There's a lot more to what happened then you have reported. The product was changed earlier this year from its original price and limits. Then after selling thousands of them, Linden is now increasing the price by 66.7%. This includes a 150% price increase for people with "grandfathered" sims, and an over 200% increase for nonprofits. The announcement indicated that the price increase was because of abuse of resources, essentially blaming the need for the price increase on the customers. Which, if true, does not explain why they continued to sell them up to the very minute they made the announcement. At a $250 setup fee and a $75/month tier fee, the sudden increase to $125 in 2 months meant that the product was practically worthless on the resell market. And that many people would have to abandon them, giving Linden a free $250 for the hardware which they can then charge the next persona setup fee.
In addition, Linden has not maintained a dialogue as they said with customers - basically they've move the discussion to the forums where customers can comment, but there are few answers to any questions asked. Linden did revise the price increase slightly, but this has only enraged many people as well.
More importantly, this affects more than just the "land owners". Numerous regular customers are finding that the land tiers are now going up as well since they rent from the land owners. Some land owners are selling or abandoning land or converting it back into the regular full sims. Some land owners are doing this with more than just the open space product as they worry that the full private sims are the next target for a price increase and they get out of land holding now. All of these things combined mean less physical space for people to put their stuff which means less demand for content from the content providers which means less money for them which means they may be able to afford their land tier.
This is certainly not the end of the world for Second Life, but it will have a wider impact on the Second Life residents than you have reported. It remains to be seen as to how much an impact.
Gene Turnbow
· 11 months ago
Many are calling this a classic "bait and switch" move by Linden Lab, and the closures of "sims" - Second Life parlance for "virtual island" - is fast becoming an avalanche of digital destruction. Linden Lab customers are voting with their feet, to the tune of nearly a thousand sim closures per week. Needless to say, Linden Lab cannot sustain a rate of loss like this for very long, as they only had some 30,000 sims on their grid to start with.
If Linden Lab reverses their decision and finds some other way around their financial difficulties other than what appears to be criminal abuse of their own customer base, they may pull themselves out of a nose dive and stabilize. We'll just have to see what happens next.
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In addition, Linden has not maintained a dialogue as they said with customers - basically they've move the discussion to the forums where customers can comment, but there are few answers to any questions asked. Linden did revise the price increase slightly, but this has only enraged many people as well.
More importantly, this affects more than just the "land owners". Numerous regular customers are finding that the land tiers are now going up as well since they rent from the land owners. Some land owners are selling or abandoning land or converting it back into the regular full sims. Some land owners are doing this with more than just the open space product as they worry that the full private sims are the next target for a price increase and they get out of land holding now. All of these things combined mean less physical space for people to put their stuff which means less demand for content from the content providers which means less money for them which means they may be able to afford their land tier.
This is certainly not the end of the world for Second Life, but it will have a wider impact on the Second Life residents than you have reported. It remains to be seen as to how much an impact.
If Linden Lab reverses their decision and finds some other way around their financial difficulties other than what appears to be criminal abuse of their own customer base, they may pull themselves out of a nose dive and stabilize. We'll just have to see what happens next.