I built Subeta when I was 13. It’s a virtual pet site, like Neopets but weirder, more community-driven, and somehow still alive. At its peak it had 30 employees and hundreds of thousands of registered users. Today it’s got a dedicated community of thousands of active players who’ve been there for years.
The game
Players adopt virtual pets, customize them with items and colors, explore a sprawling world, battle, complete quests, and hang out in the forums. There are dozens of unique pet species. My favorites are the Kumos (which I “created”, it’s just a dog) and the Experiment #333, a fluffy dog-squid hybrid that has no business working as well as it does.
20+ years
Subeta has been through everything. Exponential growth, server migrations, scaling from 1 to 30 employees, an acquisition attempt, staff drama, community drama, redesigns, engine rewrites. Some of the original PHP I wrote as a teenager is still in there, haunting us. The current stack is Laravel with a modernized frontend, but the real magic has always been the community.
What it taught me
Running Subeta taught me how to build products, manage teams, and keep a community healthy, long before I knew those were job titles. It’s the reason I became a software engineer. I’m still involved, and we’re still shipping.