Effective April 22, the current flat buy fee rate of $1.49 will be replaced by a 7.5% buy fee (capped at $9.99) applied to the total amount of Linden Dollars purchased in each transaction. The $1.49 minimum still applies.
So what does this mean? If you buy Linden dollars in amounts of $20 or less, nothing really changes. But buying more than that, you'll be paying more. For instance, someone buying $30 USD worth of Lindens, assuming an exchange rate of 250 Linden dollars for one US dollar, will be charged 7.5% of $30 extra, or $2.25, and so pay a total of $32.25 instead of $31.49. This is an increase of 76 cents. For $50 USD, the fee is $3.75, and paying $53.75, an increase of $2.26.
Linden Lab would explain it was trying to manage having to deal with expenses, such as "Investing in our infrastructure to further improve speed and cadence of update" and "Developing new marketing initiatives and entertainment partnerships to fuel growth,"and wanted to "manage these costs in a way that minimizes the overall burden on our Residents." While it was going ahead and taking some loss, the Lab stated they needed a way to make up part of the expenses.
The fee for buying Lindens last went up in June 2018, from 99 cents. It was the second increase in less than a year, in Novemeber 2017 going up from 60 cents to 99 cents, and in June 2017 going up from 40 cents to 60 cents. Part of the reasons for these increases were the reductions in sim tier charged to residents.
The fee for selling Linden dollars, which is 3.5%, remains unchanged.
A thread was created in the Second Life forums about the topic, which as of the writing of this article is sixteen pages long. Checking the first few, a few residents complained, "LL are digging their own grave by raising the fee." But most seemed more open to explanations and reserved in their criticism, "It is all a matter of take it or leave it in the end. If you are not satisfied you take your business elsewhere. That is the normal procedure everywhere."
Source: Linden blog
Bixyl Shuftan
That may the "leave it moment". Still renting a land in SL to help some friends pay fees for a sim, but I begin to feel I have over-extended my time in Second Life.
ReplyDeletethis will be the third death of secondlife
ReplyDeleteit should be going down. you can rent servers for games that look visually leagues better than SL and it's tremendously cheaper and a server holds more people than 4-8 linden sims.
ReplyDeleteSL seems to be purposefully trying to tank itself for years. Ever since they had announced they wanted to build SL2 with no adult regions and tons of limitations, and abandon the current SL, they have been increasing the costs to remain in SL, raising prices for creators, and going out of their way to hamper the growth of the platform.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine wanting the shitty new iteration of SL so bad you want to shoot yourself in the foot over and over again. But that's LL for you. Greedy AF.