After all the confusion, Apez has now been sold. It appears that Egoisme is now the new owner. Some Apez users are reporting on SLU that service continued more-or-less “as normal” during the last few months, and Cenji has indicated that all accounts have / are being honoured in terms of payouts.
How things will pan out for people remains to be seen. Certainly, with the demise of Slapt.me, the apparent disappearance of Metaverse Exchange and the wholehearted chewing-up-and-spitting-out of On Rez in favour of the SL Marketplace (nee XStreet SL nee SL Exchange), a good, solid, competitor is required to face-off against Linden Lab if only to encourage further development of, and enhancement to, current services. Whether this can be Apez / Egoisme remains to be seen.
Certainly, no-one can deny that Apez as a brand is now – pardon the pun – damaged goods. Therefore, any attempt to “restore” the Apez name (as Egoisme state they would like) is potentially going to be akin to trying to push water up a hill.
However, the Apez system – servers, vendors, etc., did and do work well, and retain a lot of potential. Put them together with a reliable level of customer service (which many complained was a major issue with Apez), develop a really solid front end that disposes with things like “Sekrit Naughty Words Of The Day” lists, which offers both consumers and merchants a flexible means of both finding and promoting goods and services under a brand entirely distinct from Apez, and Egoisme might just have something. It’s still going to be an uphill climb – especially given the overall state of stagnation within Second Life and LL’s ability to massively steer people towards SLM; as such whether the possible rewards of persevering with such an effort prove worthwhile for those concerned remains to be seen.
Update: Egoisme apparently sold Apez not long after acquiring it. When this took place & to whom is unclear. All reference to Apez (including the press release announcing the acquistion linked-to above) has been removed from the main Egoisme website.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 