To accelerate its growth in the United States and its presence in the fast-expanding online gaming market, Thunes, a global cross-border payments company, is proud to announce that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tilia LLC,
an all-in-one payments platform. Tilia is licensed in 48 U.S. states
and territories and offers payment solutions (acceptance and pay-outs)
for online games, virtual worlds, creator economies, and in-app
purchases.
Upon closing of the transaction, which is subject to regulatory
approvals, Thunes’ bespoke global network to accept and pay in real-time
through four billion bank accounts, three billion digital wallets and
550 Alternative Payment Methods (APMs) will become available to
merchants across the United States, including current Tilia customers.
Using Tilia’s technology, Thunes will be able to offer Visa, MasterCard,
American Express, JCB and UnionPay acceptance to Thunes’ customers.
As part of the transaction, Thunes and Linden Research, Inc. (“Linden
Lab”), the current majority owner of Tilia, have agreed to an exclusive
five-year partnership in which, post closing, Thunes will provide
payment processing and pay-outs to Linden Lab, leveraging Thunes’ global
network – allowing gamers to pay, and to receive money real-time, in a
more cost-efficient way and with increased transparency.
The press release quoted Thunes' CEO Flores de Kort, “The acquisition of Tilia demonstrates our ambition in the United
States. This investment will enable us to leverage Tilia’s capabilities
to provide merchants with direct money movement solutions in and out of
the United States. Furthermore, Tilia’s deep expertise in online gaming,
virtual worlds and token-based payments will greatly accelerate our
growth into that fast-growing, exciting industry.”
Linden Lab's Executive Chairman, Brad Oberwager, was quoted as saying, “Thunes is an exceptional company that directly connects nearly every
payment method and market worldwide. The combination of Tilia and Thunes
will give Linden Lab’s customers more payment choices, and the ability
to receive pay-outs in real time, anywhere, into the wallet or bank
account of their choice. It will be business as usual for our people and
our customers as we bring Tilia and Thunes together.”
Tilia was quietly bought by Linden Lab in 2015, but was quiet about it's purpose until 2019 when it was announced that it would be taking over currency exchanges, and people selling Lindens to buy real-life currency would have to register with it, saying this was necessary due to new Government regulations. It would also be used to buy and sell Sansar currency, which at the time was owned by Linden Lab. Eventually Sansar would be sold, but Tilia would continue to handle it's transactions, and make deals with other virtual platforms such as Upland to handle theirs. When Linden Lab was bought by the Oberwager Group in 2020, it was believed Tilia was part of what attracted them. In 2022, Linden Lab announced JP Morgan was making a "strategic investment" in Tilia.
There is a thread in the Second Life forums about the sale it Tilia (here). Linden Lab would state, "This is good news for Second Life residents and creators. More options
without additional costs. We are having an open meeting on May 20 and
can discuss in detail."
If you rent a place in Second Life through someone rather than getting it directly from Linden Lab, then chances are you know of Caspertech. Their rentboxes are a fairly common sight in numerous places here, including at the Sunweaver Estates where the Newser office makes it's home. Since 2018 with the closing of Hippo Technologies, they've clearly been the top seller of rental vendors. Things seem to have run smoothly with them. So it was a big surprise yesterday when Linden Lab announced they were acquiring them.
CasperTech has provided various business related services within Second
Life for 13 years. Over that time, CaperTech has proudly provided
continuous service for tens of thousands of Second Life businesses, and
it has remained steadfast in its commitment to the merchants who have
depended on those services.
This acquisition will ensure that all of the existing CasperTech
services in Second Life will continue to operate without interruption
into the foreseeable future, but it also opens up brand new
opportunities to vastly improve the experience for our users as our next
step in the CasperTech and Second Life journey.
You can expect to see the same great services that you know and love
continue on, with all of the same functionality you enjoy today, but
with closer integration into the Second Life ecosystem – and as such, an
even more reliable and convenient experience.
The news sparked more than a few questions and some fears among some residents, both those on the forum thread to discuss the matter, as well as conversations with people I had that day. A few were expecting Linden Lab to gouge them to the point they'd have to give up some of their land.
Shortly afterwards, there was a special episode of Lab Gab to help explain things. In short, Caspervend is not in trouble, but the owner had other reasons to sell.
Caspertech is owned by Casper Warden, and he and Patch Linden were interviewed by Strawberry Linden. Casper stated he came to Second Life in 2006, was asked to by people in his real-life job to take a look at it. Worked on promotional material for the company at first. But was soon making his own items. Caspertech as a Second Life company has been around for 13 years. Casper originally created the vendor system in 2009 for his own personal use as he didn't like some of the ways what was on the market worked, "they were script-heavy, and I didn't like the way that the vendors scrolled through the products." But he soon realized people were more interested in his vendors than what he was selling, "In hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised by that." So he soon launched version one to the public. While he didn't do an ad campaign for it, word spread by word of mouth and started becoming popular, "and we just continued to expand to meet customer needs." Casper does make other items, such as a security orb and a product update system, though his vendors continue to be his "bread and butter."
Patch called himself "a bit of a fan" about Casper's products, and had been using them not just for himself, but Linden Lab work, calling it "an awesome system." He would say the talks about Linden Lab getting Caspertech started, "a little while back now," with he and Casper talking on various subjects, and eventually came to the idea of the Lab taking the system and intigrating it with Second Life. This way, Patch stated, this would mean the long-term stability of the vendor system while under the Lab there would be more resources available to improve on it. So Patch asked him about the idea, "and well, here we are." Patch went on to say Caspertech's technology, "will bring a lot of capabilities ... in the future."
Strawberry asked what residents can expect. Casper answered that customer services will continue, "It's really critical to us that our customers don't get disrupted." He went on to say that he was still basically in charge of Caspertech's day to day operations, saying the big difference was that they now had, "the support and resources of Linden Lab behind us," reminding that other companies offering rental vendors had closed down over the years, "now our customers can be assured that their Caspertech services aren't just going to suddenly disappear." Of the future, he stated that he saw "plenty of exciting opportunities" to improve the vendor system, saying residents can expect "significant" improvements. Patch stated that in the deal, the Lab "would not interrupt or change what you know and love about the Casper products today. They will continue for the foreseeable future just as they are now. ... the goal is to ... give Second Life residents the tools they need to be successful in what they do."
Casper described himself as mainly a software engineer, and stated that as his business expended, "I found increasingly less and less time on my hands to really spend on the code," and that "many requested features have kind of sat on the back burner. ... this move give me an opportunity to really get back to what I love and what I'm good at," developing his rental vendors and other products of his. He would go on to say he'll still be online, and around in group chat, "monitoring and helping to keep everything running," and thanked his support staff, "who have already kept the show running all these years."
Patch stated they would soon start working with Casper to "transition the service" to the Lab, saying the goal was to make it smooth to the point it wouldn't be noticed by anyone. And after that, Casper would presumable have more time to work on the system's new features.
In the forums, someone would ask Casper if he was in some kind of financial trouble, and he would answer, "No! We've been profitable since the day we launched. But the amount that one guy (me) can handle is limited, and as CT grew I found myself with a massive challenge and not enough time to improve the service. Now I can! *yay*" There were numerous other comments. Some were cautious, some were optimistic, some were a little of both, feeling the Lab wasn't out to gouge them but weren't so sure about the promised improvements. There were a few comparisons to Linden Lab's acquisition of Xstreet, which would eventually become Second Life's Marketplace. One would say this was no surprise as she felt Caspervend had gotten "too big to fail" for Second Life.
While a major development, for now it appears little will change as far as daily life in Second Life goes. Hopefully Casper will soon come up with the improvements he says he was requested to make, but hadn't the time to develop them. For now, we can only wait and see.
In what would be the biggest computer gaming business acquisition in business history, yesterday on Tuesday January 18 Microsoft announced it was buying Activision/Blizzard. The deal would be at 68.7 billion US dollars, or about $95 a share.
“Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms,” Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella would state, “We’re investing deeply in world-class content, community and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to all.”
Activision/Blizzard is best known for the well-known MMORPG World of Warcraft. But has also been successful in games such as Overwatch, Hearthstone, Diablo, Starcraft, and Call of Duty.
Microsoft had already been a company heavily invested in gaming such as with it's X-Box and having acquired the popular Minecraft some years ago. The deal would make it the third largest gaming company. It is notable that while Minecraft's maker Majong was acquired while both the game and company were doing well, in recent months Activision/Blizzard has suffered a series of blows, most notably a rash of sexual harassment allegations. It's stocks have sunk more than 37% since it's high last year. Activision/Blizzard's CEO Robert Kotick would continue for now, though is expected to step down once the deal closes, which may take as long as a year and a half to complete.
Besides the Newser's choice for "Man of the Year" Draxtor Despress, there were a number of other newsmakers. But the ones who stood out were the team of investors led by Randy Waterfield and Bradford Oberwager. On July 9, it was announced by Linden Lab that negotiations between them and the team had reached a deal that would result in the investors taking ownership of the company known for it's running of Second Life. All that was left needed was the approval of the US Federal Government to finalize it. The news was all the talk around the residents for a while. Some were afraid the result would be Second Life going lower in quality or even dismantled and shut down. Others felt there wouldn't be much change or possibly even some improvement. And still others felt it was too soon to tell or were otherwise unsure. Ebbe Linden stated that part of the deal was the Lab would continue to be free to run Second Life. Brett Linden added Waterfield and Oberwager had a solid view of what Second Life was and wasn't, which led to their decision to invest. After a few weeks, the chatter died down, and Residents were more or less going about their usual business.
While the investment team was only in the news for a matter of a few weeks, the move's potential implications for Second Life are obvious. So they are the Newser's Men of the Year - Runner Up.
Other notable people this year were the Moles for their continued work on Bellisseria and the Linden Homes, the staff of Gen-Con whom took their annual gaming convention online to Second Life, those whom made an effort to inform residents about the Coronavirus and honor those whom passed away from it, and of course the Relay for Life volunteers.
On Monday October 22, Trion Worlds, a game developer and publisher, was bought by Gamigo. Trion currently is behind five games: Atlas Reactor, Trove (a Minecraft spinoff), Rift, Defiance, and Archeage. On their website, Gamigo called themselves a "leading publisher" of "various Free2Play MMORPGs and MMOGs," many of them browser-based games.
In the Rift forums, one director posted, "...We can confirm that there has been a transaction involving Trion Worlds and its games. While many of the names and faces you’ve come to know in our studios will remain on through this transition, others will not be making the journey. To those who are leaving us, we are forever grateful for your incredible work and contributions over the years. We’d like to assure our communities that the games will continue on in capable hands moving forward, as everyone involved is aiming to make this transition as smooth as possible for you. We will have more information to reveal as soon as we possibly can. ..."
What followed in the Rift forums were many sad comments, and well-wishes for those whom had been laid off. While a few expressed optimism for the future of the game, more often there were predictions the game only had a few years left in "maintenance mode" with few to no updates.
In a statement by Gamigo, the company told, "Trion was acquired via an 'Assignment for the
Benefit of the Creditors' process, in which the buyer only buys those
assets, with which he wishes to continue the business. In this
process, gamigo group acquired the majority of the assets, including the
platform, takes over employees to operate the business and gets the
full publishing rights of the games. The IP’s of the Trion Worlds games
have been acquired by gamigo’s sister company Padmapani GmbH and are
made available for gamigo group, worldwide and exclusive."
According to an article by Gamasutra, "roughly 25 employees remain at each" of Trion's two studios. With the company having once employed 200 people, fifty are now left. Earlier, it was reported only 25 employees were left in total. A look at Archeage's forum shows that the release of an update that was almost finished has been delayed. There had been some earlier signs of trouble for the company, such as fifteen people laid off in July. With only 25% of it's staff remaining, it is unclear what the future is for updates that are far from complete, or if any more will be made for the forseable future.
In 2011, Xymbers Slade reviewed Rift for the Newser, saying it was heavily based off World of Warcraft, but was so good he was spending a lot of time on it. Nydia Tungsten reviewed Archeage in 2014, saying the MMO had a well done storyline and a unique crafting system, but there were some frustrations such as griefing by players wanting to become pirates.
In a move that was completely unexpected, Linden Lab announced that it had been purchased by the Trump Organization, the primary holding company for the businesses and investments by Donald Trump, the billionaire and media personality whom recently has been making news as a leading candidate in the US Presidential election later this year.
"We at Linden Lab are happy to announce our merger with the Trump Organization," Ebbe Altberg, the CEO of the owner of the virtual world announced, "Our new partnership will allow us to make developments in virtual reality like never before."
In an official statement by Donald Trump, he stated he had been impressed by past accomplish- ments by enterpenurers in the virtual world, such as Anshe Chung. and was looking forward to attracting new ones. It had also gotten his attention that among the users in the Gird were supporters of his, such as those in Second Life's own Trump Organization, and planned on making an appearance inworld soon, "Second Life is full of all kinds of people, smart people, socially upward, socially awkward, I love the socially awkward."
Developments are still coming in on what is clearly a turning point in both Linden Lab and Second Life.
Following reports that the two companies were in talks, yesterday on September 15, Mojang, the makers of the highly popular "Minecraft" game announced that they were indeed being bought up by the Microsoft corporation. The selling price was listed at 2.5 Billion dollars.
In a statement on their website, the spokesman tried to reassure Minecraft fans "Everything is going to be OK." As for why the company was being sold, "Minecraft has grown from a simple game to a project of monumental significance. Though we're massively proud of what Minecraft has become, it was never Notch's intention for it to get this big." They felt only a few companies were big enough to continue to allow the game to grow "on the scale it deserves." As they had worked with Microsoft since 2012, they were "impressed by the continued dedication to our game and it's development. We're confident that Minecraft would continue in an awesome way." Although the three people who founded the company were leaving, most of the team was planning to stay.
On his personal website, "Notch" Persson, the man who made Minecraft, gave his own statement. "I make games because it's fun," he wrote, "... but I don't make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don't try to change the world. Minecraft has certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it's changed games." Persson had actually stepped down from developing Minecraft "a relatively long time ago," but stuck around on smaller projects as people were telling him he was "important to the culture."
But he described an incident "a couple of weeks ago when the Internet exploded with hate against me" over a user license agreement issue that he had nothing to do with. Later on, he "started to realize I didn't have the connection to my fans that I thought I had. I've become a symbol. I don't want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don't understand ... I'm not an enterpenuer. I'm not a CEO. I'm a nerdy computer programer who likes to have opinions on Twitter."
Persson stated he would be leaving Mojang as soon as the deal was completed, going back to doing small experiments, "I love you. All of you. Thank you for turning Minecraft into what it has become, but there are too many of you, and I can't be responsible for something this big. In one sense, it belongs to Microsoft now. In a larger sense, it's belonged to all of you for a long time, and that will never change. It's not about the money. It's about my sanity."
Mojang's statement can be read in full (here), and Persson's can be read (here).
Where do Second Life residents go when not in Second Life? For some, it's the game of Minecraft. Among the most popular games in computer history, it's developed a fanbase of millions spending not only time there building things, but also willing to spend money on real life items such as "Creeper" hats and toys based on the game. But fans aren't the only thing the game has been attracting. Recently the Microsoft corporation has been negotiating a possible buyout of Minecraft's owner Majong, news that has some fans wondering what this could mean for their beloved game.
Earlier, Hamlet Au had commented that Yahoo's acquisition of Cloud
Party's team was a strong hint that it would soon be going into the
virtual world market (link), "given that Yahoo! is one of the very largest consumer-facing sites on
the Web, we could soon see a massive growth in virtual worlds."
Someone posting in Daniel's Flickr comments suggested, "Hopefully, much like Glitch, it will find a way to be reborn! CP had too much promise to simply disappear." If not however, the image just above will be the last moment of "the Cloud" ever shown.
While Second Life residents delt with the surprise news of Rod Humble resigning as the CEO of Linden Lab, there was an announcement concerning another virtual world: Cloud Party. They announced on their blog that they had been acquired by Yahoo.
We’re excited to announce that the time has come for the Cloud Party team to start our next adventure. We are joining Yahoo! The last two years have been an incredible experience for everyone here. We’ve been continually amazed by your creativity and the worlds you’ve built and shared with us.
Cloud Party will close on February 21st.
The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education (VWPBE) has annouced because of this, they will no longer be part of their conference. Daniel Voyager speculated this could mean another virtual world could be taking it's place there.
On July 10, Linden Lab announced it had acquired Desura, a digital distribution platform based in Australia. Sometimes compared to Steam, Desura is best known for focusing on small independent games, or "indie games," instead of those from the bigger companies Steam has. This continues the trend of Linden Lab buying or establishing platforms centered around user-generated content, such as Patterns, Blocksworld, and Versu.
In the Linden Lab press statement, Mark Humble stated, "Desura puts the best games, mods, and downloadable content from developers at gamers’ fingertips, ready to buy and play. The free Desura application can serve and patch games, mods, and add-ons directly for customers around the world. Developers and publishers can share news, images, videos, and other content through their profiles, while every member of the Desura community can post comments, submit reviews, and upload screenshots from their own playing experiences. Desura also demystifies user-made mods and add-ons for games by making them as easy to find and install or update as professional titles."
Desura called it's acquisition, "an important milestone in the company's history, with much more to come."
For our community of gamers, publishers, and developers, rest assured
Desura shall continue running uninterrupted. Long term, expect plenty
of polish as we continually strive to innovate and differentiate
ourselves as we have done in the past with our Linux client,
alphafunding, mod support and self-publishing for developers. We have
big plans and many ideas to explore, and the resources we now have as
part of Linden Lab will allow us to do just that.
Our aim remains to put great games, mods, and downloadable content at
the fingertips of players - and we look forward to doing this in a
greatly expanded manner and challenging ourselves to grow with the games
we support.
In an open letter to its game developers, the Desura team stated, "... To date Desura has been built and run by a dedicated small team- and
it's grown to the point where we list over 1,000 games and have served
over 1,000,000 customers. We are very passionate about the developers
and community we represent, and I want to assure you now this policy
isn't changing. With Linden Lab's support, we plan on expanding our team and
providing you with more co-ordinated coverage, sales, marketing efforts,
reporting, and assistance from us. We want to solve challenges like
discoverability and giving your customers' choice, and we look forward
to doing so. We are going to continue to polish and innovate so Desura
stands out and does its most important job better: getting your game
into customers' hands. ..."
There have been a few opinions about the matter, and considering it's earlier moves some wondered if this was another move to "throw enough things at the wall and hope something sticks." In the SL Universe forums, a couple people expressed worry that Linden Lab would just "gut" Desura of it's technology and then close it down like when it acquired "Avatars United."
Iris Ophelia expressed the opinion that Desura was different from Linden Lab's earlier moves, "At points, it seined like they were snapping up promising creative gaming projects and hoping that one might magically blossom into the next Minecraft. But they've yet to demonstrate the follow-through that would be necessary to make that happen." They neither had a community of fans nor did the Lab did anything to nurture one. "But Desura is very different. If we're talking about Linden Lab buying up projects to see what will stick, Desura's already well into the process of sticking, if not already 'stuck.''
Iris called Desura, "Steam for Indie games … if you're big on indie games, you're probably big on Desura." And indie games were what Iris called "a big f**king deal. In the past few years, some of the most memorable games have been indies that seemingly came out of nowhere. … this segment of game development is big and only getting bigger. Desura appeared at the perfect time to take advantage of this, making an array of publishing and vending tools available to just about anyone with a game they wanted to sell."
Linden Lab made what could be a brilliant move, Iris felt. Provided the Lab can help keep it's momentum and help fix what problems it has, this could easily be it's best purchase, "I'm not worried about Desura 'sticking,' so long as Linden Lab sticks with Desura."
Most responding to Iris's article expressed optimism, though there was one person asking, "What does this have to do with Second Life?"
So it seems Linden Lab, for once, made the right move at the right place at the right time. But will they continue to avoid blunders with their new acquisition?
Last week on January 24, Linden Lab announced they had purchased the iPad game "Blocksworld." Described on it's own website as a "mix of Lego and Minecraft," the Linden press release described it as an iPad game in which players use cubes, wedges, rockets, wheels, motors, and more to easily create 3D models of anything they can imagine - from race cars to animals to robots and more. These models come alive with realistic physics simulation, and users can play, interact, or even explode their creations. As with Linden Lab's Creatorverse, Blocksworld allows users to share their creations with others to explore, play with, and remix to make their own.
CEO Rod Humble was quoted in the statement, "Blocksworld is a great fit with what we do at Linden Lab. It's a very user-friendly complement to our portfolio of shared creative spaces, We're happy to have the Blocksworld team join Linden Lab and are looking forward to bringing Blocksworld to the App Store worldwide soon!" Boldai, the team behind the game, is based in Sweden. On the website, they stated Blocksworld was developed at the University of Linkoping.
It's notable that in their press release, Linden Lab called itself not just "the makers of Second Life," but "the makers of Second Life, Creatorverse, Patterns, and other shared creative spaces." Some established residents of the Grid, already feeling the Lindens are leaving them behind, might consider this statement further evidence that they are.
Hamlet Au in New World Notes suggested that the purchase was motivated
by predictions of tablets outselling desktop computers within two years.
Ciaran Laval on her blog felt Rod Humble was continuing to move Linden
Lab forward, expanding it and making it known for more than just Second
Life.
For the complete Linden Lab statement: Click Here.
Some news in about Blue Mars. The virtual world was at one time seen as the "Second Life Killer." Then in January 2011 the company behind it, Avatar Reality, changed course to concentrate on a mobile device version. The PC version would be limited from then on to bug fixes. Since then, little news has come from this virtual world. It did get a couple more updates after all, as well as Avatar Reality getting a new CEO (Henk Rogers).
Recently, Ball State University acquired the rights to the virtual world. Ball State's official statement was later taken down, but Tateru Nino described the terms of agreement as "the university will begin to fully operate Blue Mars for non-commercial purposes, expand upon the source code, increase its research and academic initiatives, and enhance the community of Blue Mars. In addition, Ball State will continue to deliver original content on Blue Mars as it has done in the past." The University plans to use Blue Mars for "3D simulation and research projects."
No figures are available yet on what Ball State paid, but the Blue Mars platform is reportedly worth $10 million. Tateru stated Avatar Reality, the company that once challenged Linden Lab, is now down to less than a dozen people. With the platform off their hands, she felt they would be "subsisting on licensing fees, or working on mobile projects."
Ball State and Blue Mars have a history. The University's Ball State's Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) made a number of projects there, such as the Virtual Middletown Project and their simulation of the 1915 World's Fair.
Some of you may have heard something about a rumor flying about Second Life, that Microsoft was making a deal with Linden Labs to acquire them, if the deal hadn’t already been done and they were just waiting to announce it. My reporters and I heard about it to, but the decision was made to not say anything until rumor became fact.
As it turned out, Microsoft was making a deal for a virtual world, but it wasn’t Second Life. It was Vivivaty, a competing world which went out of business in April, which was bought up by the computer software giant. Supposedly, Microsoft may not stop there. And there are people guessing they want a virtual world for it’s X-Box game to compete with Sony’s own virtual world for it’s Playstation game: Home. But these are just guesses.
I spoke to my friend Aeonix Aeon of Pixel Labs a little about this. He told me he hadn’t thought too much about the rumor in itself. On the other hand, he thought that the rumor had a strong ring of truth to it. The way Linden Labs was acting, he felt they were looking for someone to buy them out.
Aeonix had also put his thoughts down in an article online on the Andromeda blog. He had been thinking since April 2010 that Linden Labs had it’s eye on an initial public offering or a buyout. He observed Linden Labs was exhibiting the “telltale signs” of it.
Linden Labs, he stated, was “reaching the end of an investor lifecycle ... Essentially, Linden Lab is at the end of that lifecycle of investment and for those of us who are knowledgeable on this, we also know what sorts of things to expect in the actions of a company in this position.” Aeonix wrote this observation was partly from being in this kind of position in the past.
For a company such as Linden Lab, one can expect that at the end of the lifecycle they would begin acting in (what would be seen by an outsider) very nonsensical manners, with massive layoffs, external office closings, and liquidation of assets in an attempt to bring the company into a leaner and more profitable state. This behavior is also a telltale sign that reorganization in the company is to position that company for the exit strategy of IPO or Buyout from a bigger corporation.
Back to the conversation, Aeonix thought, “ I believe that Philip (Linden) is weighing both sides for the benefit of both himself and investors, as well as the existing community. Which means, there will likely be concessions on both sides. ... Second Life will evolve, and on an increasingly rapid pace. We'll look back and see SL 1.0 and think ‘Wow.. it’s so different than what we have today.’ There may be new rules in place, depending on how things evolve out. ... Of course, long time users will scream bloody murder. We already saw that with V2. ... evolution.”
Aeonix concluded his article, “keep in mind that regardless of the outcome of this rumor, Linden Lab knows that it’s time to pay the devil its due. Whether or not we find that the devil we thought was behind it is truly the devil or just a lower demon compared to the bigger devil of Microsoft, has yet to be confirmed. Let us hope that they aren’t looking to sell all of our souls in the process.”
