Linden Lab Attempts to Cut Second Life Land Loss By Significantly Cutting Setup Fees (But Not Monthly Tiers)

SL region loss from 2008 to now via Metaverse Business

Just announced by Linden Lab:

"Effective immediately, all new Private Island set-up fees are up to 40% cheaper... Here are the new, reduced set-up fees:

• Full Private Island - previously $1000, now $600
• Developed Full Private Island - previously $1029, now $629
• Homestead Private Island - previously $375, now $225
• Developed Homestead Private Island - previously $395, now $250
• Openspace Private Island - previously $250, now $150"

They're also allowing transfer of Grandfathered Full Private Island regions ($195/month) and Grandfathered Homestead Private Island regions ($95/month) to new owners without losing the discounted pricing. Taken together, the two moves seem pretty clearly aimed at stopping the loss of private Second Life sims, which have fallen below 2008 rates and continue sliding downward. (See above.) However, the lack of monthly sim maintenance fees have not changed, so I doubt this move is aimed at encouraging new landowners:

Rather, the setup fees are likely to appeal to existing land owners/land barons who already have an audience and customer base, and are fairly confident they can earn revenue from new sims. I'm skeptical Linden Lab will find many of them willing to try that, but maybe I'm wrong -- will check back in a few months.

Considered next to Project Sansar's upcoming launch, the moves seem to say a single thing: Keep Second Life revenue coming in at a steady trickle so we can still launch Sansar and keep it going for a few years. And if so, who can blame them?

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Comments

[Resident]

LOL bunch of weaklings. They are sweating in their basement in Battery Street now.

It hurts doesn't it Lindens just like you did hurt your userbase.

Keep dumping, no mercy.

Anshe Chung is selling Homestead sims for 5000 Linden per week which is 85 US$ a month. She must be paying 75 US$, you know the 75 US$ everybody used to pay before the Homestead debacle for which Linden said they could not sustain that price.

But for Anshe Chung they can sustain that price to make her the monster estate she is with her 3000 sims.

I think Ebbe and the Lindens figured out there are no millions standing outside waiting to get into Sansar and now they are in panic mode.

Their friends with all their sims cannot keep the land anymore and need to unload, now suddenly Linden allows transfer of grandfathered regions so their friends can unload their stock without taking a big financial hit.

[Titanic]

What did I say about Ebbe the Skipper and his sailing capabilities.

Let me quote myself:

"Ebbe will sail the ship alright, right to the bottom of the ocean"

I wrote this on this very blog more than a year ago.

Look it's Nemo and his friends.

[Cube Republic]

Technically if the sky has already fallen it would have returned to a liquid so we've all been at the bottom of the ocean for a long time if that makes sense.

[Wupsie]

I dunno, looks like a move from Linden to allow their friends sell off their old sims to the unknowing customers so that their friends have fresh money available to invest in Linden Lab their new Scamsar sheme.

When Linden starts to flip prices on land you know someone will get screwed.

[Cube Republic]

As much as I love SL, it does seem a bit shady. What are the statistics of the number of GFR?

[Wupsie]

It doesn't only seem shady IT IS SHADY

There are a couple of Linden friends such as Zoha, ACS, RGF, Kristaki Hudson, Dreamseeker, Weazle and a couple of others who are Linden their special friends.

These special friends own over 10000 private sims combined, all their sims have been grandfathered under the table out of sight of normal customers.

That means of these 18000 private sims over 10000 have been secretly grandfathered by Linden Lab. Did you know the original amount of grandfathered regions dating from earlier was only a couple of 1000 at most.

Now add with these 10000 regions also the educator and non profit regions. There are thousands of them.

You get to 12000 + private sims which receive 50% edu discount or 30% and higher secret tier deals.

Everybody else gets cheated by poppa Linden and charged big fat tier.

Now it gets even more nasty.......

Over the years Linden their friends used to charge 320 US$ a month to rent out full sims, just above the 295 US$ that Linden Lab charges directly, but low enough to undercut anyone else who did look to rent out land such as Roleplay groups or communities or smaller estates (that is why these places had a hard time to survive and places like Steelhead had to close, they cannot rent out as they cannot offer competitive rates).

Now because of the decline caused by CEO Altberg his stunt, Linden their friends who receive the huge discounts cannot even rent out at 320 US$ per sim, they need to go much lower now in the area of 250 US$ per month for a sim or even lower in order to rent out a sim.

To give you an example Anshe Chung is now renting out full sims for 200 US$ a month and Homesteads for 85 US$ a month to avoid going under.

Now Linden Lab does not have to fear customers would leave the rentals of their friends in droves because Linden Lab lowers the setup fees for a sim (this happenened in the past when Rod Humble waved setup fees for a weekend).

Now the rental rates by their friends are already so low it makes no sense for a renter to pay 600 US$ for a sim to Linden because he can already profit more thanks to the extreme low tier that is being offered by Linden Lab their friends who receive their huge reductions in tier.

This is just a move to squeeze some extra cash from people by increasing the sim transfer fee by a massive amount with the excuse of grandfathered tier transfer. Instead of 100 US$ transfer it is 600 US$ transfer.

I think they are preparing the tar and feathers for CEO Altberg when the Linden Lab board will see their income statement.

[cyberserenity]

Hypergrid? LOL.

[Humperton DiAngelo]

Well I must say I feel sorry for the dogs at Linden Lab. I do not mean the staff but the actual dogs at Linden Lab as these will become the first victim of Linden Lab their reduced profits income.

Giving up their favorite doggy biscuits as Governor Linden needs to tighten the belt will sure be hard on those puppies.

[zz bottom]

Again a muddy move from the lab towards its customers.

[irihapeti]

a company announces that they reducing prices for their customers

and then some people go: maaaaan !!! what a rip off !!!

lol jejeejeje (:

[Carlos Loff]

An Opensim region is 15/month with no Setup fees and NO LAG and those grids are small business, this land price costs are ridiculous, they wont make any difference and are still a robbery given the competition

[Shockwave Yareach]

Too little too late

Sl land is way way too expense. Period! And the people willing to pay so much just to play make believe have already been shafted by LL.

You can save things by cutting the monthly land cost in half just like you do for project atlas folks. Then offer a homecoming program where people who have lost islands can get them back without another setup fee- just start paying the new monthly price and welcome back.

I currently pay 50$ a month to be Inworld. While my mazes need more space, I'm not interested in going back to paying a couple of grand a year for the space I need just to have LL take it away from me because of a renter there ( which I was pointedly told was permitted, up to the minute I was told it wasn't). I already spend 600 a year for my tiny parcel. For that much money I can have lots more fun outside SL.

So if you want to get real, you have to deal with the real fact that you get little bang for the buck in SL compared to other things. LL cannot make things better. So lowering the price is the only arrow left in their quiver

[The days and nights are long]

If it's part of more changes to come by the Lab then I applaud the effort . No matter what some say & think Ebbe has done more good then the last 3 CEO's combined .

With grandfathered regions when I first see it though 'oh my god ' this is a chance to reopen my family RP sim but with $600 set-up fee & other costs you would be in the same hole at least two years & by the time you start saving money project Sansar will be open with a Carret dangling everyone to try it .

Sociel griefing is far more destructive then tier . I think money is just the tip of the hat . you still have griefers around the grid that go unchecked while wreaking other peoples live through self - important agendas with self-made rules that if anyone dares to cross them they will find out the Hardway having just crossed the eyes of madness .

Example of a recent statement of self-agenda trolling...
Adeon Writer-
"I get what you're saying. I've reported a ton of random child avatars in 8 years of SL. Yes, you report silently, don't talk to them, and wait for LL to take action.they don't belong here"

[The days and nights are long]

@ Resident
"Anshe Chung is selling Homestead sims for 5000 Linden per week"

It's a bait & switch . you have to read the tiny disclaimer that's written stating up to 4 weeks then a return to $7000L weekly .

Just another effort to hurt smaller estates & role play groups.

[metacam oh]

Set up fees? What's to set up? Please let me pay you $600 for the privilege of paying you $295 a month for 1/8th of a servers resources.

[Eddi Haskell]

The cost of Second Life "land", which when you come right down to it is data storage, has not declined in 10 years. Yet, the cost of data storage has declined by a factor of at least 8 in 10 years for online data storage. Linden Lab should have offered more prims per parcel in these 10 years to keep up with actual data storage costs. This would cost them virtually nothing. I still pay the same amount of tier I paid from my home parcel for 8 years -- and still can only put out on the same amount of prims or data per parcel. There is no other business that could stay in business by following this same model. I would be happy if I could put out more "stuff" in my skybox-- and cannot figure out why Linden Lab never has changed their data model in a decade.

[Tamar Luminos]

It's a step in the right direction, but it's not enough. The set-up fee and tier are still ridiculously overpriced and as long as they stay that way, I imagine more and more people will be ditching land rental and ownership. It's almost a crime that they haven't lowered land costs before now with competition creeping (admittedly, slowly) up on them and now with them moving on to their newer platform (Sansar). I can only hope they're planning to drop land costs again, drastically, when Sansar comes out to try to retain players, but there is a fear that they'll leave SL's jacked up land prices in place to milk the loyal players there to shore up Sansar if it doesn't bring in the revenue they hope it will.

[Humperton DiAngelo]

It looks like a trap. In a month they will be opening Sansar where they did promiss cheap land and free land for everyone.

A sim transfer fee of 600 US$ to adjust a name on a file. It is pure robbery.

Do not forget Linden sells sims to educators for only 150 US$ per month. Do you think little Linden Lab is not making money on educators? They are sure banking a lot of profit on educators.

It costs less than 10 US$ to them to run a sim per month, they have thousands of people who pay them 30 times that cost. That is a profit margin of 3000%

Remember when both Kingdon and Humble said how Linden Lab was comfortably profitable?

I suspect Linden their large customers cannot maintain the thousands of regions they have and are about to get rid of them in batches. So instead of Linden taking the loss they pretend being generous to the average customer which they have been exploiting for years now.

Just think about the following situation:

You have been a Linden Lab customer for many years where you own a full sim which you bought for 1675 US$ in 2008 and have been paying 295 US$ tier on all these years.

Now Linden Lab would offer you the privilege of you dumping that sim and then going on the market to look for another sim that is grandfathered. Then you would need to buy that sim from another resident for 300 US$ and pay a 600 US$ transfer fee, so another 1000 US$ investment so you would be able to pay 100 US$ less in tier per month.

Geez they sure know how to appreciate their customers at Linden don't they. And all this while they are openening their latest sheme in the next month.

Ebbe Altberg I know you are reading this. Do you already have a Wikipedia page Ebbe? You know the CEO that destroyed Second Life should have their own page on Wikipedia so you can be remembered for your legacy.

[Iggy]

Another finger stuck in hole. Water continues to pour in. Little Dutch Boy needs more fingers. I showed LL one of my fingers a long time ago.

It's the flipping TIER, but LL just does not get that, do they?

[irihapeti]

@Eddi

since the change to Land Impact (LI) the parcel prim allowance has been increased by upto double the old prim parcel allowance

set the prims to type Convex Hull rather than Prim when linking to make a build. 2 linked Convex Hulls (2 standard box prims) = 1 LI

for example I made a house using 83 standard prims. By converting them to Convex Hull then the parcel Land Impact (LI) is 44 prims. Which on a 117 prim allowance parcel is pretty good savings

is some gotchas with using type Convex Hull. Some main ones are:

- with sculpt maps then best leave them as Prim type for 1 LI. Or the LI will blow up (in the same way mesh can when the shape is complex)

- if using cut and/or hollow prims in the build and need to move avatar into the hollow/cut part (a L-shape wall for example cut out of a cube) then dont use Convex Hull for that. Set to Prim type for 1 LI. With Convex Hull the physics shape of the prim follows the volume outline of the basic prim, not the cut/hollow outline like Prim type does

- be careful using torus prims and Convex Hull. They can blow up the LI sometimes as well when linked. So I tend to set them to Prim type as well for 1 LI each

+

building with prims and sculpts old school style is pretty good these days prim allowance-wise compared to how it used to be before LI

can stuff anywhere from 0x to 2x as much stuff on a parcel now these days

[24 hr lock smith]

do the sports

[Count Burks Estates]

Interesting information about the Land market in Second Life. The top of the Land and Real Estate market will always dominate in my view.

[Kitten Mew MEw]

Honestly I would happily take another "Full Region" but the thing is honestly " I am not willing to pay $1200 for a region, because IMO this is just too expensive...

The setup fee should not be more than $100
Regions should cost only $195 Monthly

I am not interested in paying Buy Down Fee or $600 fee I already Own a Full Region from many years ago, but wish to acquire a few to bring some new RP community into SL however I am not going to spend $1200 to do it (When I am not going to be making money off it or back from it.)

Also I will not rent regions from the other scamming land owners who charge $40+ over the fees for renting a sim just for estate rights because I looked into this option for my friends I told them (Don't rent from them" they barely rent 1/2 of a region at $130ish a month.

Should Linden Lab decrease these fees I would be happy to buy one but not willing to pay the insane setup fees or such when (Linden Lab) likely has regions going offline since a lot of sims are being sold / lost, and they could simply set one of those to me and start billing me the monthly fee (For those who don't know God Tools) easily change Region Names, and can easily change who owns a region there is really (NO WORK) being done and Lindens profit big times.

[stephanie]

I agree with kitten mew mew, if they would put it that much cheaper they would have alot more sales and alot more land then they have now