Commentary: Patch Linden - A Long Career With A Sudden Ending That Leaves A Big Hole And Many Questions

 

It isn't often that one of the Lindens, particularly someone outside the Lab's CEOs, makes a big impression. Early on, there was Torley Linden with his "Friendly Greetings" Second Life tutorials. Oz Linden had some fans as well, and his farewell party had a huge attendance. April Linden as the one furry among the Lindens at one time had some admirers among the grid's furs. 

 

And then there was Patch, or Eric Nix as he's known in real life. 

 

It's fair to say Patch had a very huge group of fans. Being in the public eye since 2015, he would take a role in various Meet the Lindens events at the Second Life Birthdays and other occasions, as well as taking part in Linden Bid Me Bald events since 2017 and Linden Jail and Bail events since 2018. He was a part of Bellisseria since its beginning, and would sometimes appear in group chat and make comments, the locals as a group feeling he was one of them. 

 

As then CEO Ebbe Linden began to appear less in public around 2018-19, Patch Linden would stand in for him. When Ebbe Altberg passed away in 2020, Patch would be part of the Lab's leadership team, and took the lead in honoring it's departed leader. Linden Lab would never choose another CEO, it's leaders being those of the Waterman Network that bought them in 2019 with Brad Oberwager (Oberwolf Linden) as Executive Chairman. But Patch would remain the most visible of the Lindens. 

 

It's fair to say to Second Life's residents, Patch would be the face of Linden Lab to many, if not most, taking the lead in being part of many fun events as well as announcements such as Pride Month celebrations and explaining why controversial moves such as the Gacha Ban were done. And he would also appear in public between events, and willingly be the butt of jokes such as people spinning on top of him and taking pictures and getting spanked. 

 

Then came the troubles.

 

In late February 2024, there was an article being passed around accusing several Lindens and Moles of engaging in ageplay, or in laymans' terms virtual child pornography, including Patch. The majority after being confronted with this "what the hell" moment would conclude there was no real proof any of the charges were true, Prokofy Neva, who was certainly no fan of Patch or at least a number of decisions made under his watch, would make a lengthy article explaining none of them held water. Linden Lab eventually felt it had to make a statement a few weeks later acknowledging they were taking the accusations seriously and investigating. While a few Lindens were let go some months later, the reasons were not given, so they could have been dismissed/resigned for other reasons. 

Sadly while most of us believe "all remain innocent until proven guilty," some go with "once accused, always suspect." And a small number would view him with suspicion and hostility. Linden and Mole Chatter in the Bellisseria group would vanish for a while. Patch would keep a low profile for some time, not appearing at the VWBPE Conference that year and it would be months later before anything was heard from him. It wouldn't be until the Second Life Birthday that all seemed more or less normal again. But once in a while one of his anti-fans would speak out. 

 

And now, out of the blue, while things were seemingly going well, comes the announcement Patch is no longer part of Linden Lab. 

 

It's fair to say Patch was fired and not simply deciding to move on and resign. There was no official final statement from Patch. His account was quickly deleted. And there was no time as a Linden to tie up loose ends. While he would continue to take part in the Jail and Bail at the Fantasy Fair, it would be as his "civilian" account, Patch Pawtato, which most of us hadn't heard of until now. 

 

So what happened? Companies do not simply up and toss out someone as productive and well-liked as Patch. None of the Lindens are talking. There was nothing in the short statement given by the Lab. So all we are left with is speculation. Naturally, some look at the accusations made against him and wonder if that was the reason. But it's been two years. If there was anything solid to be found, it would have been almost certainly been very quickly. In one IM conversation with someone, he gave one interesting possibility. A couple months ago, Facebook/Meta came close to shutting down it's virtual world, at least to those using VR gear. He thought instead of seeing it as a victory, the Waterman Group instead saw that the market for virtual worlds was going downhill and talked about the possibility of selling Linden Lab, talking enough about it to take a few steps, which included removing a certain high-profile employee with a cloud over his head, "'What about that guy who was accused of messing with kid avatars?' 'He's gone now.'" In my opinion, possible but unlikely. While perhaps not making as much as during the Pandemic in 2020, Second Life is still making quite a bit of cash. Someone else pointed out that Patch had been around for twenty years, and maybe the decision was made to move him aside to make way for someone new. Possible but highly unlikely. There's nothing to say Patch was out of touch with today's residents.

 

In my opinion, what probably happened was some kind of dispute, or a series of disputes behind the scenes between Patch and the owners. And all it would take would be for one of them to be in a particularly foul mood. CEOs. It certainly would be far from the first time someone was booted for POing the boss. 

 

But the truth is, we may never truly know why Patch was given the pink slip. With Philip Rosedale, Second Life and Linden Lab were established, and he felt it was time to move on. With M Linden, Second Life and Linden Lab had gone downhill during his tenure. With Rod Humble, he'd stopped the slide but hadn't succeeded in getting the place to bounce back and had angered content creators. But with our unofficial leader of the Lab, the reasons just aren't clear. And this uncertainty will likely complicate the Lab's relationship with the residents somewhat for some time. 

 

Will anyone else rise to fill the void Patch leaves? Right now, we don't know that either. Grumpity Linden is one possibility. But it's also probable no one Linden will truly take his place, among the Bellisserians, or the residents in general. The accusations were a reminder if you're high profile, you're a tempting target for trolls. 

 

Wherever you go from here Patch Linden/Eric Nix, we wish you well.

 

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Newser 

Discord Backs Down: Age Verification Delayed

 

Earlier this month, Discord announced that it's users would need to submit to age verification. Either they would need to show some ID proving their age, or they would need to show a picture or short video of themselves. The result was numerous users complaining. Part of the backlash were concerns about the safety of data collected as in October hackers had stolen the information of 700,000 government IDs owned by the platform via a third party service it was working with at the time. There were further concerns when other hackers discovered "the frontend code for their partner Persona was publicly accessible on the open internet," and the code "compares your selfie to watchlist photos using facial recognition, screens you against 14 categories of adverse media (from mentions of terrorism to espionage), and tags reports with codenames from active intelligence programs consisting of public-private partnerships."

So on Tuesday February 24, Discord announced a change of plans. They were delaying age-verification checks. Discord's co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy would explain:
 

In hindsight, we should have provided more detail about our intentions and how the process works. The way this landed, many of you walked away thinking we're requiring face scans and ID uploads from everyone just to use Discord. That's not what's happening, but the fact that so many people believe it tells us we failed at our most basic job: clearly explaining what we're doing and why. That's on us.
 

Our goal is straightforward: keep the Discord experience completely unchanged for the vast majority of people while ensuring an age-appropriate experience for everyone. Over 90% of users will never need to verify their age to continue using Discord exactly as they do today. This is powered in part by our internal safety systems, which can already make an age determination for many adult users without any user action. We'll publish the methodology behind this in a technical blog post before we launch globally.

Vishnevskiy would go on to say the age-verification was "being shaped by legislation already in effect in the UK and Australia, with Brazil quick to follow, and Europe and multiple US states close behind." They were also no longer in a partnership with Persona, the platform they were working with when the hacking breach happened. 

So Discord users can relax a little, though perhaps not for very long. An article by "The Verge" stated, "Age verification is a reality on a growing number of social media platforms, requiring an ID or facial scan for full access to everything from YouTube to Roblox. The age-gating wave is coming along with calls for stronger child safety measures online, despite concerns about privacy, security, and censorship. In the US, lawmakers are pushing forward bills like the App Store Accountability Act and Parents Over Platforms Act to have app stores themselves verify users’ ages." So users of platforms valuing privacy will likely be needing to be very watchful for a while

 

Sources: Discord, Arstechnica, International Business Times. The Verge  

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

TikTok Deal Finalized, Complaints About New TOS & Posts Being Censored

 

For fans of TikTok in America who have been somewhat worried about the lingering threat of a potential ban in the United States, they no longer have to worry about that as a deal was made with American investors that satisfied the demands of the current administration. But, it may have come with a price that some users are not willing to bear.

More on the story in Extra. 

 

(finally up, sorry about the delay). 

Commentary: A.I. Art - Is It Stealing Your Art?

 

One of the burning issues in both the real world and online is Artificial Intelligence, or AI. There have been worries it will eventually destroy the world, and more recently Amazon announced it will be replacing some jobs with AI programs. On the Internet, there's been a big debate about the creations of AI programs: AI art. Some love it, Others hate it. Nydia Tungsten recently had a few things to say on the matter.

 

Read Nydia's commentary in Extra 

More on the "Gang of Homos" Controversy

 

Several days ago, the Newser reported on the Bella Epoque store having to move after the landlord Lighthouse (landland.ansar) evicted the owner, Jani La Belle (Janire Coba), she posting that this was done so out of discrimination, showing him making a "Gang of homo" comment. The response was much support for her and condemnation of him. Since then, Lighthouse finally answered the Newser. But more details have come out, such as someone else going over to talk to him, as well as looking around, and feeling things aren't adding up. 

Read more in People. 

 

Looking Back: The ToS Content Creator Controversy

 

 There's no denying Linden Lab was pretty smart in creating Second Life and keeping it updated over the years. But unfortunately, they've also been known to make some blunders as well. Ten years ago was when they made one of their most memorable, a change in the Terms of Service that basically stated they could take the hard-made work of content creators, and sell it as their own. The result was an uproar of criticism, by both people accusing Linden Lab of plotting to rip off it's residents, and people criticizing them for refusing to own up to it's mistake of poorly written language and correct it.

Read the story in Extra.

 

Linden Lab's Social Casino (And Controversy About)

 

 For those looking for a little casino action, Linden Lab now has a "Social Casino" where one can play slots and blackjack. However, the move is not going well with some residents.

The news was announced in both the "Shop and Hop" group by Strawberry Linden, and on the Second Life Twitter by the Lab.

We opened up a new Social Casino in Second Life where you can get free chips to play if you login daily. Check it out, it's called Helios Casino & Lounge, landmark is attached:  https://secondlife.com/destination/helios-casino-lounge

Please feel free to share any feedback with me directly and let me know how you like it!

 

Heading to Helios Casino (78/121/23), I was greeted with a HUD coming up, giving some basic directions, and announcing I was being given 500 free chips, plus would be given an additional 120 chips for every day I came back. Examining the place, it was made by various moles, with a "Social Casino Linden" listed as the owner.

Taking a look around, there were just two types of games. There are the slot machines, which pretty much rely on "dumb luck." And then there are the blackjack tables, in which a skilled player can win more often. There are variations in the slot games. And the blackjack tables are a bit different, with some offering different stakes and faster/slower paced games, than others. 

 

If you tun out of tokens and don't want to wait until the next day to get more, you can buy some from an "ATM" by the Lab. These tokens cannot be exchanged back into Linden dollars, and cannot be given/traded to other players.

 

While worth visiting, the place lacked the variety of games of (legal) casinos I've see in the past, such as 777 Studios. But it did seem cleaner and lacking the seedy air of a few such places. 

This might have been the end of the story, but as some might imagine, especially considering the history of gambling in Second Life, the news of a Linden Lab casino has not gone well with everyone. One person started a thread on the forums, asking why the Lab had banned gachas a few years ago if they were too close to gambling and was now opening an actual gambling casino, "Are you drunk, LL?". There would also be a second forum thread "Is Gambling Back?" The Twitter post was full of comments, and a picture from Sheree Honeyflower of a few people holding signs with a gambling problem helpline phone number, "If you're going to provide gambling, you may as well permit gacha." 

 

The comments have been mostly negative, filled with charges of hypocrisy, and calls for the Lab to install some safety measures, or do away with the casino entirely. One commented, "... the decision to actively promote this one is rather, Unclever.  And highly unethical... it's only to prey on the ones having problems with addiction because no sane person drops 5k plus on something that is set to lose anyways."

 

What lies ahead can only be speculated on. Linden Lab may put a cap on the number of tokens that can be bought, do away with the option of buying them, or perhaps do nothing and hope that the issue is forgotten. What is clear is that if they expected little to no criticism, they were mistaken. For now, the Social Casino remains at the Helios Casino sim.

Bixyl Shuftan

Bonniebots and The Debate About Them

 

In the past few days, a new controversy has come up in the Second Life forums: the Bonniebots. Some say they provide a useful service. Others call them a privacy threat and a violation of the Terms of Service. The topic was a hot one in the Second Life forums with four threads on the topic shut down by the Lindens. In the last one, Patch Linden stated they would soon be meeting up with the bots' team.

 

 Read the story in Design.

VR Chat Security Update Results in Mass Protests by Playerbase

 

The Newser hasn't written much about VRChat in a while. This is mostly because we've been busy with reporting on Second Life, but until recently we didn't hear of much other than it's increasing userbase that was making it a true competitor to the older and more established virtual world. But this week there was a major development that's gotten a lot of anger from its users. The developers installed a security update in order to combat the mods of hackers and other malicious users. Trouble is, it also disables the mods players made over time to improve the experience of users, notably disabled users, some saying a number were to address issues the developers were slow to act on. 

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

Looking Back: The Redzone Controversy

 

Imagine this. You've had to deal with a stalker who just won't leave you alone. So you decide to use an alt for a few weeks or so, maybe longer, until the heat is off. Only a few trusted friends at most know it's you, so you feel safe. Then you hear the store you've been going to now has an "alt-detector," part of a service that stores information about accounts and the Internet Provider data on a database. You also hear stories about the service, that it's prone to being hacked and the information leaked. And you hear that the owner has a chip on his shoulder and puts anyone he so much as suspects spoke out against him on the security database as if they were griefers. And then a friend suggests the stalker after you could find your real-life address using your IP address if they had a hacker steal it from Redzone. Sound crazy? Well, this is what some were worried about eleven years ago during the Redzone controversy, and it was the first couple days of March 2011 that Linden Lab finally acted. So how did it end?

Read the article in Extra. 

A Bad Week For Facebook and Twitch, Windows 11 Launched

It was not the best week for Facebook last week.  On Tuesday October 5, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook manager turned whistleblower, testified before Congress. She stated the company knew it's app Instagram could be hazardous to the mental health of teenage girls, and knew it was not doing enough to combat disinformation on it's social media website that contributed to the worsening political divide in the United States and led to the January 6 riot. While it could have taken measures to protect girls on Instagram and done more about misinformation on Facebook, it had not done so as the company didn't want to cut into it's profits, putting money over the safety of it's customers. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg would respond with a statement denying her accusations.

But then came more bad news in the form of a six hour outage of both Facebook and Instagram. While for most it was an annoyance, some small businesses have come to rely on Facebook for communication with their customers. Also affected were sets of Oculus VR headgear. The company would eventually offer an apology.  It's estimated that the company lost billions from this outage. Then on Friday, the company suffered another outage and once again Facebook and Instagram were down once more, another blow to it's reputation.

Facebook wasn't the only social media platform to face big trouble. On Wed Oct 6, there was a massive data leak targeting Twitch. Over 100 gigabytes of data was posted online on Wednesday October 6. This includes operational details that the company "fiercely guards," such as how many millions the top streamers made in revenue from broadcasting. "Aside from the salary details, the documents seems to contain the site's source code and even technical details for yet to be released products and platforms," Joe Tidy in an article on BBC News would say, adding if everything was confirmed it would be, "the biggest leak I have ever seen - an entire company's most valuable data cleaned out in one fell swoop." ThreatModeler founder and CEO Archie Agarwal would say of the data breach,"This is as bad as it could possibly be."

While there didn't seem to be any passwords included in the leaked data, it was listed as "part one," hinting there was more to come. Still, it is reccomended that Twitch users change their passwords anyway.

Tuesday October 5 was the release date of Windows 11. Six years ago, Microsoft was saying there would be only new installments of Windows 10. That has changed, and the company has launched a new version that promises to be "clean and fresh and simpler." If you're reluctant to change over to the new system, you'll have plenty of company. The list of machines the company says this version of Windows needs has been described as "ridiculously strict." In a review on PC Gamer, the writers thought Windows 11 had a few nice improvements, but nothing worth upgrading to the new system, and a number of reasons to wait. Officially, PC users have until October 2025 to wait. After that, Microsoft plans no more technical or security updates.

Sources: BBC News, PC Gamer, The Verge   

Bixyl Shuftan
  

News and Commentary: Of The Gacha Ban

 
Linden Lab's move to ban gachas has been among their most controversial decisions in Second Life history. Gachas have been a popular way of selling goods. But they've also had no shortage of harsh critics. The ban brought out much criticism to the Lab, "Why shut down these business people?" But it also got a lot of cheers, "It's about time. They should have been gone a long time ago."

The move has been compared to the gambling ban in 2007 when Linden Lab ordered obvious games of chance, at least those that required Linden dollars to play for a chance to get a bigger cash return, taken down. The reasons today are pretty obvious - they were against California law, which Linden Lab falls under. Probably the biggest criticism was that the Lab only gave the operators 48 hours to shut down.

A number of critics of gachas claim they're little more than gambling themselves, that in order to get the prized rare item, people have to spend an unknown number of Lindens to get it. And therefore should fall under laws against gambling. Another comparison is to the "Lootboxes" of various games, among the most infamous examples being the ones on Battlefront II that made the game which already cost money to buy a "pay to win" one. Another example was Overwatch, in which the items in the crates didn't affect gameplay, but critics charged the desire for rare ones would be an incentive for players, notably minors, to spend money to purchase one. Several countries have passed laws or debated proposed laws against them.

In my opinion, there is another move by Linden Lab that more closely resembles it's gacha ban, it's May 2013 move to shut down independent Linden dollar exchangers. This move came two months following the US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issuing a statement of guidelines on virtual currency, which were interpreted by one blogger as Linden Lab having to register with FinCEN to avoid steep penalties. To those familiar with the blogger's article, it did seem the Lab paniced and responded with a ban. But to the Lab's surprise, a number of residents outside the US stated they'd have to stop coming to Second Life as they now had no means to buy Linden dollars. So the Lab partially rescinded the ban, and the exchangers willing to be licensed by the Lab could do business again. But two years later, the Lab would once again ban them. This time, they had made it easier for Non-US residents to buy Linden dollars, and so the third-party Linden exchanger ban was for good.

There was a lawsuit by California against Apple concerning games from it's app store in which lootboxes were involved, but it was dropped. So as Second Life is under California law, it's under no obligation legally to drop them. Might access to Second Life be blocked in countries that ban lootboxes? Unlikely as to my knowledge, no country has complained to Linden Lab about it's gachas, including those with laws against lootboxes. So it seems instead of waiting until an actual complaint in which it could either fight in court or comply, it decided to jump the gun and ban the games months, perhaps over a year, before any serious challenge was mounted. Considering that gacha machine owners were given just 30 days to transition, either there's something going on behind the scenes only the Lab knows, or once again the Lab made a panic move in anticipation government actions.

Probably one more distinction between Second Life gachas and lootboxes is that there's no way, at least legitimately, a young child can put cash into an SL gacha. No one under 13 is allowed at all. While 13-15 year olds can come on, they need a sponsor organization and are limited only to the few sims owned by that sponsor. Accounts belonging to 16 and 17 year olds, under the rules they are limited to General-rated sims. If the Lab really was feeling pressured to "do something," limiting gacha machines to Mature and Adult rated sims would have been a much less drastic action. While a minor could always lie about their age and claim to be 18, that's already a banable offense.

Yes, a lot of people hate gachas. There's no shortage of people going virtually broke trying to get that one rare item they want. And if people go onto Marketplace to try to find it, some can only find only a few at huge prices. But there are ways to deal with these problems rather than a heavy-handed ban.

So what effect will the gacha ban have on Second Life? Some of the gacha merchants will do doubt find other ways to sell their products. Some may decide they'll be working harder for less money and close up shop. Two of the biggest gacha events, The Arcade and Gacha have already announced they're continuing. But some lesser known ones may find trouble attracting clients. 

Time will tell.

On a final note, I've occasionally played gachas myself. If I ever got what I didn't much care for, well, maybe someone might like it for a gift. And once in a while the rare items I managed to get became gifts as well.

Sources: Screenrant, Wikipedia, Bloomberg Law, gamesindustry.biz

Bixyl Shuftan

Nydia Tungsten's Youtube Channel Is Back

In November last year, Nydia Tungsten took down most of the videos in her Youtube channel. Or rather, made them inaccessible to those whom didn't have the links to individual ones. The reason for this was the COPPA controversy in which many Youtube content creators feared bankruptcy over perceived violations.

But over time, there had yet to be a single instance of this happening. So Nydia came to the conclusion there wasn't any trouble. So she made the decision to make her Youtube channel completely accessible once again.

I have decided to open my youtube back up, and I am looking forward to doing more Videos to put on there, you can find them here  

https://www.youtube.com/user/NydiaTungsten/videos

WE'RE BACK BABY!

The Newser looks forward to when the machinima/music video artist comes up with more.

Bixyl Shuftan

Top Stories of The 2010s, Part Four

The 2010s are over. But as we say goodbye to the decade, there's some looking back at what happened. The Newser has covered much in the past ten years, and we're looking at some of the top stories that made the news and got more attention than most.

Read the fourth part of the series in Extra.

News and Commentary: More on Blizzard's China Controversy

This month, the players of the game "World of Warcraft" are celebrating it's fifteenth anniversary, with in-game presents, events, and bonus experience. But there's been a dark cloud over the celebrations. It was last month that the company that owns Warcraft, Blizzard/Activision, banned a player from Hong Kong in another game, Hearthstone, after when given a chance to speak on a televised stream, he called for the freedom of the people of his city. Since the Newser's first article on the subject, the situation has continued to develop. And finally at Blizzard's annual convention, the company President addressed the issue.

Read more in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

News in Brief

There's a lot going on, both in Second Life and online gaming. So while we're trying to find some time to write an in-depth article, here's a few topics in brief.

Burn2, the largest annual art and music festival is taking place on Second Life. There are numerous music events and art exhibits over the six sims. To get there, head to Burning Man- Deep Hole (174/32/25). The festival lasts to Sunday October 20, with the high points being the Burning of the Man on Saturday and the Temple Burn on Sunday.

Also going on is the Gacha Guild event. Taking place twice a year, people can purchase avatars and accessories. The hot item for this event is the Spirit Fennec avatar, of which people are selling for as low as ten Lindens on Marketplace. Starting up a few days ago was the event's "Hallows 2019 Silent Hill Hunt," which promises big scares and big prizes. The event ends on November 1, and is located at Dew Drop (189/180/1002).

The controversy over the game company Blizzard banning of a game tournament winner and stripping him of his prize money continues. A few days ago, they announced he would still get the prize money, but was still banned for six months. But this hasn't stopped the criticism from it's customers, human rights organizations, or US politicians. The company's largest annual event, Blizzcon, is just in a couple weeks and fans are planning a protest there.
Image from Vice

Stay tuned for more information.

Bixyl Shuftan

News and Commentary: Blizzard's Removing Hong Kong Gamer From Tournament Sparks Calls for Boycott, Debate on Free Speech

For years, American companies have been trying to get into the Chinese market. With over a billion people, the potential number of customers for a large business is huge. However, the country is under the control of a dictatorship that does not react well to criticism or remarks in opposition to it's goals. It frequently makes demands to such companies, and penalizes those already in for perceived comments or actions against it. The debate flared up again this week thanks to three stories in the news. One of them was a tournament of players of the Hearthstone game, which is owned by the same company that owns the still noted MMO game World of Warcraft. When one winner was interviewed, he proclaimed his support for the protestors in the city of Hong Kong. Blizzard soon reacted with actions many of its customers have found troubling, including yours truly whom had recently just signed up for Warcraft again after an extended break.

Read the story in Other Grids, MMOs, and Games.

A Reader Responds on Linden Lab's Price and Fee Hikes, Group Limit Cuts

On June 4, yours truly made a commentary about Linden Lab's decision on May 29 to raise Premium account prices by 37% (or a little over 25% for those paying monthly), the doubling of the fee to cash out Linden dollars (2.5% to 5%), and their decision to cut the group limits on basic accounts from 42 to 35. While the Lindens canceled the last part of their plans due to feedback, I questioned why the Lab made that move to begin with while also raising prices and fees while their successful Linden homes were already bringing in more money.

Some people felt the commentary was overreacting to Linden Lab's move. Most of those comments on Facebook were simple ones to the tune of "If you don't want to pay, you don't have to play." But one reader, an Elizabeth Jarvinen, took the time to explain why she felt the comments were a little harsh.

I've been one of very few residents who routinely helps out both the Lindens and the third party viewer devs with bug reports and problem solving on SL. There's been talk for years about how group size and group numbers have been problematic. Whether people believe it or not, the facts remain the same. Group membership, particularly very large groups really weigh down the SL system. That's also why they limited viewing group members / roles to groups with (under) 5000 members. 

Balancing Public Relations with Technical Solutions is not easy. It's one of the hardest things with doing anything 'on the internet' in this era~ people can always construct a narrative that has conspiracy and ill intentions, marked with corporate greed and personal gain for~ well~ pretty much any situation really. That being said, I also condemned the notion of cutting basic groups, and I'm glad they listened.

I also feel a bit compelled to point out that with regard to "small land owners" a year ago they literally doubled their parcel sizes for FREE. How was that forgotten so quickly? I get that people remember bad things more readily and that Loss Aversion is a human propensity ~ but, I really wish it wasn't.

Also also~ random addendum, the reason there was teleport failures was literally related to the linux version that the servers were running on. Not, as your article suggests, things being moved to the Cloud. Sounds silly, but that's what it was. So the issue was basically an unforeseen consequence of some other software developer that changed a thing that SL uses to exist~ and that caused teleports in SL to change behavior.

The parting words of your post seems to indicate that you believe that the Lindens of old were less greedy somehow~ and that the new ones are putting the screws to the residents just 'cause they can. The fact of the matter is SL is a dinosaur, an aging behemoth. It's made it this far, due to some very good design choices by those early Lindens you revere, but it also is struggling due to some very poor ones that did not age well. Solving these issues may not always have the most socially expedient solutions, and I may not always agree with them. But I'd rather they try than we all get a "June surprise" of Linden Lab closing it's doors and the Second Life we all know and love becoming a footnote of the history of the Internet.

Do you the readers agree? Disagree? Further comments are welcome below, as well as any reader submissions.

Commentary: Linden Lab's Surprise Price Hikes and Group Limit Cuts

Individual Lindens can be quite friendly and helpful. The moles I've run into at the SLB grounds, they've been very cheerful and reasonable. But when it comes to Linden Lab, older residents often have mixed opinions. We're grateful of course for their creating the virtual world, and admire the effort the first Lindens put into getting it going. But it seems once they became a big success, they began to change. They've kept the virtual world upgraded, with additions such as Windlight, Mesh, Animesh, and more. But they've also made a number of questionable moves over the years, a number of which got people wondering about their motivations and how interested they were in listening to the concerns of their customers: us.

While some residents were grumbling about the Lab moving Second Life's data over to Amazon Cloud servers, which they complained were leading to a number of glitches such as the teleport disconnects this spring, in general, the attitude about Linden Lab this year has been mostly positive. The new Linden Homes proved to be highly popular, and were almost certainly the big reason for the number of Premium accounts going up this year. Considering that more than 700 added were snapped up in less than half an hour after they were made available, all the Lab had to do was to offer more to further encourage residents to go Premium. Instead, they made the decision to raise the cost to residents for Premium accounts, in addition to doubling the fees to cash out Linden dollars.

As one person on the forums put it, this was bad timing by the Lindens. Being done so soon after their latest release of Linden Homes, it made the Lab look more than a little greedy. Plus being done just as Second Life's more active residents, such as it's media, were getting ready for two of it's biggest events of the year, the Relay Weekend and the Second Life Birthday, this became the latest "May/June Surprise" that the Lab has pulled. One wonders if they decided to make their move now so with everything else going on, it might not be noticed as much.

Talking and listening to the residents, while sims may be cheaper, with Premium going up so much the smaller landowners won't see a benefit. With cashout fees doubling, some content creators have been complaining this will hurt already small bottom lines. "Why are you punishing people that help keep SL more interesting, LL? ... the less I make here, the less time I can devote to creation in Second Life."

Of the Lab saying they would cut the group limit of basic accounts, the residents didn't buy the explanation of more groups per resident taxing the system. Some of the largest complaints came not from run-of-the-mill basic account residents, but by merchants, club owners, DJs, and content creators, saying they relied on people joining their groups to help advertise their events and products, and Linden Lab's move would throw a monkey wrench in how they did business.

Needless to say, the calling off of Linden Lab's planed basic account group limit cut was a sigh of relief to many. Still, people wondered why the Lab wanted to do that to begin with. Indeed since the Lindens cancelled that part of their plans, I've had people ask me if the Lindens never seriously intended to carry it out, but that was part of a strategy to satisfy the residents by ditching what would be the most disliked part of the announcement. One recalls their ordering all third-party virtual currency exchange businesses to close down operations in May 2013, and two weeks later after numerous and vocal complaints doing a partial reversal of their decision by allowing them to sell Linden dollars, but not cash them out (two years later, they would order them to shut down again, this time for good).

Going back to the account price and cashing out fee hikes, if Linden Lab was already poised to make some more money with people getting Premium to get one of the popular Linden Homes, why raise prices? Indeed I've been hearing various people saying they won't renew their Premium status. So while Linden Lab may be getting a little more money as a result of this move, the amount from Premium accounts will be significantly shorter than the 37% hike. Of raising the cashout fee, Jo Yardley of The Berlin Project pointed out some people just might bypass Linden dollars alltogether on some Second Life transactions, "If cashing out keeps getting more expensive, people might just start asking tenants, customers or clients to start paying them directly via Paypal."

Yes, we understand the Lab is trying to make land more affordable and reduce the "tax burden" on landowners. But as a Premium account is necessary to directly own land in the first place, how does jacking up the price by almost 40% benefit those who own only one to a few sims? Maybe a hike of five to ten percent now would have been understandable. But this kind of increase plus the doubling of the cashout fee just after how successful your Linden Homes have been just reminds us longtime residents why we are so wary of the Lab.

As this is the time that the Newser reflects on it's anniversary, yours truly can't help but look back at some of the parting words of our predecessor paper's editor Dana Vanmoer, "One thing I would hope for the future of SL is that the Lindens go back and realise what they are destroying with their policies. The sheer creativity, communication and international impact somewhere like Secondlife can be is being eaten away by the Lindens stupidly ignoring the content creators with their ill thought out policies which help no-one except their own pockets." Nine years later, it seems we are still dealing with policies that could have been thought out better.

Linden Lab, we're grateful for this virtual world, but how can we put much trust in you if you continue making moves like this time and time again?

Bixyl Shuftan
Editor
Second Life Newser

News and Commentary: More Information on Team Diabetes' Question About Missing Money

"Where's the missing 100,000 Linden dollars that our supporters were told would be going to us?" That was a fairly simple question asked by Team Diabetes about a month ago. The issue has become one of the more controversial issues the Newser has written about after we first reported on it on January 8. Since our update on January 22, two more people came forward with statements, and I finally had a chance to talk to the man accused of swindling the donors and got his side of the story. Unfortunately for him, his alibi didn't quite match the evidence I had.

Read more in Extra.