New World Notes

Rod Humble: Linden Lab Already Integrated Oculus Rift with Second Life, Fine Tuning It Now, Videos Coming Soon

Jo Yardley has a great scoop: Rod Humble recently told her all about Linden Lab's efforts to integrate the Oculus Rift with Second Life, and they're going great:

It is up and running right now within SL but we want to make it excellent. The new work is on integrating the mouse/cursor/UI support within the Rift, this is important because real VR requires rethinking the way you interact with the world and UI to take advantage of head tracking. Hopefully we will be sharing some vids within a few weeks then get into testing after that.

Read more here, including Rod Humble's pretty enthusiastic description of the experience.

Linden Lab Hastily Launches Authorized Linden Dollar Reseller Program to Allow (Highly Regulated) Third Party Selling of L$

As earlier indications suggested, Linden Lab has just announced an official Linden Dollar (L$) Authorized Reseller Program. Currently, Resellers include AnsheX, Bulido, vForEx, VirWoX, ZoHaIslands, but the company is taking applications for others. These are no longer third party vendors indepedently handling Linden Dollars vendors freely on their own. Rather, as the announcement explains:

These sites are authorized by Linden Lab to purchase L$ on the LindeX and then resell those L$ using a variety of international currencies and payment methods. To be clear: per the Terms of Service, these resellers will not be allowed to purchase L$ outside of the LindeX (i.e. they will not be able to buy L$ back from users and cash people out). The list of Authorized Resellers participating in the pilot program is available here.

This comes less than a week after Linden Lab updated Second Life's Terms of Service to forbid trading of Linden Dollars on exchanges other than the LindeX, Second Life’s official L$ exchange. The whole thing feels very hasty and ad hoc. Here's why:

Linden Lab Reportedly Working on Compromise to Allow Some Third Party Exchange of Linden Dollars

According to Hypergrid Business, a compromise may be in the works that will allow some third party groups to buy and sell Linden Dollars again:

Meanwhile, while some exchanges were being kicked out of Second Life by force, others received a communication from Linden Lab which also hinted at better things to come, also without any specific details. “We have approached several organizations to discuss a potential solution that would allow them to serve their customers within the bounds of the updated Second Life Terms of Service,” said the letter. “We’ll soon blog to share more information about this solution, which we plan to extend more broadly as well.”

Stay tuned, and until then, read more here.

Linden Dollar Third Party L$ Exchange Survey Results: 28% Report Moderate to Heavy Impact on Their SL Usage. Also, SurveyMonkey Sucks.

Here's the first 100 votes from yesterday's survey on the impact of Linden Lab forbidding third party exchanges trading in Linden Dollars. Of those who took the survey, 28% say this policy change signifies a "Heavy" or "Moderate" impact on their Second Life usage. That represents a significant minority of the userbase. Based on reader Comments (and common sense), users who stand to suffer most are in areas where PayPal is inaccessible (such as much of Europe), since this is the service Linden Lab uses to cash out Linden Dollars on the official exchange. As one reader, vandamian, writes:

Survey: Is Linden Lab's New Policy Forbidding Third Party L$ Exchanges Affecting Your Second Life Usage?

Update, 5/15: Survey is over, thanks to all who took it!

Linden Lab's new policy forbidding third party exchanges from trading in Linden Dollars (apparently for US Treasury regulatory reasons) has led to over a dozen such services closing down, with the company reportedly sending out warnings to them that begin, "As an operator of a third party exchange, you should cease facilitating L$ trades on your exchange immediately to comply with the Terms of Service". The move has definitely caused some user anger(see this comment thread), but I'm curious how widespread the impact is being felt. Here's a snapshot survey to measure just that.

Results published next week, but please discuss now in Comments below!

Virtual Currency Legal Analyst: Linden Lab Has to Comply With New US Treasury Guidelines or Face Criminal Penalties

Virtual currency legal analyst Alex Kadochnikov adds more context to Linden Lab's apparent move to comply with new US Treasury guidelines by forbidding the trading of Linden dollars (L$) on exchanges other than the official LindeX. As part of the guidelines, the company must register as a Money Services Business, and the penalties for not doing so are pretty steep:

Any company that issues or exchanges virtual currency must register with FinCEN, either by themselves or through their agent. Linden Lab will have to register. Linden Lab issues virtual currency. No surprises there... Once the statutory six month period for when virtual currency money transmitters must register, the government will be able to start prosecuting people who do not comply.

Here come the penalties, stated right in the regulations:

Did Linden Lab Change Its Terms of Service Around Second Life Currency to Comply With US Treasury Guidelines?

Linden Lab has updated Second Life's Terms of Service regarding Linden Dollars, the world's official currency, in a way that will impact third party sites which exchange L$ for real money or other virtual currency, including Bitcoin. In the new Terms of Service, however:

[T]o better protect Second Life users against fraud, the updated Terms of Service make it clear that trading of Linden dollars (L$) on exchanges other than the LindeX, Second Life’s official L$ exchange, is not authorized or allowed.

The given reason seems strange on its face, because Second Life users have been able to exchange Linden Dollars for real currency on third party sites since 2004. (See Gaming Open Market.) If fraud was really the concern, why do so only now? According to SL blogger Vaki Zenovka (who describes herself as a lawyer IRL) Linden Lab is really doing this to comply with new guidelines on the regulation of virtual currencies by the United States Treasury department, which I blogged about last month. Here's the problem, as Vaki puts it:

Linden Lab Looking at the Oculus Rift for Second Life Now: One Insider Weighs Its Pros & Cons

Linden Lab is planning to integrate the Oculus Rift VR headset with Second Life, as I reported last week, and staffers just received a dev kit. Some developers like it, an insider told me, "others do not." As for Linden CEO Rod Humble? "I hear that Rod falls in the 'like' category." So now, my source adds, "I expect we'll try to get it working in SL just to see how it looks."

So far, this insider went on, some Linden developers are seeing some pros and cons with the Oculus Rift, especially related to Second Life. It does cause dizziness in some, for one thing, but rendering quality is good, for another. Here's the full breakdown:

No, Second Life Isn't Losing Virtual Landowners Because of the Real World Financial Crisis

Commenting on the latest report of dwindling virtual land ownership in Second Life, Daniel Voyager offers his opinion for why this is happening, and it's a common theory we read often:

The main reasons I think is due to the global financial crisis which i’m sure is having a huge effect on spending money etc and the other reason is that tier level in Second Life is still high from what I’ve been hearing from friends during the first part of 2013.

I've talked about tier prices before, but with respect to my colleague Mr. Voyager, the theory that the global financial crisis is a direct reason for Second Life's woes is simply not true. How do we know this? Because if you look at the broader economy for online interactive entertainment, virtual goods sales are at an all-time high.

Let's just take one example:

Oculus Rift Integration Coming to Second Life, Linden Lab Staff Confirm (Both Officially and Unofficially)

Linden Lab intends to integrate the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset with Second Life, company spokesman Peter Gray just confirmed with me. "Yes," he replied, when I asked, "we plan to strongly support Oculus Rift. That means code, client, and server-side, to make the Oculus Rift experience excellent in Second Life." That's excellent news, because like I said last week, the Oculus could become Second Life's killer app, but only if Linden Lab is willing to go all in. Sounds like they are doing just that, in an official capacity.

Here's some more interesting news: several Linden staff are also working on integrating Oculus Rift with Second Life in an unofficial capacity, as some of them also confirmed with me.