Tag: Opinion

Update: March 10th, 2024: The management team list is back up on the corporate About page.

In 2021 and 2022, Linden Lab made two fairly high-profile – in terms of the company’s management team – hirings; both of whom recently departed the company within the same time frame.

To take them in order of joining the company, Andrew Kertesz, a 20-year veteran of the gaming industry, arrived at the Lab as the new VP of Engineering in July 2021 to replace Scott Lawrence (Oz Linden). In doing so, he took the name Mojo Linden.

It is not unreasonable to say his impact was immediate and positive. Openly engaging with user through the various user groups – notably the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) and Third Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meetings, as well as popping up from time-to-time at Simulator User Groups.

Three of his major user-facing contributions to the platform comprised a push to overhaul and improve the viewer’s performance; encouraging the adoption of industry-recognised standards (the Khronos glTF 2.0 specification); and pausing the development of the Lab’s efforts to develop an initially limited (“chat centric”) mobile app, in order to determine if a more comprehensive mobile solution might be developed (what we now know as SL Mobile). He was also keen to eliminate much of the platform’s technical debt – such as moving the simulator code to 64-bit architecture and to try to leverage technical options that hadn’t actually been around when SL first opened its doors.

The other hiring was that of Steven Feuling, who joined the company in May 2022 as Linden Lab’s first ever Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), alongside of Peter Capraro, who became the company’s first  Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).

Taking the name Styfy Linden, a major part of Mr. Fueling’s focus was, according to Business Insider, to help Second Life to start to expand its user-base once more. In this he worked closely with Brett Linden, the Lab’s VP of Marketing. He also saw his role not only in marketing and promoting Second Life within market sectors relevant to the platform (e.g. the content creation sector) to b ring new users in, but also in trying to both enhance the events-driven appeal of SL through partnerships with external organisations and through direct engagement with existing users to encourage their ongoing retention.

Styfy certainly wasn’t as much a “public” figure as Mojo in terms of user visibility – he did appear in a Lab Gab session for 2022’s SL20B celebrations (which I summarised here); however, his influence – alongside of that from Brett – would seem to have been key in the formulation of projects such as the Motown Experience and Welcome Hub.

While the Lab may have something of a bumpy reputation as an employer in some quarters, it is true that a lot of the staff there – particularly among the management team and who are directly responsible for the platform’s operation and services – tend to be with the company for years at a stretch. As such, I was particularly surprised to find Mojo Linden was no longer listed as part of the company’s management team, and nor was Styfy.

Admittedly, it took a big of digging to find this out; some time between January 15th, 2024 and now, information on the Lab’s board and management team has been removed from the company’s About page (or at least, that’s been the case while I’ve been poking at things over the last couple of days; maybe there’s just been a bit of a SNAFU and said information will reappear).

Anyway, using the Wayback Machine, I was able to confirm that both Mr. Kertesz and Mr. Feuling were listed as a part of the management team on December 25th, 2023, but by January 15th, 2024 their names had been removed. On discovering this, I ran a check on their in-world Linden accounts, and both have been deactivated (as is the company’s policy when personnel depart).

If I’m honest, I had wondered as to Mojo’s whereabouts a couple of times of late; his absence from the CCUG meetings had become sufficient enough for me to notice (he was by no means at every meeting, but had a habit of dropping in perhaps once and month – or close to that). However, I just assumed he was focused on other projects, and its not as if his departure has caused the wheels he helped set in motion seize up.

Obviously, people and roles do not always work out; the CMO role at the Lab was brand new to the company, and it is possible that given LL’s size, it became recognised as a square peg / round hole situation. Similarly, leading figures within organisations can be poached away / become tempted by opportunities they spot elsewhere. As such, the departure of two senior staff from the Lab in what appears to be fairly close order might be coincidence more than a sign of Something Going On, even if finding out did cause an eyebrow to do a Spock.

Certainly, I’m not going to speculate on the ins and outs because I don’t want to feed into any conspiracy theories that might be doing the rounds (in relation to this or anything else). It will be interesting to see  – if possible, assuming the management team info doesn’t reappear on the corporate website – if either post (particularly that of VP of Engineering) gains a new face (again, assuming there has not been any internal promotion to the position in the interim).

Instead, I’ll simply wish both gentlemen well in their respective futures, and also thank Mojo (should he ever read this!) for taking the time to engage with users and in responding to nagging enquiries from the likes of myself.

On May 2nd, 2022, Linden Lab initially announced the release of a new region product, the Event region type (see the official blog post Event Regions).

Leveraging the additional capabilities available through AWS, this new product was intended specifically for hosting large-scale events. At the time the product was introduced, it was noted by many (including myself), that the initial pricing seemed a little high.

Since the initial introduction of the product, the Lab has been able to learn a lot more about how best to leverage it and looked at offering capabilities more reflected of the needs of event organisers and at prices better suited to their potential use.

As a result of this, late on Thursday, June 23rd, the Lab issued a blog post announcing updates to Event region products – which are new split between Event Pro and Event Elite, each with its own price-point.

Event Elite is considered the “all-inclusive” product, and Event Pro the “a-la carte” variant.  The table below provides the prices and capabilities associated with both.

	Event Pro	Event Elite
Monthly fee¹	US $449	US $599
Avatar Capacity	175	175
20%+ Script performance improvement	Yes	Yes
Extended chat range (upon request)²	Yes	Yes
Land Capacity	20,000	30,000
Increase to 30K Land Capacity	US $30/mo	n/a
Rollback service (with 48 hr of request)³	US $25 per request	Free
Region cloning4	US $50 per request	Free
White-glove concierge support	n/a	Free

Table Notes:

1. There are no set-up fees applied to Event Pro or Event Elite regions.
2. Everyone on the region to see and participate in Nearby Chat if desired.
3. If you make a mistake with region content, or want to restore a previous build, you can request to roll the region back to a specific time.
4. The region must have 100% original content.

How to Order an Event Region (Elite or Pro)

• Submit a request via the SL support ticket system.
• Select Land & Region > Region Purchase
• Note that you may order multiple Event regions on the same support ticket

Private Region Rollback Service

In addition to the above, the post from the Lab indicates that the US $25 region roll-back service is now also available to all private region owners (another they remain at Linden Lab’s discretion and are not guaranteed).

Feedback

In my original post on the May launch of Event regions, I noted a feeling that while the “introductory offer” price of US $599 sounded reasonable, the (then) proposed increase to US $899 at the end of the “introductory period” was more than a little steep, and could put people off the use of such regions. As such, this restructuring of prices is to be welcomed, and makes a lot of sense. It would still be nice to see these products offered on more of a pro-rata basis, but overall, this is a welcome move by LL.

Update, June 23rd, 2022: Linden Lab has officially announced updates to the Event region product(s). Please refer to Event Regions: New Pricing and Offerings – Linden Lab and Lab announces updated Event and Event Elite Regions + pricing – this blog.

Update, June 20th, 2022: Speaking at his Meet the Lindens session at SL19B, Patch Linden, VP of Land Operations, indicated that the fee for Event regions will remain at US $599 a month & no set-up fee. Summary notes with link to the video available here. However, the comments and thoughts originally offered towards the end of this piece remain unchanged, as they are historically relevant.

The number of avatars a region can support has often been a headache for those wishing to hold large-scale events – and something the Lab has long been aware of itself. Traditionally, to host a reasonably large number of avatars at a single event in comfort (e.g. 75+), it has often been necessarily to have two or four regions, with the stage space effectively straddling them.

However, during recent months, the Lab has been testing a new region type, capable of supporting relatively large numbers of avatars. This testing has included providing the new region product to a number of events in Second Life that have high numbers of avatars passing through them.

Most recently, when speaking at the VWBPE 2022¹, event, Patch Linden indicated that the new region type – called Event regions – were definitely on the product development roadmap.

On Monday, May 2nd, the Lab officially launched the Event region type via an official blog post, stating:

Have you ever dreamed of being able to hold large scale events in Second Life? Have you ever wished you could keep the lag monster at bay during large events? Perhaps you just want your scripts to all go vroom?  Well wonder, wait and wish no more! Sporting the latest upgrades in grid technologies that have been enabled by our migration to the cloud, these regions have been tested running large events in real-world scenarios such as those really big monthly shopping events, and live performances! Our tests saw nearly 200 avatars successfully able to shop and party in these regions.

– from Linden Lab

The post lists the capabilities / options that come with the new Event region product as:

• A maximum avatar limit of 175 per Event region.
• Up to 30,000 land impact.
  • While this region type will support up to 30,000 Land Impact, during testing, LL identified a few cases where exceeding 20,000 Land Impact will degrade performance with a large number of concurrent visitors.
• Extended chat ranges upon request, allowing chat to travel further across the region.
• RaaS: Rollbacks as a Service – Request to restore your region to a previous state as needed – some restrictions apply.
• IaaS: Instancing as a Service – Request to have your region duplicated to another region.
• White glove Concierge service.
• Over 20% Improved script performance.

These new regions can be ordered by submitting  a support ticket.

Pricing for these region types is somewhat surprising:

• From now until June 6th, 2022, Event regions will be available at US $599 per month, with no set-up fee.
• After June 6th, 2022, the fee will be:
  • US $999 for the first month (including a $100 set-up fee, which is slightly less than that for a Full region’s $120).
  • US $899 per month after the first 30 days.

I say “surprising” because while the initial “offer price” of US $599 does not sound entirely unreasonable given the added capabilities / support options, the $899 month tier most certainly does. Certainly, in terms of events, this latter price-point will likely place the cost of these regions well outside the budget of many events they might otherwise be well suited towards handling (e.g. a one-off weekend concert, for example).

Conversely, the US $599 price point, whilst high, is a lot more comfortable than US $899, and could encourage more widespread adoption of the new product across a range of potential uses over a much longer period of time among users (corporate partners, obviously, may not find the pricing an issue, if it  encompasses them).

Even so, and in terms of pure events, I would have thought something along the lines of a pro-rata system based on the proposed length of use might have been more all-encompassing.

And turning to the capabilities and options offered with the new Event region product, there is one element in the bullet list that could do with further exposition: “Instancing as a Service” – as I enquired on the forum thread related to the announcement:

• Does this genuinely mean simultaneous instancing, on an on-demand basis (e.g. I can simply request another instance of my event to be spun-up based on the demand I’m seeing  –  and request it is taken down when demand drops below the level where it is no longer required)?.
• Is it limited to just the one instance (as the wording perhaps implies), or multiple instances?
• Is instancing covered by the “original” region’s tier, or is a surcharge applicable? If so, how much?

Those with a similar interest in this aspect of the product should keep an eye on the thread for any official response.

In the meantime, complete information on the launch can be found in the official blog post.

Footnotes

1. Patch’s comments can be heard in the What’s Up at the Lab VWBPE video:
   • Initial discussion (6:50-10:20 in the video).
   • Mentioning the educational discount applying to Event regions (47:46-48:22 in the video).