Interview With Oberwager Reveals Reasons For Recent Layoffs At Lab

 

 Last month, Alexa Linden was laid off from Linden Lab, and there were stories going around that she wasn't the only one. In a recent interview Wagner Au conducted with Brad Oberwager, the head of Second Life, it was confirmed. 

 

At one point, Wagner asked Oberwager the reasons for the layoffs. Oberwager answered that this was in response to his conclusion that the Lab's support for it's content creators and residents was "antiquated" and lacking, "what happened was, we made changes across the whole organization, and some people got promoted, some people got moved into different parts of the organization, and some people,  we had to say goodbye to some people. And that's always unfortunate, especially when it’s folks that have been around for a long time. That's really tough"

 

Besides an emphasis on Engineering, Oberwager stated they were putting new energy in customer support, "We basically blew up all the formal titles and structure in how we provide support, and we formed two new teams...Resident success and Trust & Safety. And we're going to pour all of our energy into those two groups in terms of supporting [them]. So what's happened over time is Trust & Safety continues to become more important, not less… And so we’ve created this brand new Trust & Safety team that has tremendous autonomy and a very high bar of success."

For the rest of the interview, Click Here. 

 

Source: New World Notes

Bixyl Shuftan

Update on the Sansar Layoffs

Yesterday, the Newser reported on a number of layoffs in the Sansar team that included Kona Linden whom had been with Linden Lab for close to 16 years. While CEO Ebbe Altberg made a short statement in Sansar's Discord channel, there wasn't anything else from the Lab at the time. Yesterday afternoon, the Lab posted the following on the official blog.

There’ve been quite a few rumors about changes at the Lab and their possible effects on Second Life and Tilia. The truth is that we have made a few operational and personnel changes to ensure that we continue to stay strong for the next decade and beyond. This means that we had to say goodbye to a few employees, but at the same time we also strengthened our team by bringing back some heavy hitters who will help make Second Life better than ever.  

So, Second Life is still here and still strong. We’re continuing to invest in its future and you’ll see the results of our commitment this year as we roll out a new mobile companion app, new Linden Home themes, performance and usability improvements, and a number of other new features and enhancements. The ability to change names will be available in the next few weeks, too.  

These changes reflect our commitment to making SL strong for many years to come. To infinity and beyond!


There would be more. In the forum thread "Linden Lab CEO Confirms New Round of Layoff," Soft Linden would speak in response to "hopefully this means they'll have more time, money and effort to spend on SL"

100% what this was about! Second Life has THREE rock star graphics devs now, an engineer with a proven track record for asset optimization to make texture delivery and management fast and reliable, and so much more. The various teams will have more to say in coming months, or just watch the viewer and server release notes. Right now, some of them are literally re-learning to get dressed. They missed the era between Bento bodies and Bakes on Mesh. :)

It was a painful adjustment. But a lot of the old timers and hardcore off-hours SL users here believe these changes are important. It's part of the strategy for breathing many extra years of life into our favorite world.

There was some speculation of who were these "three rock star graphics devs" were. But so far, no confirmations. In any event, it seems much of the effort that was going to Sansar will be now focused into improving Second Life, at least for now.

Bixyl Shuftan

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

High Fidelity Fading Away

When the Newser last wrote about High Fidelity in July, the company was in trouble, having laid of a quarter of it's staff and made other cutbacks. But these moves failed to turn things around and the situation has continued to go downhill. Today, while High Fidelity isn't dead yet, it certainly seems close.

Earlier this month, Philip Rosedale, the co-founder of the company, had an announcement titled "Updates and a New Beginning," which had some bad news for fans of the virtual world platform. Among the things announced, High Fidelity was going to "turn over control of the codebase to the community. As of January 15, 2020, we’re going to make High Fidelity’s Github repository private. We want to give community leaders time to create their own repositories and systems as desired."

There were more layoffs announced, "we will reduce our team size in half effective today."

All High Fidelity applications are being removed from online stores and no further accounts are being created, "we’ll also be withdrawing our apps on the Steam Store, Oculus Store and our Virtual You: 3D Avatar Creator app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Since there are no High Fidelity supported environments, we’re not offering registration for new accounts which these enable."

Taking a look at a "User FAQ" page on the forum, High Fidelity's Marketplace is closing, and there will soon be no more cashout's of the virtual currency, "The Marketplace will close. The public Marketplace pages will be removed, you will not be able to purchase new items, you will not be able to add new items available for sale, and you will not be able to edit existing items’ details. We will also no longer offer cash-out of HFC after January 15, 2020."

Philip Linden felt that the reason for High Fidelity's failure to succeed was that virtual reality had yet to take off due to technical limitations that had yet to be solved, "four fundamental advances in hardware need to happen before HMDs replace mobile and desktop general-computing use. Until VR headsets don’t feel like, as The New Yorker’s Patricia Marx puts it, “a gerbil’s casket [has] been plastered onto the upper half of my face,” compelling social virtual worlds won’t gain traction. So where does that leave High Fidelity?"

Philip's parting words to High Fidelity's users were, "Your passion and dedication to the possibilities of VR and virtual worlds is inspiring. We’re grateful for your support over the years and hope you’ll try out our new product once launched." But the reaction by some users was quite negative. In the forums, one thread was, "Never Forgive, Never Forget," the poster remarking, "I call on the community to never forget the actions of High Fidelity corporate. How they have treated their users and how they have treated their employees. If or when High Fidelity comes out with their next project or a updated version of this project. We should remind High Fidelity of their past and educate their perspectives users of their past. Philip we do not forget. We do not forgive." But not everyone was so critical, DrFran saying, "I don’t know about you, but when people constantly criticize, belittle, and second guess everything you do, you tend to distance yourself from therm. I think HiFi realized the toxicity of the user base, and had to decamp. I don’t blame them for their actions. Their ball; their game."

Ryan Schultz commented of the announcement, "High Fidelity will soon be a dead platform, the first major victim of the social VR wars (but probably not the last). R.I.P." Hamlet Au's assessment was more optimistic, "High Fidelity's underlying code can still be developed by the community under an open source license. ... This seems to open up the possibility of the High Fidelity virtual world becoming the basis for... OpenSim 2." One of High Fidelity's users, Theanie, had his comments, "I ... am not in a state of mourning. The High Fidelity code is thankfully open source, and that means the platform will never really 'die.' There are already multiple forked projects in the works that could prove to be viable successors to the now-defunct platform. However, before we can move on toward that bright virtual future that awaits us, it’s critical to spend time on reflection. As the old saying goes, “Those that don’t learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.” We need to analyze the mistakes that were made, so as to prevent them from happening again."

In any event, the sun is setting for what was the next virtual world made by the man whom led the building of Second Life.

Bixyl Shuftan

Top Stories of The 2010s, Part One

The 2010's are almost over. Over the past decade, the Newser has reported on thousands of stories. But some stand out more than others. As time goes on and new residents show up, what was big news then becomes unknown or forgotten to more and more. So in this part of a miniseries, the Newser takes a look back at some of the major headlines in which residents were anxious to read on what happened next.

Read the first part of this look back in Extra.

News and Commentary: Linden Lab Lays Off Over 20 of Sansar Staff, Next-Gen World Faces a Mediocre Future

On Monday November 4, it was reported by blogger Ryan Schultz that Linden Lab had dismissed over 20 of the part of it's staff running it's Sansar virtual world. The news of the layoffs was just two days after news that the next-generation virtual world had undergone a major staff shakeup. As Linden Lab won't confirm if anyone's lost their job or not, Schutlz and then Hamlet Au got the news from insiders in the Lab. Inara Pey would state of the sixteen names she knew on the Sansar team, four were no longer active.

While Sansar has had a few enthusiastic fans, it's following has remained small. While it initially got a large number of curious visitors after it's introduction in July 2017, most didn't find a reason to stay and it's numbers dropped to less than fifty users a day, sometimes as low as ten. By January 2019, the number increased a little to 79 a day. A report on New World Notes last month brought up an infographic from September stating that Sansar was third of social VR platforms in peak concurrent users at 220 compared to 475 of Recroom and 10610 of VRChat, which has become the next-generation virtual world of choice. The report stated what the numbers didn't show was that most were coming on for a handful of popular events, and between them normal usage of the next-generation virtual world was closer to 20. These statistics are a tiny drop compared to the tens of thousands on Second Life and the several thousands of VR Chat, "220 people for Hello Kitty during TwitchCon 2019 on September 27... And after the event, tumbleweeds as usual."

Hamlet Au would put part of the blame for Sansar's failure to draw in bigger numbers on Linden Lab changing direction with the virtual world during it's development and after it's release, such as making content creation available only with offworld tools and pairing it with VR gear, the latter which is too expensive for most computer users. The current direction seems to be a focus on live events, which as stated earlier provides a temporary boost to it's mediocre numbers. Sansar developer "Gindipple" would comment, "They've changed direction so many times now. They are winging this and hoping. I gave up on them a while ago, so don't care as much now. They lost a lot of good people in this cut back, some went to SL but many [are] just out."

Second Life's future is still secure, as the Lab is still hiring people for it. But for Sansar, it looks like it will be operating with a "skeleton crew" as it faces a mediocre future. It's highly unlikely the Lab will close down the virtual world. Hamlet predicted it would "eventually be run as a spinoff company and product separate from Linden Lab." In any event, Linden Lab long had high hopes for the virtual world, despite most users of Second Life giving it a thumbs down. Now it appears even they have admitted, at least to themselves, that it's next-generation virtual world won't be attracting numbers anything close to the one that's been going for over sixteen years.

Sources: Ryan Schultz, New World Notes, Modem World

Bixyl Shuftan

High Fidelity in Trouble

With so much going on in Second Life, it's easy to miss what's going on with other virtual worlds. But there have been reports that one particular one that a number of residents have heard of has been having serious troubles: High Fidelity.

For those of you not familiar with the virtual world, after Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Lab, left the company, he went on to found High Fidelity in 2013. Despite having raised over seventy million from investors, it hasn't been doing well. In a community meeting in early April, Rosedale had some bad news. All company owned domains in the virtual world would be shut down, except for the orientation room for new users, and instead of focusing on VR headset experiences they would be concentrating on those from desktop computers. The reason for the latter was slow VR equipment sales. Hamlet Au remarked, "I can't emphasize enough how huge a blow this is to social VR and consumer-facing VR in general." In May came another announcement, a quarter of the workers would be laid off. The company would also be changing it's direction more to businesses.

As part of the changes in April, the General Assembly meetings were replayed with monthly Developers Discussion. When blogger Ryan Schultz looked at the video for the June discussion, he noticed a significant drop in attendance compared to the April meeting. "what happened to all the people who were active supporters of High Fidelity and who used to come out to meetings?" he asked. He then noticed on the forums some longtime members had their "trusted member" status downgraded to standard, which did not sit well with some, "Wow, after being here for 5+ years, I guess I never was trusted at all." Schultz's reaction was, "Is it just me, or is there a general overall sense of HiFi turning off the lights, shutting down various systems, and in general just downgrading services to their loyal userbase?"

If those weren't enough signs of trouble, in late May High Fidelity began offering it's office in San Francisco up for rent. All of this point to signs that of a company, and virtual world, in jeopardy. The name of Schults's blog post "Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" might have been a pessimistic assessment, but hardly unjustified. Despite Philip Rosedale's success with Linden Lab and Second Life, he's been unable to recreate it with his new company and virtual world, leading one to comment, "Second Life must have been a strange anomaly, that neither its founders nor the current Linden Lab appear able to replicate."

Sources: Wikipedia, New World Notes, Ryan Schultz, Crunchbase

Bixyl Shuftan

Trion Worlds Acquired By Gamigo, 75% Layoffs Follow

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.

Sources: Rifts forums, Archeage forums, Gamasutra, Rock Paper Shotgun, MMORPG.com, Massively Overpowered  

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab Lays Off Twelve, VP of Product Leaves

Linden Lab is a little smaller as a small number of employees have been dismissed. Also, one of the people higher up has left to accept a new position elsewhere.

Hamlet Au recently stated in New World Notes that, "A highly reliable source tells me Linden Lab recently made workforce staff reductions. ... this most recent layoff impacted about a dozen employees: 'It was like one person from each department, totaling 12 ... mostly shared staff ...' "

There were also two recent former employee reviews of the Lab on Glassdoor, which may or may not be two of the twelve. One who called himself a software engineer remarked, "Massive layoffs, but got rid of the wrong people." While he felt, "Some of the people I worked with were smart, passionate and really wanted to create something amazing." He had a mediocre view as a whole of the company, "Leadership has no vision and don't have the skills to run something as ambitious as Sansar. ... The same old people have been there for the longest time. (They) keep hiring the wrong people and putting the wrong people in positions of power."

The other review from an anonymous employee, "Make LL Great Again" was less critical. But he still had a negative outlook, "Company is too focused on its new product; those who work on the mainstay feel set aside and taken for granted. HR is nearly non-existent; most team members are remote or barely in the office. Too many org changes lately have left folks feeling insecure, morale is low and sinking. I hope they can turn it around." His advice to the Lab's leaders, "You have some really awesome people there; get out of their way."

In June 2010, Linden Lab had a massive layoff, or "restructuring" as they called it, in which about a third of their staff was given pink slips. Followed by the CEO then stepping down, it was a sign of a company in trouble. This news following the Lab's decision to raise fees for it's users a few months ago can be considered a sign the company is more pessimistic about it's long-term profitability. Part of the reason may be Sansar having a small base of regular users, despite Linden Lab's large investment in the next-generation virtual world.

One Linden whom left the company recently did so on his own. Bjørn Laurin, who was the "Vice President of Product, turned in his resignation. Joining Linden Lab in March 2015, Laurin was most associated with Sansar. Inara Pey described him as "one of the popular Lab reps (alongside Ebbe Altberg and Jason Gholston (Widely Linden) ) for his willingness to offer broad-ranging views and comments on Sansar’s direction, upcoming releases and ideas being discussed for the platform back at the Lab." Laurin left to pursue a job at HTC Vive.

Sources: New World Notes, Modem World, Glassdoor

Bixyl Shuftan

Qarl Linden: He Will Be Missed

On August 4, 2010, Linden Labs killed off Qarl Linden. As the word spread quickly through SL and RL, residents were shocked and sadden by the departure of such a skilled and well-liked creator. A texture was sent to many residents, including this reporter, and posted throughout the SL blogger world, protesting the decision and demanding an explanation. So far, no one from Linden Labs has responded.

Even Qarl himself was shocked at the decision, especially since he had gotten glowing job performance reviews. As he wrote on his blog, “honestly, I’m completely baffled at the decision, as are all my coworkers (and my boss, and…)”. Check out the details at his blog: http://www.qarl.com/qLab/?p=64.

In real life Qarl was Karl Stiefvater, a multi-talented programmer. His credentials include two “Matrix” and “300” movies. His background and professional history was very broad. Most importantly, he loved Second Life and its possibilities. “SL is the coolest thing on the planet - the world we’ve all built is literally incredible - beyond belief,” he wrote on his blog.

I talked with Samantha Glume, CEO of Samantha Glume Enterprises, who builds communities and creates worlds with an emphasis on sci-fi. Like many creative people, she knew Qarl best through his work on sculpts, Jira and other projects. She described him as a talented programmer who had a spotless reputation.

His departure has had a devasting effect on the morale in SL among creators. Glume characterized the news of his removal as demoralizing. Because he was one of their best programmers, she said the Linden decision “just makes no sense.”

Qarl was working on mesh compatibility, which Glume said will enable the sci-fi community to build ships that look realistic without requiring thousands of prims. His work on sculpts was invaluable because sculpts are what make SL look and feel real. He was also working on the shadow engine, which will allow things in SL to cast a shadow, just like objects do in RL. His departure will be a huge loss to the creative community because, as Glume explained, he was responsible for actually building the systems.

“He will be greatly missed,” she said.

Source: Quarl's blog

Grey Lupindo

What a Week

It’s been quite a time for us at Second Life Newser, dealing with not just one, but two major events on our hands. One mainly for us, the other felt by just about every resident I met.

The first was, well, the paper we used to work for closing, and Second Life Newser beginning as it folded. Starting up a new media company would be no easy task. Thankfully, people have again and again expressed their well wishes, as well as expressing their thanks there will be a new paper to read. Thank you very much for the kind words, and your support. It meant a lot.

And so, on with our mission, to bring you the readers the news across the grid big and small. From the mega-events such as SL7 and Burning Life to the personal experiences of various residents. We will soon be introducing new sections to the paper to keep the front page from becoming too cluttered, especially on busy days. The newspaper site will also be tweaked a bit to be easier to read.

We are also in the process of getting an office for a physical location in Second Life. Once everything is all set, the address will be posted online.

It's been a promising beginning.

Even before the dust was beginning to settle, wham! The heavy hand of M Linden struck again as it never had before, with about a third of the staff up and dismissed. In a press release, even in an e-mail released to the residents, M Linden insisted Linden Labs was healthy and this was necessary streamlining. But as has been mentioned in various commentaries, such as here and here, this kind of cutback is not a sign of a company prospering.

There has been plenty of speculation about what this might mean, notably as it comes alongside the news of Linden Lab developing a browser-based client. Among them, that this was done to prepare Second Life for being sold. Others wonder if the Metaverse is going to be downscaled in graphics and flexibility, turned into a primitive version of itself, in order to become “Yoville2.” Somehow, the joke I made on April 1 in the old newspaper about the Lindens selling Second Life to China to concentrate on making a “Farmvile” sequel doesn’t seem so funny now.

One Columnist in Computerworld didn’t think Second Life was about to be sold or made into a graphical shadow of what it once was, but he did feel the best days of the Metaverse were behind it as Linden Labs takes it into “maintenance mode” to try and keep residents from slowly leaving. Goodbye to the hopes that it could find a mainstream audience, and heading for a slow decline.

In my opinion, Second Life can reverse this downward course and rise in numbers again. But as long as M Linden is in charge, Linden Labs’ history of bumbling and stumbling will continue.

Bixyl Shuftan

“Restructuring” of Linden Labs to Result in 30% Layoffs

In the Linden Blog, M Linden announced there would be “the undertaking of a significant restructuring of Linden Lab.”

Though the company remains in a solid financial position, it has become clear that we need to make some hard decisions in order to bring current and future Residents the kind of product and experience we feel they deserve. After three years of intensive hiring, we've come to a place where it's important that we reorganize our teams and find a renewed level of discipline and momentum as we move forward.

The press release linked to the blog mentioned “the company aims to create a browser-based virtual world experience, eliminating the need to download software.” And “Linden Lab will look to extend the Second Life experience into popular social networks.” Then there was this ominous statement: “The software development teams will be consolidated in North America and customer support will be reconfigured to provide more scalable services. As a result, Linden Lab anticipates staff reductions of approximately 30 percent.”

Almost a third of Linden Labs’ staff will be gone.

In the Linden Blog Discussion threads was “Bidding Farewell to Many Lindens, “ some of the Linden team being let go were disclosed and discussed. The popular Blue Linden was apparently on the list, as residents were unable to find him in search. People expressed sadness for the Lindens let go. As people usually complain about Linden doings, seeing people shedding tears for a group of Lindens was an unusual sight. More than one commented along the lines of “the nice ones were let go.” One resident apologized for her criticism of Pink Linden for not answering her as she was apparently among those let go.

Another posted the following:


I've been physically sick to my stomach all day. I've had the benefit of meeting a great many Lindens inworld - and in First Life - over the last four years. It started back in 2007, just trying to get a straight answer on some of the kid policies, and eventually turned into a number of friendships.

The three losses that hurt me the most are Blue, Mia, and Teagan.

Mia was the first I ever met, in RL. Always a sweetheart to me. She'd give me Linden Bears hot off the press. She worked with the mentors and volunteers, and would put together fun inworld events for the holidays. If you did the egg hunt, the valentines heart hunt in 2009, the halloween event, or some of the others - that was Mia.

Blue sent me and a handful of others to the cornfield once, for fun. Always listened, always cared. Did a mean pole dance in Rouge one night, which was one of the more hilarious things you'd ever want to see (consider the avatar he wore). Always was with us Residents, in many cases literally. He was the sort of guy who would attend Resident events.

Teagan took me to jail in RL one day, sightseeing in SF. In the wake of all the drama over child avatars at SL5B, she showed up as in a chibi kid avvie at SL5B *and* over at Kids5B. "Hired" me to shoot her pics for SL6B, and wore a shirt I created ("Philip Linden Has a Posse") as part of her usual inworld uniform.

All of them respected me as a Resident, and looked beyond the avatar choice.

It's a sad day. I'm not going to say "this is the end of SL," but it's certainly the end of the SL I've known.


How M Linden’s “restructuring” will affect the confidence of the general resident population, and their willingness to put their real-life money into the Metaverse, remains to be seen.

Sources: Second Life Blogs, PR Newswire,

Bixyl Shuftan