Lower Sim Tier, Higher Linden Dollar Purchase/Sell Fees Announced, Residents Can Now Pay Tier With Linden Dollars

Linden Lab had some good news and bad news a few days ago in regards to the fees it charges, good news for sim owners, not so good for the rest of us. 

The good news, if you own a sim, your expenses are going down. The Lab announced it was dropping sim tier by $20 USD a month. 

 

In recognition of our upcoming 20th anniversary, we are ... Dropping the monthly price of Full Regions by $20 for our 20th anniversary – effective immediately, Full Regions are now $209/mo.  

As the chart shows, this is the third sim tier reduction in five years, with sims now being $81 USD less a month than they were in early 2018. 

The Lab would also announce that people could pay for a sim using Linden dollars in what's being called the "$L For Land Beta Program." (see more below).

The bad news, fees for buying and selling Lindens are going up. The Lab would say this was partially due to the expected loss of sim tier revenue, and partially due to inflation increasing their operating costs.

This latest land price reduction, increased development of Second Life features, improvements, and an unfortunate combination of world-wide economic factors including inflation, all bring additional costs to our operations. We’ve spent time considering ways to manage these costs to minimize the overall burden on our Residents. We decided to absorb many of the costs and distribute some by making a change to Linden Dollar buy and sell fees. Effective today, we are changing LindeX fees as follows:

• Increasing the buy fee to 10% with a minimum fee of $1.49 and a maximum fee of $14.99USD per transaction
• Increasing the sell fee to 5% 

This is the latest of several Linden dollar purchase fee increases since June 2017, when they went up from 40 to 60 cents per transaction. Later that year, they would be raised from 60 to 99 cents. In June 2018, they went up from 99 cents to $1.49 per transaction. In April 2021, they went from the $1.49 flat fee to a 7.5% fee that could go no lower than $1.49. 

 

The fee for selling Lindens hasn't been changed as much. They had been 1.5% several years ago, then in Nov. 2017, then went up to 2.5%, and later to 3.5%.

Of the good news that residents can now pay sim tier with Linden dollars, thus for those making Linden dollars able to avoid the cashout fees, there are a few strings attached. The Lab would describe them on a webpage (link). To begin with, it's a trial system that might get canceled after six months. Also, at least for now, only Premium Plus accounts are eligible to take part, and only one sim can be paid for this way. Skill gaming (technically legal gambling) sims are also not eligible, at this time.

Linden Lab would also post a chart of how many Linden dollars would be needed to pay for the various kinds of sim, a regular full sim costing 57,475 Linden dollars a month. To set up these kinds of payments, one has to travel to the "Land Payments" sim, go in the office, find a kiosk, and follow the instructions on the website. 

There's a thread in the official forums to the topic, which as of the writing of this article has 17 pages so far, so discussion has been active.

 

Addition: Although the price changes were supposed to take effect right away, I was contacted by someone saying her sims are still showing the old prices. 

Bixyl Shuftan