QQ Pet returns with an AI brain as Tencent stuffs 29.5 billion parameters into a digital pet

QQ Pet is back with an AI brain — Tencent stuffed 29.5 billion parameters into a digital pet. The last time I opened QQ Pet was in 2005. That year, I was a junior in college, four of us in the dorm, two computers. One guy bought a new computer, and the old one got passed around — mainly for keeping QQ logged in and raising pets. When QQ Pet first launched in 2005, half the class went crazy over it. That little Q...

💡 What You Will Learn

QQ Pet is back with an AI brain — Tencent stuffed 29.5 billion parameters into a digital pet. The last time I opened QQ Pet was in 2005. That year, I was a junior in college, four of us in the dorm, t

QQ Pet is back with an AI brain — Tencent stuffed 29.5 billion parameters into a virtual pet

The last time I opened QQ Pet was 2005.

That year I was a junior in college. Four guys in the dorm, two computers. One guy bought a new machine, the old one got passed around — mostly for keeping QQ logged in and raising pets.

When QQ Pet launched in 2005, half the class lost their minds. That chibi penguin wandered around the bottom-right corner of the screen, bubbling when hungry, turning gray when dirty, coughing when sick. You had to work odd jobs to earn gold coins to buy it food, medicine, and baths, and you also had to help it find a partner, get married, and lay eggs. Back then, the internet didn't really have a "raising sim" concept, but you genuinely felt like you were raising something alive.

I killed two pets. The first one starved to death — I went home for summer break and forgot to feed it, came back to nothing but a tombstone. The second died of illness; I treated it too late. After that, I learned my lesson: every time before logging off, I'd check hunger and mood stats, feed it once more before bed, without fail.

Four guys in the dorm, three pets, visiting each other. Your QQ pet would come work at my place, mine would go take a bath at yours. After lights out, someone would quietly open their laptop, feed their own pet first, then feed their roommate's as a favor. If anyone's pet died by morning, they'd hear about it all day.

Back then, early twenties, no money, no worries — the biggest concern in life was making sure that penguin didn't go hungry.

Then it disappeared

In 2018, Tencent announced QQ Pet was shutting down. By then I'd been working for over a decade. When I saw the news, I froze for a second, then opened my phone and scrolled through my photos — and found a picture I'd taken of a computer screen in college, that penguin in the bottom-right corner dancing in a top hat, timestamped December 2005.

That was the last time I ever saw it.

Honestly, I didn't feel much at the time. A guy in his thirties doesn't cry over a virtual pet. But every now and then, thinking back, it hits me — it was there with you through a stretch of your life, and you never even got to say goodbye.

Then yesterday, it came back

I opened QQ on my phone, and a fluffy 3D little creature was squatting in the chat list. I petted it, it looked up and said something completely different from before — not a canned line, but something it came up with on the spot.

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Tencent says the new QQ Pet runs on its own Hunyuan Hy3 large model — 29.5 billion parameters, MoE architecture, activating 21 billion per inference. I work with AI for a living, so I know what those numbers mean — this is basically a flagship-grade LLM stuffed into the body of a virtual pet.

It actually "responds" now. You pet it, it thinks up a reply based on its personality; you ignore it, it gets dejected; you talk to it, it understands. Not that old three-line loop of canned dialogue — AI is generating responses in real time behind the scenes.

They also removed a mechanic I both loved and hated — the death system. Pets can't starve or die of illness anymore, and you don't have to worry about them collapsing from overwork. Twenty years ago I was terrified it would starve; twenty years later, it's finally "immortal."

I picked a clingy one

The new QQ Pet comes in a few personalities: Little Sun, Clingy, Little Troublemaker, Little Drama Queen. I chose a Clingy one, because it actively nuzzles up to you and hops over next to the chat box when you send a message.

My daughter just started elementary school this year. She saw the pet on my phone and asked, "Dad, what's that?" I said it's a pet I raised in college, and now it's back. She asked, "Where did it go before?" I said, "It went to get an upgrade."

She doesn't get why I stared at my phone for so long. She doesn't know what this virtual pet means to an old guy born in '84 — it's not just an AI feature, it's the college memory of twenty years ago itself. The me who secretly fed his pet in the dorm, the me who used a pet egg to flirt with girls, the me who thought raising a digital penguin meant owning a life — that me is now a middle-aged man working overtime every day, with a mortgage and a kid in elementary school.

But that Clingy one, squatting in the chat list, nuzzling up to me — for a second, I was back in 2005.