Thursday, February 13, 2020

More Sansar Layoffs, Kona Linden Among Those Cut


For the second time in three months, Linden Lab is laying off a number of Sansar's already small staff. Following a report by Ryan Schultz on his blog, CEO Ebbe Altberg would confirm on the Sansar Discord channel that some of the virtual world's staff were dismissed.


Yes, there were layoffs today. A truly wonderful group of people. But as you can see, Sansar is up and running. We are still in discussion about next steps. Including with the wonderful group of people. More to come. Don't give up yet. Go create and have fun. Not much point in speculating until we can tell you more.


Schultz had originally written that "a very reliable source" had told him "there were over 40 people laid off, and a small number of software developers were moved from Sansar to Second Life." The source had also told him that further development of Sansar had been shut down, though not the virtual world itself. This number of those laid off, as well as the claimed state of development have not been confirmed by other sources. What has been confirmed is one name among those dismissed. Kona Linden (Kona Gurion in real life), would contact Hamlet Au and inform him he was among those laid off. Hamlet would call Kona's layoff particularly sad, "With his layoff, Linden Lab loses its last known link to Second Life during its founding, and glory days of 2006-2008."

Sansar was already reportedly operating under a "skeleton crew" following the previous round of layoffs. Inara Pey would state that Sansar will still be running events in March. But with this latest round of dismissals, the long term future of Linden Lab's next-generation virtual world has become more uncertain than ever.

Sources: Ryan Schultz, New World Notes, Modem World

Bixyl Shuftan

No comments:

Post a Comment