Category: News-Opinion

Changes to the Abandoned Land Policy

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeLinden lab have made alterations to the Mainland Abandoned Land Policy as of January 15th, 2013. The changes see the policy largely rationalised to improve readability, particularly the sections relating to purchasing Abandoned Land, claiming Abandoned Land and triggering an auction.

However, what may cause concern are the changes made to land abandoned in error.

Previously, this was handled as follows (Abandoned Land Policy, June 2011):

When a mainland parcel is abandoned, there is a short period (from one hour to 24 hours) during which an owner can reclaim the land if he/she abandoned it in error. After that period, objects on the land are returned to the original owner, the name of the parcel changes to “Abandoned Land – For Sale,” and ownership transfers to Governor Linden. The land can then be purchased by anyone with a premium account.

The revised policy now states:

When a mainland parcel is abandoned, the ownership of the parcel changes to Governor Linden.  There is no Linden dollar (L$) grant related to abandoned land.  Once abandoned, the parcel settings are amended to reflect the abandoned status and auto-return settings are enabled after one week.

I abandoned my land by mistake!

You should never expect to be able to reclaim abandoned land.  Please use care to make sure that any abandonment action is intentional.  However, if you do make a mistake, please submit a support case as soon as possible.  Include the parcel location and explain that you would like to reclaim a parcel you abandoned by mistake.  We can attempt to make a one-time courtesy effort to recover the land for you.

This effectively means that the automated buy-back of abandoned land is being eliminated. The new code is alrweady live on the Magnum RC. Concerns were raised at the Server Beta User Group meeting that this could make obtaining mainland harder, as use cases exist whereby the short-term abandonment of land can assist with land purchases (such as obtaining a section of abandoned land to increase land holdings without actually trigger a tier rise).  While Maestro Linden himself was in no position to comment on the policy change, he did offer to feed concerns back to the Land Team.

Note this policy relates to Mainland only, and does not apply to private regions.

Related Links

Tier cuts: looking from the Lab’s perspective

Posted on by Inara Pey

Apologies to those who may have received notification of an early version of this post being published at the weekend. Slight error on my part hitting the wrong button when trying to clear-up some old drafts.

Tier has long been an issue within Second Life, one which has been exacerbated over the last 24 months by the ongoing decline in private region numbers, which form the greater proportion of LL’s revenue. The decline has been tracked across the weeks and months by Tyche Shepherd via her invaluable Grid Surveys. In 2012 alone, the grid has suffered a loss of around 12% in private regions. Such is the concern over tier that it gets raised following articles which may not be related to the subject – such as LL moving to promote SL through Amazon.

This decline has been subject to many calls for the Lab to reduce tier, with some recently advocating it should be cut by one-third. However, as both I and Tateru Nino attempted to explain in June 2012, while cutting tier may appear the obvious thing to do, it may not actually be the easiest or most comfortable thing for the Lab to do.

Crunching Some Numbers – the Lab’s Perspective

While I have covered some of this ground before, I thought it interesting to look at some numbers purely from the Lab’s perspective, using Tyche’s Grid Survey and survey summaries as reference.

Private regions losses through 2012 (click to enlarge)
  • As of December 31st, 2011, monthly private region revenue for LL was approximately $5,006,000, with a margin of error of +/-$60,000
  • As of December 31st 2012, monthly private region revenue for LL was approximately $4,244,000 per month, with a margin of error of +/- $53,000
  • While acknowledging we have yet to see Tyche’s 2012 end-of-year survey, that amounts to a drop of $762,000 through the year, or an average of $63,500 per month

If there is no reduction in tier, it is probable that the current decline in private region revenue will continue at or near the 2012 monthly average of $63,500. However, were the Lab to cut tier by one-third, they immediately slash monthly private region revenue by $1,400,520. That’s equivalent to 4,747 full private regions vanishing from the grid – 1.6 times more that the total number of private regions (full, Homestead and OpenSpace) lost in 2012.

Even allowing for the tier cut stimulating the demand from new land (and there are problems with that, as discussed later in this article), and assuming set-up fees remain unchanged, it means the Lab would need to see the equivalent of 1,337 full private regions added to the grid in the first month following the cut just to match the revenue loss suffered had they not cut tier (i.e. the difference between $1,400,520 and $63,500).

Continue reading “Tier cuts: looking from the Lab’s perspective” →

The Amazon deal: LL demonstrating they can’t see the wood for the trees?

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Friday 4th January, I was one of many who reported on the “unexpected” (given the move had apparently been made of December 10th, 2012) move to make Second Life available via Amazon following a tweet from the official Second Life account. Ciaran Laval was perhaps the first (certainly that I know of) to blog on the matter, and Tateru gave a very pithy commentary on the nature of the packages and on promoting SL as a “game”, which drew considerable commentary on Plurk as well as on her blog.

The tweet announcing the promotion / "expansion"
The tweet announcing the promotion / “expansion”

For my part, I resisted passing direct comment on the move in my original piece, in keeping with my attempts to avoid colouring any “news” items with personal bias. However, I have to say that the Amazon deal leaves me feeling that – once again – the Lab has bungled an opportunity, or at least failed to launch it fully and properly or in a manner liable to serve Second Life and themselves particularly well; although perhaps not for the reasons others have cited.

In difference to many critiquing the move, I have no problem in Amazon presenting SL as a game. Not that I’m saying I think SL is a game, I most certainly don’t, per se. I simply have no problem in Amazon presenting it as such, and for a couple of reasons:

  • Whether we like it or not, SL is largely referred to by the broader media and the more specialist (dare I say gaming media) as a “game” (even if the latter does make some attempt to sub-categorise SL in some way) – ergo, the wider perception is that SL “is a game”, whether we agree with that perception or not
  • More directly, and as Uccello Poultry comments on Tateru’s piece, the simple fact is that “game” is probably the only listing option in Amazon’s catalogue they consider to be the closest “fit” for SL – and it is a little unreasonable for us to expect them to develop a dedicated category on the basis that we find the “game” label offensive.

At the end of the day, issues over the listing category could be overcome had time been taken to give a reasonable explanation / description of the product itself. Sadly, and as demonstrated by the pages for the Viewer, the Lab has done the barest minimum required. Rather than providing insight into the platform through a mixture of text and screen shots, all we have are five bland bullet points which fail to leverage SL’s potential or appeal. The effort does, being brutally honest, leave me wondering once more if there is anyone working at the Lab who actually a) has real, hands-on marketing experience, b) is capable of writing attention-grabbing promotional material, and c) actually grasps what SL is about for themselves.

For me, this lack off effort on LL’s part is more damning than Amazon’s sin of promoting SL as a game.

Vehicle Packages: opportunity missed
Vehicle Packages: opportunity missed

Turning to the vehicle packages themselves, I have to say I don’t necessarily agree with all the criticism levelled at them – SL actually can be quite good for using some vehicles / craft, as I’ve personally discovered as result of receiving the Premium sail boat, which is one of the “vehicles” in the packs.

Again, from my perspective, the crux of the matter is that the packages are indicative of thinking at the Lab which is at worst, simply lazy, or at best, demonstrating an inability to think an idea through in terms of its potential to benefit the platform and by extension, LL’s own bottom line.

In short, in opting for the packages on offer, rather than being a little more ambitious, it would appear the Lab has missed an opportunity right from the get-go. That is to address, at least in part, the perennially thorny issue of user retention.

Continue reading “The Amazon deal: LL demonstrating they can’t see the wood for the trees?” →

Lab promotes Second Life through Amazon

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update, January 5th, 2012: The “limited offer Vehicle Starter Pack” has been withdrawn ahead of the stated end of the promotional period. This is apparently because no-one thought to ensure the offer could in fact be limited to “one per customer”.

secondlifeIn something of a surprise move Linden Lab announced on the 4th January, 2013, that Second Life is now on Amazon.

But only (perhaps only for the time being) if you are a US resident.

The announcement reads in full:

It’s a new year, and we have news: Second Life is now available on Amazon! 

In addition to the standard Mac and PC versions, we’re offering several bundled packages for sale, which include vehicles to enjoy and L$ to spend inworld or on the Marketplace.

As a special promotion, this weekend only the Starter Vehicle Pack (usually $9.95), which includes a hoverboard and L$1000 will be available for FREE [limit one per customer].

If a friend of yours has been waiting to join Second Life, now is a great chance for them to head over to Amazon and get started with the free Starter Vehicle Pack. Spread the word!

One of the SL offer pages on Amazon.com
One of the SL pages on Amazon.com

The links lead to a series of pages offering various packages for download, which comprise:

  • A PC or Mac “basic” pack, which appears to offer the current version of the viewer,
  • A “Deluxe Vehicle Pack”, comprising a hoverboard and what appears to be the sailboat previously offered to Premium members together with L$2000, at a cost of $14.95
  • A “Premium Vehicle Pack”, comprising the hoverboard, sailboat and the Premium gift dune buggy together with L$4000, at a cost of $24.95
  • The special “limited offer Vehicle Starter Pack” mentioned in the blog post of a hoverboard and L$1000, for $9.95 (offer expires on the 6th January 2013, and is limited to one per customer.

Amazon’s account linking facility is used for the downloads. Whether this means that in the case of new users any required Second Life account must be created through Amazon’s servers prior to downloading the viewer, or whether the SL account creation can be handled once the viewer is installed (as appears to be the case with the forthcoming Steam link-up), is unclear.

Certainly, it is interesting to note there is a subtle difference in the wording of the account link-up instructions. Those provided on the viewer pack pages refer to the need for a “Linden Lab account”, while those on the vehicle pack pages refer to purchasers having a “Second Life account”, suggesting the two are different – although granted, the different wording might simply be an error and not indicative of anything.

Even so, leaving it to the LL side of things for the actual SL account creation would appear to simplify matters considerably for Amazon – although it does beg the question as to *what* account would require creation prior to downloading either viewer package where new users are concerned. Doubtless, someone from the US will be able to enlighten me, should they opt to try the mechanism out!

Another interesting tidbit with this move is that it seems the packages have all been available through Amazon since … December 10th, 2012, with, it would seem, nary a word from the Lab.  Katharine Berry was perhaps the first to notice things when, on Christmas Eve, she Tweeted:

Eagle-eyed Katharine Berry spotted the packages on Christmas Eve
Eagle-eyed Katharine Berry spotted the packages on Christmas Eve

This possibly explains why the special offer package appears to be on such a limited-time offer (until January 6th, as mentioned) – although it is not uncommon for the Lab to run “weekend only” offers with regards to Second Life.

For the majority of us, however, the news has come somewhat out-of-the-blue – although with a degree of hindsight, a large rear-view mirror and the fact that we had the promise of Steam being on the horizon for a while now, it perhaps should have been. After all, LL have an established relationship with Amazon both  with Jeff Bezos being a former (current?) investor in LL (2006), and through the development of a Kindle Fire specific version of Creatorverse. So chalk that one up to the first prediction for 2013 most of us missed!

For now, however, it’ll be interesting to see how the move fairs, whether additional packages will be added to it and if it will spread to Amazon’s international operations (amazon.co.uk, etc.) – and whether LL have any more surprises up their collective sleeve!

With thanks to Ricco Saenz for the pointer to Katharine’s tweets.

When griefing crosses the line

Posted on by Inara Pey

It’s a fact of life that griefing is part of the subculture of Second Life. It’s not necessarily an agreeable subculture or one we particularly want or need, but it is there all the same. I say this not to excuse what goes on, but to underline the fact that right or wrong, most of us in hearing about it tend to shrug our shoulders and then carry on with our lives.

There are times, however, when griefing – which is actually crossing the line each and every time it occurs – crosses a the line not only in terms of resigned acceptance, but also in terms of criminal behaviour.

The fashion world in SL has recently been subject to this latter situation. This saw an SL user  already complicit in copying skins and shapes, and whose profile boasted they had scant regard for the ToS together with outright threats against content creators, start to use griefing as an attempt to extort money from others. They did so by crashing large fashion events and then demanding payment in order to not crash future events.

extortion

Much of what happened in this matter appeared to go unreported outside of fashion circles – few blog (this one included) reported on the matter, despite the problems apparently occurring over a span of months. The Lab also appeared unwilling to engage in the matter, despite extortion being a criminal act. In the end, many of those affected by the situation saw no other choice than to themselves disrupt in-world user group meetings in order to try to voice their concerns and frustrations directly (if unfortunately inappropriately) to the few remaining Lab employees users can actually contact nowadays.

(I say “inappropriately” not as an admonishment here, but because those who were confronted by this extortionist were demanding direct action from those Lab personnel the least well equipped to provide meaningful feedback on matters.)

In the end, the approach did appear to work, inasmuch as the account of the individual concerned was banned from Second Life and all content relating to it (apparently ripped from other merchants) was removed from the Marketplace.

Of course, in an age and situation where alt accounts are freely available, the removal of a single account is no guarantee the individual responsible has actually been removed from SL – or more particularly that their modus operandi will not be repeated elsewhere by others.

Yordie Sands brings word that the latter appears to have happened, and the use of extortion has been taken up elsewhere. Writing yesterday, she details a situation where Junkyard Blues, a renowned SL blues club run by Kiff Clutterbuck and Dina Petty, has been recently subjected to repeated griefing attacks which comprised, in Kiff and Dina’s words, “Multiple griefers with blinding graphics card attacks and sim lag/crashes … In some instances the computers of many staff and patrons actually shut down or rebooted as a result of the attacks.”

Such was the frequency of the attacks that patrons began staying away from the venue. However this was not an “innocent” (if such a term can be used with any form of griefing) attack. Junkyard Blues were contacted and informed that if they handed over cash, the attacks would stop.

This is again extortion, plain and simple.

As a result of both the threats and the attacks, Junkyard Blues has been forced to resort to restricting access to their club to “members only”, which impacts both their business and their customers.

Continue reading “When griefing crosses the line” →

Curio and Hush reach a settlement

Posted on by Inara Pey

The long-running dispute between Gala Phoenix, proprietor of Curio Skins and Hush Darkrose / Verikai Vargas, proprietor of Hush Skins, has reached an out-of-court settlement, it has been announced.

The dispute, in which each party accuses the other of IP infringements, first hit the headlines early in 2012, and was, through part of the year a major topic of conversation and heated debate.

The joint statement relating to the settlement reads in full:

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

Hush Darkrose /Verikai Vargas, owner and operator of Hush Skins, and Gala Phoenix,
owner and operator of Curio Skins, announce a mutually amicable settlement to the
dispute between them regarding the ownership of their skins.

In March 2012, Gala Phoenix filed a DMCA takedown notice against Hush Darkrose for
alleged infringement of her Curio skins. In May 2012, Hush Darkrose responded by filing
a DMCA takedown notice with Linden Research, Inc. and filed a Notice of Civil Claim
against Gala Phoenix for alleged infringement of her Hush skins.

Hush Darkrose would like to clarify that she did not “obtain” an injunction against Gala
Phoenix, but rather only sought an injunction against Gala Phoenix in a Notice of Civil
Claim, which was then filed with Linden Research, Inc. and resulted in the takedown of
certain Curio skins.

Since that time, Hush Darkrose and Gala Phoenix have been in legal discussions regarding the skins in question. The parties have agreed that each store was created separately and individually.

Wishing to avoid the expense of litigation, Hush Darkrose and Gala Phoenix have
reached a private and amicable agreement, and are content with the results. Neither Hush Darkrose nor Gala Phoenix admits liability, and both parties wish to put the dispute behind them and move forward.

Both Hush Darkrose and Gala Phoenix would like to thank the public for their support
and patience during this time, and hope that the public will continue to offer their support
to both designers and the incredible and unique skins that they each offer.

Thank you,
Hush Darkrose, Hush Skins
and
Gala Phoenix, Curio Skins.

—-

With thanks to Venus Petrov.