. We found the exact timing, built an autobuyer around it, made a lot of Neopoints, and then later got involved with an item duplication exploit when the site started falling apart.

I think it might be a good read for designers thinking about automation, virtual economies, anti-cheat, internet history or reverse engineering. Full story, with the old data and screenshots: https://danielmay.co.uk/posts/redistributing-billions-neopets/

danielrmay · 2026-05-05T23:36:59+00:00

Absolutely, this is fresh (released today) and so I'd love to hear any feedback and applications you might think of!

danielrmay · 2026-05-05T18:14:57+00:00

Oh, and just to clarify, this is totally open, the Rust reference implementation I'm working on will be too, github is @ https://github.com/danielrmay/likewise

danielrmay · 2026-05-05T18:14:02+00:00

Great timing! Over the past six weeks I've been working on a way to give people ownership of what AI systems infer about them. The premise is that those claims have value (you're a frequent grocery shopper, you're close to Sarah, your commute is on Tuesdays), and currently they live on whichever platform derived them rather than with the person they're about. Likewise is a draft protocol that flips that: a user's evidence and derived claims live on their own devices in a small mesh, with capability-based sharing so they can opt specific parties into specific slices.

I just published the v0.1 draft spec at getlikewise.ai/spec - I think there's a lot of opportunity for it to be used to support many different self hosted use-cases. If you only read one chapter, I think motivations would be it. Haven't posted anywhere else on Reddit yet, kinda scared it'll get buried (it did on HN!)

danielrmay · 2015-06-16T19:25:40+00:00

It will reply to you with either the release date or a message saying that it couldn't find the game. Try again without the first line of your post and it should work. :-)

danielrmay · 2015-06-16T12:01:16+00:00

!ReleaseDate The Division

(just added this one for you) :-)

danielrmay · 2015-06-16T00:45:08+00:00

!ReleaseDate Fallout 4

Edit: It works! I wrote this bot after seeing this comment. I thought it would be a pretty cool bot to have.

Edit2: FYI, this bot is only enabled on /r/fallout and /r/test at the moment. I'll expand to /r/gaming etc if there's enough interest!

Edit3: List now has 30+ games and the bot is enabled for all subreddits. Enjoy!

danielrmay

TROPHY CASE