On Friday January 17th, 2025, Linden Lab announced improvements to the financial and billing systems used by Second Life as provided by Tilia, the Lab’s trusted billing partner- see: Enhancing the Financial Experience in Second Life.
In the interests of clarity and first-hand reading, I’m not going to list everything in here; better than people read the Lab’s own post. However, the following points are worth highlighting:
All USD balances are now securely managed through Tilia Wallet, providing a centralized and compliant way to handle fiat currency transactions.
Whilst maintaining all current pay-out connections:
Pay-out transactions should now process faster through Tilia.
There will be an introduction of direct bank deposits for the receipt of pay-outs (exact implementation time frame for this still TBA at the time of the update)
Updates to the Second Life Marketplace, Cashier, and Account dashboards to make managing payments smoother and more intuitive.
Enhanced Security & Compliance: Tilia is a fully regulated financial institution, ensuring that all transactions are secure, fully tracked, and compliant with global financial regulations.
This upgrade also marks a significant step forward in enhancing the financial and billing experience for all residents, ensuring greater security, reliability, and flexibility. Tilia has managed payments, tax forms, and KYC processes for Second Life for a while now. With this upgrade, they now also handle all fiat currency transactions, including securely holding USD earnings in Tilia wallets and processing credits (pay-outs).
This upgrade also brings both familiar and new pay-out options, including PayPal, Skrill, and the newly added MassPay.
On Friday January 17th, 2025, Linden Lab announced improvements to the financial and billing systems used by Second Life as provided by Tilia, the Lab’s trusted billing partner.
In the interests of clarity and first-hand reading, I’m not going to list everything in here; better than people read the Lab’s own post. However, the following points are worth highlighting:
The changes and updates are being deployed over the rest of January 2025, and on a rolling basis. Therefore, users will see them come into effect as they are applied.
The will result in a series of updates in how information is displayed within various web properties (e.g. the Cashier page, the Add Payment Method page, etc.).
There will be no changes to fees for existing services. However, new pay-out types and speeds that will be coming soon may have different fees based on the underlying costs involved with those pay-out methods.
From January 30th, 2025, Skrill will no longer be available to add as a new payment or pay-out method.
Those already using Skrill as a payment or pay-out method, you may continue to do so as long as it remains active in your account.
However, if anyone using Skrill removes it as as their payment / pay-out methods after January 30th, 2025, they will not be able to re-add it.
Once these changes are active, the following countries will no longer be supported with new pay-out connections: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kazakhstan and Russia.
Through our partnership with Tilia, these updates create a more modern and sustainable foundation for managing Second Life’s economy. The system now automatically reconciles transactions nightly, allowing for accurate and efficient handling of payments and balances. Users will continue to have the flexibility to manage their balances and payment methods while benefiting from improved security and reliability.
Runitai Linden in both his “Classic” (Primitar-esque) look and his more recent avatar look
Update: subject to direct correction, I believe (from comments made) that Runitai is moving to work as a paramedic.
During the Content Creation User Group meeting on Thursday, January 16th, it was announced that Runitai Linden (often referred to as DaveP) is departing Linden Lab.
One of the now longest-serving employees at the Lab, Runitai joined the company in 2005, and has been a core member of the graphics / rendering team throughout most of that time, although he was moved over to work on Project Sansar, remaining with that project through to its launch as Sansar, before transferring back to Second Life when the Lab suspended work on Sansar in early 2020, prior to its eventual sale to Wookey (then Wookey Projects Inc).
Commenting on his departure, Runitai stated:
It’s been almost 20 years, and I’ll always be grateful for the time that I’ve had here, no doubt, and everything Second Life has done; and I’ll always be proud of what Linden Lab and the residents have accomplished here. But I’ve been convicted [sic] recently to pursue a career in public service, and at the same time I felt that calling things stopped coming together in my head for doing the work that needs to be done here; I really feel that I’ve done all that I can do and it’s time for me to go on to something else.
I wouldn’t be able to do that if it wasn’t for all of you. The career I’ve chosen doesn’t exactly pay a living wage, so I’ll definitely be living off my savings! But I feel this is what I have to do. I also feel that the Second Life team has never been stronger, everybody at the Lab and the open-source community does such great work, such talented people; world-class engineers all round. I have no doubt that Second Life will thrive in my absence.
I will definitely miss all of you, I’ll miss this place – it’s been a rollercoaster, that’s for sure!
One of the things very much marked by Runitai’s return to Second Life following his time working on Sansar, has been the drive to update the visual fidelity of the platform more it towards established graphical standards. While this initiative may not have originated entirely with him, his involvement in this work has been instrumental – particularly in looking at how best to enable key aspects of the glTF specification the Lab hopes to adopt (e.g. supporting current mesh data formats over the outdated Collada .DAE, prototyping scene upload capabilities, etc.), and in driving much of the work in getting the viewer’s performance back up to acceptable standards following the issues coming out of – but not necessarily entirely the result of – the implementation of PBR materials and rendering.
Runitai did not elaborate on the specific area of public service he is moving into (or which is perhaps now claiming his full-time attention). However, everyone in Second Life who has come to know him well or distantly (as in my case) over the years cannot fail to understand the incredible amount of work his has put into the platform, or the sheer wealth of technical knowledge he has acquired and put to use throughout his time at the Lab. This along with his openness, honesty and jovial nature, will be very much missed.
For my part, I’d like to thank Runitai for all of his work with Second Life and wish him well in his new career path. Also, for those who do know Runitai and who have not already obtained a copy, his Linden Bear is available at the Hipptropolis Campsite, home of the CCUG meetings – it is floating (at the time of writing) serenely next to the table and camp fire.
On Friday 6th, December, 2024, Linden Lab hosted the second of its Zoom-base “Blogger Town Hall” calls with invited bloggers to discuss Second Life in a session. The topics discussed were wide-ranging, covering Mobile, marketing, the desktop viewer, support and other issues.
Participating directly in the meeting from Linden Lab were: Executive Chairman, Brad Oberwager, CTO Philip Rosedale; VP of Product and Engineering Grumpity Linden, Pluto Linden (Mobile UX), with Brett Linden hosting the event.
As reiterated in this meeting, the Lab is experimenting with routes of engagement with the broad user base of Second Life – many of whom may not read the official blog posts on secondlife.com, but who may follow one or more bloggers. Further, these bloggers know how to communicate with their audience / have come to enjoy an audience because of they was they blog – written or video, etc., and so they offer a far-reaching channel of communications. Most particularly, the zoom meetings:
They allow for face-to-face interactions between users and those at the Lab, allowing the latter to be seen as they are.
The format allows LL to easily bring together different groups of bloggers relatively easily according to the core subjects the Lab would like to discuss and take feedback on.
Given this, these meetings are not replacing other forms of meeting / channels of communication – the Lab is experimenting with multiple ideas for improving their overall communications with users – and leveraging existing communicators / bloggers within the broader SL community is just one aspect of this work.
On The SL Mobile Roadmap
SL Mobile Credit: Linden Lab
Pluto Linden provided a presentation to highlight some of the upcoming features and capabilities that will be coming to SL Mobile in the coming months (approximately December 2024 through to Quarter 2, 2025), although as with everything, time frames for precise delivery on the following is subject to confirmation / change.
In doing so, Pluto emphasised the fact that all that has happened with the SL mobile product is foundational; “and now, a lot of the really exciting stuff is to come, and on the horizon for 2025”.
The presentation itself highlighted the following upcoming new features and capabilities:
2024 Plans
Ability to create accounts via Mobile, including creating an initial avatar and logging in using the existing new joiner workflow – also see below for more on this.
Extending the work on push notifications to include Group notices, including the ability to specify which of your Group from which you wish to receive notifications .
Persistent chat / IM conversations between log-ins.
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SL Mobile plans for late 2024
Quarter 1, 2025
Implement an Address Bar, making it possible to:
Search landmarks /create landmarks.
Share SLurls with people on other apps (Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp, etc.) via the native share cards found in Android and iOS.
Allow maps.secondlife.com work on the Mobile App.
Shipping the first version of a new feature called Lobby, intended to:
Reduce the time between launching the App and in-world interactions.
Provide information and a focus on communication within the App, allowing the user to see and respond to incoming messages; see who among their friends is on-line, even as the App is loading the world, .
Provide an ability for those on lower / mid-tier mobile devices to make use of the App as a communications tool.
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SL Mobile plans for Q1 2025
Quarter 2, 2025
Better and faster access to chat, avoiding multiple taps on the screen.
Better selection of, and interaction with, in-world objects.
Laying the groundwork for item-level avatar editing, which is seen as a springboard to offering other / further ways of interacting with Inventory, including the potential of eventually making Marketplace purchases through the App and being able to unpack and use them.
SL Mobile updates planned for Q2 2025
Mobile App – Audience and On-Boarding
As noted in Second Life Mobile: free to all users & Lab execs discuss the product and goals, SL Mobile is being broadly developed at the moment with two primary audiences in mind: existing users, as a means for them to enhance their SL experience through being able to engage with the platform whilst away from their desktop viewer access; and “Lapsed” users who have left SL, and who have stated a reason for them doing so is because SL doesn’t address their preference for using mobile to access the things they want to do.
This was reiterated by Brad Oberwager when discussing the fact that SL Mobile will have the ability to create new SL accounts in the very near future.
We built the Mobile App for current residents with the hope it brings lapsed residents back. But because we’re not putting any marketing dollars behind getting people into [Second Life] through the Mobile App, the join flow is really going to be getting an alt put together [so] while you can do all sorts of things through the join flow, this is really designed for current users.
We wanted to put the full experience on the Mobile App, because that would cool if VentureBeat was going to write something, and they want to come through, it would be cool to have that happen; but that’s not what we’re marketing towards.
-Brad Oberwager, December 6th, 2024
Measuring SL Mobile’s Success
In terms of measuring the overall success of SL mobile, the Lab is not focused on technical elements (features, crash rates, bug fixes etc.). The key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring the App’s success are focused on usage, for example:
How many times a month is the App being used overall / how many times a month is an individual using the App.
How many times a day is the App being used overall / how many times a day does an individual log-in to SL using the App.
How long does an individual spend in-world when logged-in via the App.
How many people are downloading the App is considered a separate measure, as it both leads to the above three as meaningful measures, and is more a “ego statistic”.
On Marketing Second Life and Top-Level Goals for the Platform
What our goal is as a company … as we start to gear-up marketing dollars and things like that, is to do two things. One is to bring folks back who have recently been engaged as residents [and] who have now stopped that engagement for whatever reason, to bring those folks back in to enrich the community; and to do outreach to bring in new residents. New residents that get excited about living in Second Life [and] they spend a lot of money because they’ve got to dress their avatars and get their houses and things like that.
So everything that we’re doing now is designed for those two things. So that means making Second Life easier – high priority; giving a better experience for current residents – high priority, because if you can satisfy that, then you can have those current residents bring-in lapsed residents. So everything that we’re thinking of goes in that lens … We’re spending our money towards the desktop, getting ne folks in through that channel so that they can spend more money on our creators, so our creators are reinvigorated and the community continues to be invigorated.
– Brad Oberwager, December 6th, 2024
He went on to confirm that with all the work that has thus far gone into Second Life and the Lab over the last few years, including the recent restructuring is to pave the way towards growing the platform and in Marketing it more and more clearly.
Everything we’re making [in SL}, we’re putting it back in. What I am going to do, is I’m gong to start to change where I’m putting that money. And I’m going to start putting that money into marketing dollars because I want to bring folks into the world. … I think that our product is relevant; I don’t think it is relevant for everybody … but I think there’s an imperative that [Second Life] continues and it’s extremely valuable for folks out there to learn about and come in. That costs money.
– Brad Oberwager, December 6th, 2024
This work as actually starting now, with money “dribbling out” with a focus on SL on the desktop and in bring people back to the platform, on getting existing users to log-in more, and on bringing-in the people who would likely find Second Life a great place in which to spend time. Some of this will be experimental, with the Lab continuing to analyse what works and what doesn’t over the next few months, and the marketing work will, interestingly, be synced with new product releases.
On SL Desktop’s Accessibility and Future
The focus with desktop viewer development over the last several months has been on making the platform more accessible to lower-specification computers (as reported in the likes of my CCUG meeting summaries). This work has most notably included significant performance improvement work on the viewer, and the purchasing of a lot of older hardware / graphics cards on which Second Life ca be tested and better determinations made as to how best to handle performance shortfalls / bottlenecks / enable SL to perform reasonably well on such hardware (affectionately referred toas the Potato Farm at LL).
We did identify various pain points for people on lower-end machines, and there’s been a lot of work our team has been doing to address them. They’re working quickly and they’re working together with Firestorm so that those changes [many in the ExtraFPS viewer, which at the time of writing was in Release Candidate status and close to being promoted to release status] are rolled out to everyone as quickly as possible once they’re ready.
There’s going to be changes to viewer settings that will improve performance and some controls people are able to have over choices that they make in terms of how good things look and how fast they run. And we’re also looking to put together some recommendations for [hardware] configurations where we know Second Life will run really well at different price-points.
– VP of Engineering and Product, Grumpity Linden
The overall goal of this work is “to meet you where you are, on the hardware you are [on], and we want you to have the best possible experience in Second Life.
In addition, Philip Rosedale noted that LL have a lot of “different tools in the hanger” which can help further improve the viewer when running on older hardware, including the Unity-based rendering engine developed for Mobile.
It is, as you know, not exactly the same by any stretch as other engines that are out there, but we have it as a tool. How we use it to, say, improve the desktop experience, we’re not sure yet. But we’re definitely happy that we’ve got a pretty good Second Life renderer running on Unity, we’re just not sure how we’re going to use it. But we are going to make Second Life more accessible on all machines.
– Philip Rosedale, December 6th, 2024
In this, it was also emphasised that the presumption at the Lab is that the primary mode for accessing and using Second Life will remain the desktop viewer (in some form), and that SL Mobile will be very much an adjunct / companion to that use.
We do not believe the the experience of Second Life at this point in time can be transitioned entirely to a a “black mirror” experience, as I like to say, because it is more the small size of the window that is the challenge here … Even if we could do anything technically we wanted to, we remain cautious – in fact sceptical – about the ability to do all the things one wants to do with Second Life on a mobile device.
– Philip Rosedale, December 6th, 2024
On Matters of Support
It was noted that in the recently company restructuring (which saw a number of layoffs and was geared toward a focus on customer success and trust and safety, the ball was dropped on matters of general user support for a time. This is not improving, and Brad Oberwager, whilst taking full responsibility for the slip, believes that by the years end, support responses will by “100% better and faster”.
Outside my Linden Home on the SL Mobile App, November 14th, 2024 (unedited / retouched)
A little over a week since quietly making it available to all Second Life accounts types, on Thursday November 21st Linden Lab officially blogged that all Second Life users can now download and make use of the SL Mobile App (available on both Android and iOS) – see Second Life Mobile is here!
The original November 14th move to make SL Mobile available to all was followed by a special Zoom telecon with a number of Second Life bloggers, during which – and among other things – the Lab specifically discussed Mobile and its development and their hopes for it.
Engaged in that call were Executive Chairman Brad Oberwager, CTO Philip Rosedale, VP of Engineering and Product, Grumpity Linden, and chief Mobile developer Adam Frisby – who some may know for his former involvement in Second Life and his role in creating the Sine Space virtual world (or as it was once known, sinewave.space), whilst being hosted by Brett Linden.
Currently, the product is still officially regarded a “Beta” – it is still being improved based on feedback, and new features are being developed for future integration.
Capabilities are being added in terms of user “journeys” – that is, if someone wants to do X in SL, what capabilities / functionality / abilities do they require? The first such “journey” focused on going something in-world – such as a club or venue, etc., – and doing something, and what that would entail (being able to see the scene, move, chat, IM, view profiles, tip performers etc).
The App is not – and most likely will not – ever be seen as a “replacement” for access Second Life via a desktop / laptop; not is it ever likely to be as feature-capable as the desktop viewer.
Broadly speaking, SL Mobile has been developed with two primary audience in mind:
Existing users – as a means for them to enhance their SL experience by continuing engage with the platform and their friends during those times of the say when it might not be practical to utilise the desktop viewer in order to do so.
“Lapsed” users who have left SL, many of whom have responded to the Lab reaching out to them by saying Second Life doesn’t address their preference for using mobile to access the things they want to do, rather than being reliant on a desktop environment.
Linden Lab is seeking feedback on the App, particularly if issues are encountered / persistent. However, when reviewing the App on Google Play or the Apple Store, LL do ask that users keep in mind that SL Mobile is not feature complete, and is being built iteratively, and so not all desired functionality may be there when using it.
Alongside the announcement, the Lab promoted a short video first seen with the “soft” opening of the App’s availability on November 14th, and which is presented below.
Personal Notes
I’ve been using the SL Mobile App since it was first made available for Premium account holders, and as such have watching its development since then. While my own experience with the App has been problematic – and potentially the result of a range of factors outside of SL and the Lab’s control (quality of wi-fi, for example), I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen in terms of development and progress. However, given I personally have little use for the App (I work from home and so my PC is always within easy reach when I have time for SL), and given its (until recently) limited availability, I’ve not covered it to a great degree going forward.
That said, I will continue to cover the App in my Viewer Release page and weekly viewer release summaries, and as as result of the App now being available to all, I will attempt to report on significant updates going forward, for those interested.
On Wednesday, November 13th, Linden Lab quietly made the SL Mobile App available to all users.
The release was somewhat low-key to help minimise the impact of users piling on to the Google and Apple stores and becoming frustrated if they found themselves unable to access the app and download it due to the volume of demand.
As a part of the opening of availability of the App, Linden Lab hosted a mini round-table via Zoom at which SL Mobile was discussed, and a little look behind the curtain for the App and its history was given. The following is a summary of some of what was stated / revealed.
SL Mobile Credit: Linden Lab
On Developing the App and Initially Limiting Access
There were many ways SL Mobile could have been developed; in 2019, for example, it was indicated that LL was working on an iOS client focused on communications (see: Second Life: LL confirm iOS client in the making). However, this work was suspended at some point, most likely so a better solution could be sought.
As was noted in the Zoom discussion, there were multiple paths to take, and how best to present the a Mobile app to an audience of Second Life users. One question in particular that had to be addressed was how to present the app to users; its development involved many challenge such that simply opening it up to all users from the first instance was not considered as really feasible, because the feedback could be overwhelming. The release needed to be limited in some way whilst still allowing for the necessary feedback.
So what is the best way to limit it? It is to limit it to people who have really committed financially, as well as in various other ways [to Second Life], and subscribers were they way that we could do this. It’s not like we really wanted to paywall it forever; we just wanted to open it up to smaller audiences, get feedback, get a lot of iteration, and that’s what we’ve been getting from the community, and it’s been fantastic.
Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering, Grumpity Linden
Features and Intent
In terms of which features the Lab decided to focus on in particular for Mobile, the approach taken was to think in terms of “user journeys”: identifying a specific activity users enjoy doing in Second Life – such as socialising, be it at a club or similar venue, or getting out and about with others – and what are the key capabilities involved in that experience: moving, teleporting, communicate, see what’s going on, hear what’s going on (music), look-up profiles, etc. Then building-out those capabilities iteratively, before moving to another journey – such as enhancing avatar customisation options, and start an iterative process that could result in a more rounded means to management inventory on Mobile.
This next journey – subject to official confirmation – might be enhancing avatar customisation through the App. Again, this will not mean a complete set of customisation and inventory management tools being made available at once, but will again be an iterative process, with options and capabilities added over time to improve the experience.
However, it is important to remember that the aim with Mobile is to augment people’s Second Life, offering an adjunct to the viewer. It is not intended to emulate / reproduce all of the functionality available within the desktop viewer.
The idea is not to create a simpler experience, say akin to Fortnite, on Mobile, where one can “play” Second Life and have the whole experience on the Mobile App. We don’t actually know, and are inclined to disbelieve, that would ever be possible. What we’re trying to do instead right now somewhat better by using Mobile; maybe it’s getting messages; maybe it’s finding new places … maybe it’s doing something you like to do every day, but do it in Mobile because you’re on a bus or something; but we’re not trying to design the Mobile client to replace Second Life on the desktop.
– Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab CTO
SL Mobile (Credit: Linden Lab)
Audience
Broadly speaking, SL Mobile has been developed with two primary audience in mind:
Existing users – as a means for them to enhance their SL experience by continuing engage with the platform and their friends during those times of the say when it might not be practical to utilise the desktop viewer in order to do so.
“Lapsed” users who have left SL, many of whom have responded to the Lab reaching out to them by saying Second Life doesn’t address their preference for using mobile to access the things they want to do, rather than being reliant on a desktop environment.
One thing the Mobile app is not intended for – at least for the foreseeable future – is the on-boarding of users entirely new to SL; the learning curves involved in becoming comfortable with SL and engaging with it are seen as being too complex / steep at this point in time. Which is not so say the Lab will not be seeking to resume marketing SL to potential new users; far from it, as Brad Oberwager, the Lab’s co-owner and Executive Chairman, noted:
What we are going to do is to start driving people to the desktop and see what happens. That is in play, and that’s good for everybody here. The more people we can all bring in, the better Second Life will be for everybody.
Reception
One of the downsides to the iterative approach taken thus far with SL Mobile has been that it has received extremely poor feedback on both Google Play and the Apple Store. Much of this appears to revolve around perceived incompleteness, possibly as a result of users jumping in and expecting a fully-rounded product and becoming frustrated when they discover functionality is missing.
In this respect, it is again important to remember that SL Mobile is still very much in a beta stage of development, and the iterative process will continue; as such people do need to offer some patience in terms of “missing” features, etc. While the negative feedback has been a source of frustration and disappointment for the Lab, measures are being considered to correct it- be it by resetting the app on the Apple Store and by continuing to offer a better and better product. At the same time, as Lead Developer Adam Frisby noted, the number of poor reviews is hardly insurmountable in the scheme of things .
Trying SL Mobile
As noted, SL Mobile is now available to everyone on both the Apple Store and Google Play, and the links for more information are below. If you are keen to try out out, again, please remember, this is not a final release – as noted above, SL Mobile is still in beta, so please keep this in mind when reviewing the app. That said, if you do encounter issues or bugs, do please file a report with the Lab .
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 