Day: September 28, 2017

Linden Lab has announced forthcoming changes to their Sansar Store policies.  Specifically, the changes comprise updates to the listing guidelines, together with new eligibility requirements for those listing goods on the Store.

To quote the blog post specifically on the eligibility requirements:

As of October 2, 2017, you’ll need to have a credit card on file for your account in order to sell in the Sansar Store. Adding one is easy – just follow the steps here.

Free account holders will be able to sell up to 50 items at a time. Subscribers at the Creator level or above will have no limits on the number of active listings they can have in the Store. Note: if you have more than 50 listings in the Store when this change goes into effect on October 2, 2017, your items may be de-listed, so please take a moment to review your items to avoid the inconvenience of having to re-list them.

There has been a degree of negative feedback on these points in particular, and a part of the meet-up on Wednesday, September 27th – which was to discuss ideas and feedback for the Sansar Market – initially focused on the announcement. During that part of the meeting, the Lab sought to clarify a few things:

• The overall number of creators using the store affected by the 50 item limit is regarded as “super low”.
• Those who were invited into the Creator Preview with a free account will be able to continue with their current levels of listing (if over 50) through until the end of October 2017. The October 2nd change only applies to those joining from the Creator Beta launch onwards.
• The 50 listing limit includes free items.
• The move for having payment information on file is intended to help deter fraudulent activity within the Store from the outset (e.g. the legal selling of goods through an unverified account – something which has been / is an issue with the SL Marketplace).
• This is only the first iteration of Store policies. The Lab is listening to feedback, so ideas and alternatives might be fed into things as time goes on.
• One area of confusion lies with the term “credit card”  – which actually covers the likes of debit cards which have Mastercard / Visa verification – although there is concern not everyone has access to these as well.

Some  creators expressed a preference for a PayPal option to be implemented (PayPal is currently only available when cashing-up Sansar Dollars). This is coming, but no confirmed time line could be given. In addition, a suggestion was made for people to be able to offer alternative forms of identification for verification. This is something the Lab has done for SL merchants cashing-out from that platform, and hasn’t been entirely without its own problems.

Further feedback and discussion on this and other topics can be found on the official Sansar Discord channel.

Wednesday, September 27th also saw the Lab issue some information on the next couple of major releases for Sansar. These are:

• The Discovery release: due at the end of September / beginning of October, this release will include an improved Atlas for the Sansar client, and object interaction for Desktop mode users. You can read more about this release in advance in my Product Update.
• The Friends release: (presumably following the Discovery release at the end of October / beginning of November), this update will see the improvements to the Atlas continue, make it easier to connect with other Sansar users, and will also include changes to make it even easier for people to publish their experiences.

I’ll hopefully be following both releases as they happen, and have updates on them in these pages.