Isn’t it typical?
Just when LL appear to be doing something right for once, and taking steps to address upset and concerns over the future of youngsters and educational activities in Second Life – they then go and do this…
While it is an enormous relief to the majority of us that our tiers are unlikely to increase as a result of LL hiking up the (already exorbitant) cost of sim rental, the second part of Nelson’s post must come as a real kick where it hurts to educators and non-profits alike, specifically:
2) We will adjust how education and non-profit advantages are provided, effective Jan. 1, 2011.
All education and non-profit private regions of any type, purchased after Dec. 31, 2010, will be invoiced at standard (i.e. non-discounted) pricing. All currently discounted renewals which occur after Dec. 31, 2010, will be adjusted to the new price at that time. To continue to provide entry-level, private spaces to educators just launching their programs, we will be providing Homestead and Open Space regions to qualifying organizations without their meeting the retail full-region criterion. Customer Support will be available to answer any questions that you may have about these changes.
In a rough translation, this could, together with the blog post on 13-15 year olds entering SL be taken to read, OK, we’ve heard the pleas from you educators, and we’re going to provide a means for youngsters to join you on the main grid by limiting them to your private sims…but we’re going to foist a drastic price increase on you at short notice for those sims because or forcing you to take a product we’ve already severely capped in terms of usage, really guys, we don’t want you or your kids here.”
As has been pointed out in many of the (unanswered) replies to this post, this is a double hit from LL that is going to trigger a further migration away from the platform to other environs: not only does it hit educational institutions, but it takes out non-profits as well. what’s more, both types of institution generally set their budgets well ahead of time…and what amounts to a tad less than three-month warning of a massive price hike means that many are likely to be caught out by this move.
It’s a shame this move has been announced as it really smacks of nothing less that giving with the left hand and taking away with the right…
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
I’m not sure it’s only three months’ notice, at least not for many academic institutions.
The post says “All currently discounted renewals which occur after Dec. 31, 2010, will be adjusted to the new price at that time,” which suggests to me that any renewals that take place (or have taken place) this year are unaffected for the time being.
So, for example, a college with an annual contract that runs through the academic, as opposed to calendar, year won’t be charged the higher fees until September or October next year (at least one in the Northern hemisphere).
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Obviously, those entered for this year are unaffected. Those that go through between now and the end of the year suffer the least.
What of those that renewed in the first quarter of the year? The second? They will suffer. What is more, due to the way many financial calendars run, many will have already applied for budgets based on the current rate, and will having their spending for 2011 allocated – thus they will be hit. Granted, some countries are hit less than others – in the UK, for example, there is likely still time for institutions to apply for additional funding, given the financial year runs April-March here and budgets are still in negotiation. The same is not so true elsewhere in the world. In the US for example, many organisation operate a fiscal calendar that runs November-October…thus allocations for 2001 are liable to be cut and dried.
Beyond this, many small non-profits don’t operate on an annual basis within SL; this move again hits them very hard.
The fact remains that, given the margins that must be prevalent on SL server usage, this kind of targeted increase very much sends out a message akin to “you are here under sufferance”, again as many of the responses to the announcement indicate. This is hardly an impression LL should be giving even incidentally, when they have made the “educational benefits” of SL such a plank in earlier statements this year.
If nothing else, the timing sucks – which is admittedly par for the course with LL, which seems to have a habit of announcing welcome new one week and they shooting itself in the foot the next…
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Education budgets in the UK generally run through to July, but they are set in August, so the business plan for the year will already have been submitted, approved and the budget for the department allocated.
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Interesting development.
A lot of people who experiment with art projects in SL are non-profit. This effectively gets rid of them, leaving the LL sponsored projects. So if the Art continent is still a go that means there will be no other destination for anything art. Art by LL committee is a scary thought.
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Good point.
What is happening with the whole Art Endowment push? Last I’d heard was that Kingdon’s “77 sims” had been scaled back, and I cannot recall mention of at at SLCC10…
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