Second Life Premium Plus roll-out postponed

I was unable to get to the Web User Group meeting on Wednesday, May 5th, and it is taking a while to catch up with things. However, one item of discussion that I’ve been made aware of  – with thanks to Lucia et al – is that of Premium Plus.

This is, as most know, the new subscription level, placed “above”, so to speak, that of Premium, that Linden Lab have been working on.

No specifics as to what it might include have to date been released, making it the subject of much speculation in forums and at things like the Web User Group meetings, but it had been indicated that the roll-out of Premium Plus would follow some time after the deployment of Name Changes, which happened in early April (see Linden Lab announces “the return of last names”, and some notes).

Indeed, updated server-side support for Premium subscriptions – including Premium Plus – have already been deployed, and updates to more easily handle data relating to subscription benefits have also been made to the viewer, and will filter out to  TPVs over time.

However, the plans for the formal deployment of Premium Plus have now changed, as first revealed at the May 5th Web User Group meeting; the change, and the reasons for it were further confirmed to me by Grumpity Linden on Tuesday, May 12th.

We have made the decision to delay the deployment of Premium Plus based on two key factors:

1. We want to be focused on our Uplift project (move to the cloud) and to minimize distraction for our development, QA, and Ops teams. While we’ve laid a lot of groundwork, quite a bit more still remains to finish Premium Plus.
2. The pandemic has brought a lot of financial uncertainty to people all around the world and we know many of our Residents have been hit hard.

We are very happy that SL has provided an outlet for people where they can connect, escape, engage safely, and earn a living or supplement their income as well. But we also realise that introducing a higher-priced service level in this time would be really ham-handed.

– Grumpity Linden, May 12th, 2020

As to when might we see Premium Plus – or something like it – made available? Grumpity continued:

I don’t know that there’s a whole lot more to say. I can’t promise a time line, but early 2021 is reasonable to expect. If we find ourselves in a position to move up that time line, we’ll certainly explore that. Without any actual plans to that effect, we may find, for example, that a different type of service level than Premium Plus is a better offering for the times we find ourselves in come Fall.

Given the current global economic  / income environment,  delaying the deployment of the new Premium level is a sensible move, for the reason Grumpity states. As and when there is further news on Premium Plus, I’ll endeavour to provide an update – and in a more timely manner!