The highly-popular Minecraft game is known for being a number of things. Among them it's kid-friendly graphics. But according to an article written by PC Gamer's Mollie Taylor, it's been labeled as an adults-only game in South Korea.
Why designate the child-friendly game as for those 18 and over only? The Republic of Korea has a law banning minors 16 and under from playing games between Midnight and 6AM local time. Instead of going through the expense and hassle of developing an installing a method to keep those gamers in the country from playing their games those hours, Microsoft opted to just limit playing the game there to adults 19 years and older.
At first the law didn't affect gameplay as Mojang accounts don't need age verification. But that changed in December 2020 as gamers there would need an Xbox Live account to access the game, and in March came a warning that anyone in the country wishing to get the game would need to be 18 or older. The result has been the game having a split age-rating in the country, officially labeled as 12 and up but thanks to Xbox is de-facto limited to those 18 and over. Naturally, the situation has gotten many in South Korea upset, "Korea will become [the only game market] where even Minecraft is reduced to an adult game."
When contacted by PC Gamer, Microsoft responded, "We’re working on a longer term solution for existing
and new players under the age of 19 in South Korea and will have more to
share on this later this year."
In light of more regions being moved to the cloud, we are pleased to announce that we are ready to begin offering new private region purchases in limited quantities. As we continue to uplift more of the grid, more regions will become available over time, eventually leading to the Land Store being reopened.
Those wanting a sim are asked to send a ticket through the Lab's Support Portal, "The ticket can be submitted under the Land & Region > Order Private Region category." After the ticket is sent, it will either be handled or added to a waiting list "which will be handled in the order the submission is received." The Lab reminded the sim's name had to conform to naming guidelines, new sims are charged setup fees, and those wanting sims where "skill gaming" could be run would be paying much more.
For more information, check the Linden blog entry here.
With Second Life's userbase increasing in recent months, most certainly mainly due to the Coronavirus quarantines, it was probably expected that there would be an increased demand for sims by the residents. On May 10, someone posted in the Virtualverse forums that the number of private sims had increased by 361 since March 30. Tyche Shepherd seems to be on hiatus, so we don't have his reports to go by.
With numbers like this when the number of private sims usually goes up or down by less than a tenth that, perhaps it should be no surprise to hear the latest announcement by the Lab. Yesterday on Thursday May 14, Linden Lab announced that it could no longer guarantee a new full private sim to someone who wanted one.
Due to the ongoing public health crisis, we’ve experienced an
unprecedented surge in demand for new Second Life regions. While we are
thrilled by the heightened interest, the increased demand has consumed
our available inventory of full regions (there are still many parcels
available on existing regions, both on the mainland and from private
estates).
We are committed to maintaining (and improving) the stability and
performance of Second Life. So while we are very gratified that we can
be of help to people in these trying times, unfortunately, our current
server systems cannot accommodate unlimited growth without adversely
impacting that stability and performance. This means that region
inventory in Second Life will be extremely limited and may not be
readily available until early fall.
The Lab stated that one reason for the inability to handle the increased load was their transitioning from their current servers to cloud ones, which hasn't been finished yet, "As a result, we are in the unfortunate position of hitting the maximum
capacity of our “old” servers until the “new” cloud servers are fully
operational."
While the Lab stated new sims will be made available as old ones are closed, this limited availability will continue until the new cloud servers are fully operational, which they guess will be "early fall." In the meantime, Linden Lab suggested alternatives to full private sims, such as land on the mainland, or renting from an estate owner.
So far, as of the writing of this article, there have been just a few reactions in the official blog and Virtualverse. But they have been positive ones.
But, there's a catch. First, the offer is only good until October 4. Second, to lower the tiers, one needs to pay a one-time fee, $600 USD for each regular sim, and $180 for each homestead. The deal does not apply to sims receiving the non-profit discount or those under it's "Skill Games" policy.
Ciaran Laval, after a joke that the Lab was trying to make the "protest gnomes" (pictured above) redundant, called it "a good deal," at least for those who have the money up front. Jo Yardley commented, "This offer comes at an interesting time because by the time it ends,
Sansar will have opened to a lot more beta testers and if all goes well,
we’ll be months away from it opening to the main public. Who knows how things are going in SL by then?" She called it, "A good deal and another step in the right direction, but still, $600 is a lot of money," suggesting the Lab could have done a little better by allowing landowners the option to pay in installments. Hamlet Au was hopeful the move could help stop the long slow decline of Second Life's sim numbers, which have fallen below the 25,000 Level, less then 17500 of which are privately owned. In the thread on the topic in the official Second Life forums, reactions were somewhat mixed, one calling it a "cash infusion" strategy for the Lab, another commenting "if I were a non-grandfathered land baron right about now, I'd be doing one heck of a happy dance."
Time will tell how the move will affect Second Life.
Being a Premium Second
Life subscriber carries many benefits - from weekly L$ stipends, to
your own Linden Home, expanded live customer support options, exclusive
gifts, and more. Just last week, we added a new perk for Premium subscribers, and we’ll be adding even more benefits and features for Premium members throughout the year.
If you’ve been waiting to upgrade to a Premium account, now is a great time, because today we’re kicking off a great new sale: from today until April 13, 2015, you can upgrade to Premium subscription for less than $5 for your first month! That’s a 50% discount off the regular rate, and this offer won’t last long. Upgrade today and start enjoying Premium benefits at our lowest-ever monthly rate.
Previously, if IMs were sent to your account while you were offline, you
could access up to 25 messages when you next log in. That remains the
case for free account holders, but starting today, Premium Members can access up to 50 missed IMs. That means fewer notecards filling up your inventory and fewer missed messages from friends, colleagues, and customers.
So how useful is this perk? Perhaps not as much as it suggests as there is an option for messages made to you while offline could be sent to your email.
I've heard various comments about how the various rewards for premium membership are just tiny perks of limited value. One blogger recently commented with SL Go, there was an opportunity for a real bonus: make SL Go available for free to premium subscribers. Since the client made SL playable from a portable tablet and older machines, this would be a real benefit, not just a perk. But with SL Go slated to be discontinued after the company offering it was bought, that opportunity is gone.
Do you the readers have an idea for Linden Lab? What could they offer that would get you to sign up for Premium membership?
After being talked about for some time, Kim Linden announced Linden Labs had made a limited release of their web-based viewer.
Yesterday, we quietly launched a beta test of a new technology that opens up Second Life to new users like never before: Second Life on the Web! The SL Web Viewer allows new users to become Second Life “guests” through the Web and enjoy basic SL functionality while exploring exciting destinations in Second Life -- all without downloading a Viewer.
Linden Labs is asking residents to test their viewer. However, not everyone who tries will get the chance. Residents are asked to click on http://interest.secondlife.com/beta , where they sit through a video lasting a bit less than a minutes, and then are given either an “Explore Now” button, which means they can proceed, or a “Join now” button, which means they can’t. I myself tried several times with no luck. Those who are successful can create a temporary guest account to use the viewer.
Wallace Linden stated, “The test won't be available to everyone, based on a number of variables, including bandwidth, system setup details, and other factors. I don't think cookies or repeated logins will make a difference. I don't have more information that that at the moment, though.”
In the comments below, most residents, at least those who could get in, were pleased with the viewer. Inksky Jedburg has one of the more detailed comments, “The first thing I noted was how very simplified the viewer was, obviously not going to be a tool for builders and creators, but rather a tool for socializing (on a limited scale compared to the SL viewer), and exploring. I could not go into mouselook to look up and down from my POV, though camera controls were available as was ‘camming.’ The beta only allows you to go to a select few locations, less than 100 I believe, and I understand having it that way for the beta. Though textures were gray for a while, what struck me was how smooth movement was. As I thought of first time user experience, the dumbed down controls like sound on/off, pick from a palette of locations to visit, and a palette of available avatars, and a very basic help window describing around a dozen available functions, seemed to be very complimentary controls for someone visiting for the first time, or even coming in on business for the first time. Simple and stupid, and yet showing SL as it mostly is seen on the viewer (minus windlight!). “
Inksky was “favorably impressed” with the viewer, “I think it has potential to be much better, and I believe it could be a major win if developed with greater care than LL has given past developments. So please, proceed with caution LL and use some common sense to make this extremely useful development pay off.”
