Is The New Openspace Pricing Policy Fair? Read The Summary, Take The Survey

Online Surveys & Market Research

As promised in my Monday interview with him, Linden CEO M. Linden has just announced a price and policy revision that significantly changes their highly controversial original announcement.  Read it all here, but the main points are thus:

"1... Those of you who chose to use the Openspaces as intended may stay at the US$75 rate, but will need to contact the concierge team to do so.

2. If you want more than an Openspace, we will offer you the choice of moving to a new product called Homesteads that is intended for light use such as low density rentals... Homesteads will also have technical limits for avatars and prims, and eventually script limits as well.

[On] January 5, 2009 – non-compliant Openspaces will transition to Homesteads and the maintenance fees will go from $75 to $95 per month. We will offer an educational discount to qualified educators on the new Homestead product. The discount amount will be the same as Private Regions, roughly 30%. [On] July 2009 — the maintenance fees for Homesteads will go from $95 to $125 per month."

Take the survey, discuss in Comments below.  Image credit: "Libris no more", by Wildstar Beaumont, found on the Openspace Flickr stream.

Comments

[GoSpeed Racer]

At first blush this approach seems more reasonable. We'll see how things come out as they hammer out a policy on what constitutes acceptable use.

[Vint Falken]

Wondering why they can't go back to the '4 voids by same owner on one server'. If you read through Pavig Lok's comments on telephone interview with M, it definitely makes sence. Especially for light use, as they are bound to be grouped by the owner in such case.

Also, 3000 => 750 prims errr... ?!

[Ananda Sandgrain]

All in all a much fairer policy change, and quite responsive to the biggest complaints surprisingly. The "habitation" restriction probably still needs some clarification, i.e. "does this mean I can have those 10 people moving around in there or not, and for how long each day". And if I were them I'd de-clarify anything pinpointing number of regions per CPU except for Full Use regions.

Overall prices are still way out of range for me and the tier structure is still entirely slanted in favor of for-profit and predatory inworld enterprises, of course.

[Ann Otoole]

Well...
Now that they have damaged the economy it is nice that they will allow "light commercial use" on the cheap sims since a lot of formerly successful businesses will be having to downsize until the Big Spaceship lands with a million resident concurrency and business get back up to pace and begins it's upward swing again.

[Wildstar Beaumont]

75 USD per month for something that becomes a little more than a backdrop sim sounds a bit too much now.
750 prims, 10 avies and potential script limitations means that they can hardy support 3-4 Trudeau boats or SPD ships and relative crew passing through. RP areas and thematic regions may still have hard decision to take.

[Moe Lovenkraft]

The proposal is better but I have three main concerns:
1. OpenSpace sims are now ridiculously overpriced. Up the prim count or lower price/tier.

2. Homesteads at 99$/month is ok but 125$/month is too much given the limitations.

3. Payor and owner should not have to be the same as this limits business and options way too much.

[OpenWhat]

When you read the announcement at first it might seam reasonable. But if you check the details you see that you get even less than before except the phase in of the hike ($95) and in July $125. So at the end you still going to pay their original announced price of $125 but now with a 20 avatar limit and the original 3750 prims (good or bad but still not like originally purchased). The $75 product which the openspace sold for gets limited to 750 prims and 10 avatars. So for users who purchased the old void sim product with 1875 will get their limit decreased. ( and of course need to send a ticket to request this price ) Overall nothing really changed they are going to increase the price 67% over 6 month and have additional limits and a new product to the same price (on request) with more limitations.
I just have the impression that most people did not read the KB about the product as of today.
The only people which have a benefit are those who really want a most empty sim (sailing) and they better don't forget to send the the ticket to request this limit ( oh and 10 avatars max)

[Ordinal Malaprop]

One might look at it from different directions. It might be said that voids are now horribly crippled, with prims reduced by over 3/4 and an enormous av cap, but a new price point has been announced with performance equivalent to the old voids but at a significantly higher price.

Or, one might say that voids have now become much more expensive, and lost a little functionality, and a new, super-limited price point has been introduced at the same price as the old voids.

Regardless, the outcome is either "less performance", "more expense" or "both".

[Ann Otoole]

More than 20 avatars in an open space or homestead region is unreasonable. Even in a full scale region more than 20 avatars results in severe performance degradation which erodes the resident experience. As it is I sometimes consider setting the avatar limit in my full sim to 20. The only reason I don't is because the photo garden frequently has more than 20 in there. (Something that intrigues me but not enough to go disturb photographers while they are running photo shoots. I also sometimes wonder what the income rate at L$10 per resulting uploaded image is for LL off that place lol.)

The Lab needs to drop the requirement that you first lease a full scale region before leasing a "Homestead" region. (hey also need to drop this "buy" word since it is a lease) Otherwise they need to change the name since it will not be "Homesteading" to rent at a higher rate from a landlord. Such a move will also ensure the upcoming downsizing will result in more businesses making the stay since it means a few less precious dollars out of pocket during the depression.

[Erasmus Hartunian]

I'll swallow the 27% price incresase in January, although it is stiff in the current economic context. I have no issue with avatar count limit.
But comes July, it would take an economic boom in SL for me to even think about paying the full 67% price increase.
I'll be watching the premium account tally. Unless it starts moving up by more than 5% a month (as they are required to have mainland), I will trim down in SL and move some eggs into my other baskets.

[Doubledown Tandino]

Is this a joke? What's funnier is that SL users will buy it as a better alternate... all the while it just seems NOW like a plan to snag some extra money. When they first raised the prices it seemed as though M Linden did it for one reason: because people were overusing their OS sims....

Now it seems like "the new deal" is basically the same rate hike, + you'll need to move out if you're not going to use the sim as intended.

[Faerie]

I'm very glad that the sailing and flying sims will not be affected. They are truely innocent parties in this - the ones who have always used Opensims *exactly* as they were supposed to.

@ Wildstar: My understanding is that prims worn by an avatar don't count towards a sim's prim limit, and if that is correct the sailing sims should be unaffected since most of the prims in a Trudeau sailing boat are "worn" by the owner/captain and a smaller number are being "sat on".

All in all, I think M linden has offered the best compromise that could have been hoped for in the circumstances.

[Hypatia Callisto]

overall I think the Homesteads are great for individuals - and should be sold that way. BUT.

It does not solve the land baron problem, and the big communities like Caledon are still under siege even under the new pricing.

I think the way to deal with the land baron problem is for LL to offer a top end offering.

Server rental. That way we can cluster our sims, and divide it up as we need. Say like 2 full sims and 8 openspaces, etc.

The fact is, most of the land is empty most of the time. Events sometimes tax a sim that may not be originally designed for it - happens to the sailing communities, Caledon, etc. So what LL could do is offer a server rental aimed at community building, with some stipulations

The sims have to be connected as a landmass - no floating them out on their own.

You have to already have a certain size estate. (this should only be offered to bigger accounts - set at least 2-4 full sim minimum leased already by the account)

This should be able to go up head to head with Opensim rentals, satisfy large land barons and let them own their own lag. Oh, and LL will profit pretty well on it I would imagine. Win-Win for all.

[Pavig Lok]

Reposting my comment from Mis Tat's post on this issue: http://www.massively.com/2008/11/05/linden-lab-introduces-new-land-product-changes-for-void-simulat/

-----quoted post-----
So the result is the new openspace you:

* pay 25% of the price of a full sim
* get traffic limits at 10% of a full sim capacity
* get 5% of the prims
* share lag with people you don't know
* face yet to be announced future restrictions

Somehow this doesn't look as good value as the old void groups to me.

Or for a new Homestead sim you:

* Pay about 30% of the price of a full sim with an increase later to 42%
* get under 25% of a full sims resources (25% prims, 20% people etc)
* Get the same pricing increase everyone complained about (that hasn't changed)
* face yet to be announced future restrictions

In contrast.. the old void group package you:
* had to buy 4 at a time
* had nearly a full sim worth of resources (prims/people/etc) to divide up as you saw fit
* could manage lag within your void group (as they acted as a co-dependant set)
* paid a little over a normal sim price

Soooooooooooo whichever way you cut it this looks like more money for less good stuff. The new plan is more acceptable but certainly not much of an improvement - in fact for "homestead owners" they will actually be getting _less_ than they had under the old price increase.

--- end quote

Old void groups had a good balance of positives and negatives; you needed to buy four at a time but you got some bonuses in how the land worked. For Rezzable or Caledon (and such estates) they were a cost effective tool, neither under nor over priced. They were easy to understand too - effectively a sim split in 4 pieces.

The new openspaces and homesteads are a symptom of the lindens move from voids as a value added service for sim owners into a product on it's own. A symptom of selling hosting as if it was real estate.

[Lin Ochs]

38.6% Totally satisfied? You must not own any land in SL. LL is totally ripping us off with this new pricing system. Less for more would put walmart of business.

[IntLibber Brautigan]

Once you read the details, this is nothing but a more detailed bait and switch that gives you a choice of what kind of funeral you want.

Rather than adopting our proposals of a true 'middle weight' sim with 7500 prims for heavy openspace sim owners to migrate into, they rename the openspace a 'homestead' with the same 3750 prims the openspace has, keep the same ultimate 125 a month tier on it, and fake up a whole new class of useless sims and call them openspaces with only 750 prims.

The purpose of these tactics are clear: Confiscate the assets that people invested their capital into, and force people back to the crappy mainland estate of LL itself where people will be crammed into tiny parcels in overloaded overscripted overprimmed sims full of griefers, trolls, and zero support from LL, other than the G-team banhammer to enforce their ideas of political correctness.

Its time to send our response to LL, by Boycotting Lindex. Dont buy your L$ or sell your L$ at their official exchange where you get raped for 3% fees and a weeks delays in getting your money into paypal (or more time to get it to your bank account).

Use a third party exchange: xstreetsl.com, or the Dutch Exchange, or ours, ACE-exchange.com. ACE is only charging 1% fees on currency trades, and 0.5 % of that is going to the Save our OpenSpaces Legal Fund to sue Linden Lab to stop their bait and switch tactics....

[Ebenuscrux Bracken]

Seems like a typical business "lets make it look pretty and the public will buy" diversion tactic that linden labs has pulled on us.

"Homesteads", as they so carefully named, is easy to describe as nothing more that a rip off that really belongs in the list on ripoffreport.com. let me explain in a few bullet points that are basicly a dumb down version of what all is stated in the comments already.

-You're given 25% of a full sim prims per homestead.
-You're restricted to 20% a full sim avatar limit.
-You're to be restricted(not yet announce how greatly) on scripting
-You're required to still pay the insane increase of 67%, just now it is tiered out into a gradual increase...but still 42% of that of a full sim cost!?!

simple question, why would I pay almost half the cost of something for less than 1/4 of the value it should be?

This is not a better solution, but an even worse proposition made to look pretty. Like adding flowers around a piece of trash, it is still trash...just pretty now.

[Lulu Pink]

maybe said before here but i dont mind to repeat this is what i see here now:

YES, LL did listen to comments and suggestions.
They took out what was simply right... limit the sim on a limited price.
So what did they change from their original so hard attacked plan to charge more?
1) they charge more in two steps, ok that IS an improvement
2) they DO limit the then called homestead sims to what ppl suggested to do to the openspace sims.
Means to me: Yes you are right we have to limit the use, thanks for that, but we still raise the price as we wanted.
3) the gratefully offer to keep your open space sim with limitation that make it a piece of void land... 750prims, 10 avis and most likely script limitations for the price you thought once you have a sim with 3750 prims and no other limitations.

In fact, i think this is worse than the simple price raising they told to do before!!!
I could live with as other say, too:
OK, name it homestead, take 95$ that is fine for more space so lets say a more luxury place to have than a standard sim. but please with 25 avis and not 20, just to be fair.
nice idea about void sim, do so but for 75$??? for a 256x256 empty square, you are kidding me arent you? make this 50$ and 1500 prims than it may be of interest... 15 avis fine

The idea of the new (i call them) VOID sims is nice... in fact this lets them deal great with the overload openspace or homestead sims may cause... just put now together 3 homestead and one void on one cpu core, that should be just fine and be less load than one full sim ALWAYS!

[Aslan]

I read the responses and most would be laughable if so much actual money wasn't involved. Linden is giving absolutely nothing in response to all the bitching, complaining and screaming, and so many are foolish enough to call that a "good compromise" or a "fairer policy change". It's neither. It's unconscionable, immoral, legalized theft. I know perfectly well that if anything Linden has so far proposed is implimented, there will be an economic melt down of all of Second Life and every cent anyone has foolishly "invested" in nonexistant property will be forever gone. And Second Life will very shortly follow and disappear along with it. These greedy scum bags will then have reaped exactly what they have sown. And for those of you who believe Linden is actually trying to be fairer with this abortion called a proposal; you deserve it. Incidently, this seems like an excellent post to be pulled lest someone's feelings get bruised.

[Ananda Sandgrain]

Oh... one reason I do think this is fairer is it give six more months for the OpenSim-type projects to develop, and maybe in that time we'll see better-packaged avatars and inter-grid account and messaging systems start to come online.

It looks like under market competition the price of a *full* sim is less than that $75 a month, and some are even offering void-type products for $10-15 a month.

So this is six more months to decide what land in the main grid really gets you.

[Iggy "Fenderbender" O]

No idea about the fairness of the new position, but Wildstar's remarks seem well informed here.

"750 prims, 10 avies and potential script limitations means that they can hardy support 3-4 Trudeau boats or SPD ships and relative crew passing through. RP areas and thematic regions may still have hard decision to take."

Three of my favorite racetracks poofed before this controversy broke...I too wonder if the price is too high or the prim-count too low to support a hobbyist's track and a handful of us racing our prim-hogs.

A student of mine, an avid gamer and car-geek, is researching car-culture in SL. He wonders why ANYONE would race at all in SL, except for the joy of building his or her own car. Soon we drivers may be stuck with road-rallies on those improved highways the Lindens promise us (actually, rallies are working better now, in my experience). Or we may be stuck just looking at our rides, parked, until we find a friendlier metaverse for racing.

[Winter]

If any one thinks this is a good policy, numbers speak for themselves and not even talking about the Avi cap and restrictions on Scripts still TBA:

Current Pricing:
Open Space Sim = 3750 prims $75 USD = $0.02 Per Prim/Month
Full Sim = 15,000 prims $295 USD = $0.0197 Per Prim/Month

New Pricing policy
OpenSpace Sim = 750 prims $75 USD = *$0.10* Per Prim/Month
HomeStead Sim = 3750 prims $125 USD = $0.0333 Per Prim/Month
Full Sim = 15,000 prims $295 USD = $0.0197 Per Prim/Month

[Ganymedes Costagravas]

I think LL took their residents complaints serious, but I think they wanted a solution without "too much" fuss.

What they did now is good progress, but there's still room for improvement. So still "no cigar".
For a great deal of people, the new policy will be fine, but there's an equal amount of people out there who will still be unable to keep their patch of land because it's either too restricted, or will become too expensive when Homesteads reach $125 tier.

As with everything, the more choice you offer, the more people you're able to satisfy.
I know it may sound a bit utopic, but LL should seriously consider to not just offer 3 types of sims (OpenSpace, Homestead, Island sim), but "about 5":
OpenSpace
Homestead "light"
Homestead
Homestead "advanced"
Island sim

Again, this is merely my personal opinion of "sim type utopia". 5 types would (imho) be much more sufficient to meet the demands of all, at a fair price and with good performance.

Reason why LL probably won't do this is because it would mean a great deal of work and maintenance, but only this way they could offer much desired "land to unleash your creativity upon" for practically all those who desire it.

[Balthasar Bookmite]

I think it is a good thing that the Lindens reacted in a positive manner, although I can't help get the feeling that somehow they will take a while to get all the openspaces registered into their correct categories causing stress among owners.

[OpenWhat]

How can you see a positive manner in all this ?
It's the same thing with more restriction and more to come. With the rate hike split up in two steps. Did I miss something ?

[Scarp Godenot]

$125 gets you half a sim, 7500 prims and NO restrictions on the mainland. This seems to be a model that is just fine with LL. No problems there, right?

So my question is: if this is able to work for the LL financial model, why can half as many prims not work in that same model for LESS than the $125?

The numbers just don't add up. It is all about computer processing time and bandwidth supposedly. But if you compare the actual numbers, it really isn't.

Homestead people will be getting truly screwed just for the ability to be surrounded by fake water.

[Ciaran Laval]

Of course it's not fair, it's the same bloody policy. I'm staggered at how easily people have wool pulled over their eyes, this wasn't even a decent effort by Linden Lab and people have been suckered in.

To those of you who are stupid enough to fall for this, I have a bridge or some nice mainland to sell you.

[Hiroshi]

Linden's policy is not consistent.

[Sven Pertelson]

Not only do I have misgivings - I am even more furious than I was with the original proposal.

Openspace sims for scenery or sailing need more than 750 prims to look or be interesting - and LL have the gall to keep the monthly cost the same instead of going back to 1875 prims and limiting avatars and scripts which might be worth $50/month. The Homesteads (hate the name)with avatar and script restrictions might still be worth $75 a month but still face an eventual 67% price hike. We are not stupid !