Adopt Me!

Uplift Games employs roughly 40 people and earns million from the game a year, often from microtransactions. Me! Had averaged over 100,000 concurrent players in September 2022.

• Title — Adopt Me! • Developer — Uplift Games • Publisher — Uplift Games • Engine — Roblox Studio • Platforms — Windows, macOS, Xbox One, iOS, iPadOS, Android, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 • Genre — MMORPG, pet-raising simulation • Director — Bethink • Programmer — NewFissy • Modes — Multiplayer

• Illustration — A player with their pet (a Wolf wearing sunglasses) in their house Adopt Me! is a pet-raising simulation that revolves around adopting and caring for various pet types that hatch from eggs. Eggs can each hatch different pets. Starter eggs, given to players when they play for the first time, for example hatches only a dog or a cat. While some pets can only be purchased with Roblox's virtual currency, Robux. Pets are grouped into five classes based on rarity and cost: common, uncommon, rare, ultra-rare, and legendary. Once hatched, pets grow from their starting status as newborns, growing up into juniors, pre-teens, teens, post-teens, and eventually becoming full-grown. Players are also able to trade pets with other players. If a player has four fully grown pets of the same type, they can combine them to form a "Neon" pet, and four fully grown neon pets can be combined into a "Mega-Neon" pet. Purchases within the game are facilitated both by Robux, and through Adopt Me!s virtual currency, simply called "Bucks". Bucks can be earned by fulfilling the needs of a pet, such as eating and drinking, among other methods. Players can also adopt children and roleplay with other users.

Prior to 2018, Adopt Me! was solely about adopting children, in line with several previous Roblox games with the same concept. Originally, the game was a collaboration between two Roblox users who go by the usernames "Bethink" and "NewFissy". Adopt Me! added the feature of adoptable pets in summer of 2019, which caused the game to rapidly increase in popularity. Adopt Me! had been played slightly over three billion times by December 2019. During the 2020 April Fools event, Adopt Me! received an update including a pet rock, available for a limited time. This update allowed the game to achieve 680,000 active players, three times as much as the strategy action role-playing game Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, which had the most active players on Steam at the time. In July 2020, the game had been played over ten billion times. By March 2021, Adopt Me! had around 20 billion total visits.

In May 2020, Uplift Games partnered up with Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Animation Group to promote the CGI-animated film Scoob!. As part of the event, Scooby-Doo (as a puppy) was brought into the game as a temporary pet where players could drive around in the Mystery Machine (also limited-time) and complete a task where they could help find his missing collar in-exchange for three detective-themed pet accessories. The pet, vehicle and collar were later removed from the game after the event concluded. On November 18, 2021, they partnered with Universal Pictures and Illumination to promote the CGI-animated film Sing 2. For the event, players could talk to Buster Moon next to a stage to complete a task of finding different pieces across the map in-exchange for a Galaxy Explorer pet accessory helmet. The Buster Moon NPC, stage and pieces were later removed from the game after the event concluded. On June 16, 2022, they partnered again with Universal Pictures and Illumination to promote the CGI-animated film Minions: The Rise of Gru. The event allowed players to talk to Gru to adopt a Zodiac Minion Egg. To hatch the egg, players can complete various tasks eventually leading the egg hatching into a Zodiac Minion Chick.

The game averaged 160,000 concurrent players as of September 2022, making it one of the most popular and successful games on Roblox. The highest number of concurrent players Adopt Me! has achieved is 1.92 million. Around a third of Roblox players on the Xbox One play Adopt Me!. Due to the presence of microtransactions in the game and the target demographic being young children, there have been instances of children spending large amounts of money on Adopt Me!, including one particular incident where a child from Australia spent $8,000 AUD (US$6,348.88) on the game. The number of players playing Adopt Me! usually triple whenever a major update occurs, and causes platform-wide disruption on Roblox.

As of 2021, the game became notorious for its rise of scammers who scam players for virtual pets. Due to the high cost of pets within the game, with some rare pets selling for up to US$300 on off-platform sites, a large subculture of scammers have risen within Adopt Me!. As the primary user base of Adopt Me! is on average young children, who are especially susceptible to falling for scams. One of the most common ways in which scammers carry out their operations is through "trust trades", in which the scammer manipulates players to trust them and trade a rare virtual item, promising to give it back. The scammer either leaves the game with the victim's item, or blocking the victim to continue scamming other users. Adopt Me! had released several new features focused on combating scams in November 2020, including the introduction of "trade licenses" that are required to be earned before one can trade pets above rare rarity. It also affected the amount of pets a player could trade, and the addition of viewable trade history and the addition of notifications to the player if the game detects a markedly unfair trade.