Insilico, Landmark Second Life Location, Reportedly Closing Soon Due to Mounting Financial Losses

This is big: Insilico, the masterpiece, cyberpunk-themed Second Life location which has been among the most beautiful and popular SL destinations for over 8 years, is reportedly closing in the next few weeks:

We still have the sims until the end of their respective tiers. Central and South will be dropped on the 28th/1st, but East and South East will remain until November 17th... after which they too will go their separate ways. The Ning will hang on for a while longer after that, but for how long I cannot say as we don’t have access to the creator account. In the meantime, continue RPing and taking in the sites. Enjoy it while you can. Take pictures, tell war stories, have a party. [Click here to visit Insilico in Second Life]

So reads a new announcement on the official Insilico site. This comes roughly six months after Skills Hax, Insilico's lead creator, was temporarily banned from SL by Linden Lab. Since then, manager Abeus Madruga says, Insilico's revenue sources have been drying up to a point where they can no longer cover tier costs:

Sadly, our primary sources of income have never fully recovered. It’s not any one thing, but a combination of losses that have slowly eroded away: Malls are drying up, Skills’ Marketplace sales disappearing, fewer long term residential rentals, etc. Suffice it to say that there has been a growing short fall (even before), and up until now we’ve been making up the difference out of pocket when needed. That shortage this month will be substantial however, and unfortunately we are not in a position to keep covering the difference.

Somewhat ironically, Linden Lab has promoted Insilico in its marketing material. Ironic, because Second Life's extremely high land tier costs are now apparently making it impossible for Insilico to keep existing. One can only hope for a respite from Linden Lab -- or perhaps a rebirth in, say, Sansar.

Hat tip: /SecondLife.

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Comments

[Better then Ezra]

Old horse mouth running the lab is to blame, after three long years of undermining everything from his comments to all the different purges spanned over that time it is a wonder the grid has anyone left outside clueless consumers.

"One can only hope for a respite from Linden Lab -- or perhaps a rebirth in, say, Sansar."

Why do they deserve a respite? Did you read the comments from the other article? One of those same posters who did not get the royal treatment followed thru on what they said! Gypsy closed all 20 regions of 'Elf Circle' and IS in the process on closing down the last ten regions of 'The Fairies Circle'
two once proud fantasy communities once having over 100 regions..GONE!! And its loss will be the grids loss in the long run! so much for choosing one community or another. hows that working out Ebbe?

Why Sansar? Can you not build experiences in 'High Fidelity' without the huge overhead? And likely easier to build a 'real community' not a blue mars type experience.

Seem to me they got more chances then most while having found all the reasons(excuses) they could give themselves to close..so let it be wrritten,so shall it be done!

[Joey1058]

If Insilico were to resurrect from the ashes, it would make sense to go with Hi Fidelity. If you're on your own servers, then you can tell LL to take a flying leap. Open Sim is cool, but I equate that to using Linux over Windows. I don't have the patience to troubleshoot server issues, and I'm sure everyone would rather be inworld instead of in the guts of codes.

[JohnC]

You would think that LL would have the sense to see that they are sawing off the branch on which they sit. But unfortunately they still make big money from SL even now in it's currant depressing state. And although they have always banged on about community, all they have ever done is fleeced that community for all they have. But I know that even now there will be people who stick up for them and perpetuate the fraud. If you want an idea of how much it actually costs to set up and run a sim then take a look at even the higher prices in Open Sim, and prepare to be shocked.
But you will notice that the first people invited into Sansar are content creators, so the cycle starts again . LL charge the content creators the content creators charge the users, the users purchase space to build and must find ways to charge their users to recoup costs, when the users get tired of a place it has to close because it can no longer afford what it must pay to LL. They have no idea at all of art for arts sake, not even when it is benefiting their own product. Thousands of beautiful sims have come and gone, many would still be there if the LL money machine had not just flattened them.

[Clara Seller]

Insilico going down the drain is really just SL "failure" showing itself like a tumor the size of a watermelon. In true American fashion, let's just pretend like it never existed. We definitely shouldn't try to adjust course or anything. It would upset the system. Let's look at some more Sansar pictures and see if we can spot some people in them.

[Patchouli Woollahra]

This is terrible news. You'd think with a build like this that LL would reach out and help with upkeep, especially since this is on several LL staffers' cards.

Another key SL experience damned by balance sheet obsession. I can't be an apologist for this sort of thing, sorry. Not bleeding happening.

[JohnC]

I think it is easy to confuse HiFi and Sansar with new forms of SL or Opensim, but as far as I am aware technically they are different animals. And especially with regards to raw power needed to run complex graphics on a VR headset. So you cannot just go to HiFi and re build a huge and complex sim like Insilico, or rather you can try, but not many people would have the super computer power needed to experience it. And when you break insilico down it's not even that complex by modern game standards. I think people hoping to jump ship to Sansar or HiFi will need to take a big cut back in their expectations, at least for a year or so. What would be extremely interesting, and possibly even a game changer, is if The Moses team over in OS get their browser based viewer up and running with the same functionality as the standard SL viewers. This will mean that extremely cheap virtual land can be rented with no upload costs for anything, and most importantly it will be available on any device that can run a browser, i.e. it makes SL type experiences open to everyone with just a few clicks and no cost.

[Rin]

Insilico closing is sad news because it was a nice looking place ... but it is also not surprising in some ways. It long ago become stale. No new, up to date products, the mall was always laggy (besides malls like this having long ago started to loose out to the more frequent fairs) and no one wanting to rent there anymore it seems.
The people liked to go there for a look, but no one liked to stay and I can't see any way to recover the cost in such a situation ... unless someone with money to burn steps in to keep it up just for the pleasure to keep it.

Blaming LL is one thing (and they should be for the way they handle the costs of land and miss to keep awesome landmarks around *shakes fist*), but I have also noticed that many of the great sims of the past like Doomed Ship for example or also Insilico are not even known to people with months or sometimes years of SL life on them. Such places fall to the side and disapear when the older residents who knew and frequented those places leave or move on and not enough is done to expand the community and lure new people in.
It is easy to stay in our own little communities and miss them becoming small and obscure, not realizing that the rest of SL has moved into some other direction. Insilico might be partially a victim of this.

[Patchouli Woollahra]

@johnC: that would be an interesting possibility. if it happens, I wonder to what extent LL might be open to migrating Agni to a customised MOSES sim system that includes things only it can bring to the table.

@rin: Second Life was originally founded on the basis of "Live by the eyeball, die by the eyeball". Even after the massive changeover in basis circa 2003, this still shows up here in the end, eh?

[JohnC]

As far as older sims not being known to new users, it has always been a problem in SL. after 8 years with one sim, We were always getting people turn up who said exactly that "we have been in SL 10 years and didn't know you existed". For me that is just a problem with SL it is too big with no real organization. LL have been so good at leveling the field and taking a totally unbiased view of all content that amazing sims that would attract more users are listed along side first time user builds, so that new users are more likely to get put off the whole idea before ever seing anything to attract them to stay. And the fact that there is no way for sim owners to escape its grip, you are forever doomed to be just another SL sim, there is no feeling of ownership of what you produce, and very little if any way of advertising yourself beyond the walls of SL. Which is held in absolute contempt by the rest of the virtual world. It is an insular world. Which was great when the world was looking at it. But now it is a black hole for anyone who wishes to reach a wider audience.
As to the browser I believe it will happen if it is at all possible because it is being developed by a highly motivated, and more importantly, funded, government team. Amazingly the whole idea was unfortunately criticized by some long term OS users who for some reason saw it as an attack on their fundamental ideas about OS. An open source Virtual platform along the lines SL and OS, that is available to the whole world through a browser, even challenges the currant mega VR hype in my opinon. I guess we wait and see.

[Cathartes Aura]

Sorry to hear that Insilico is shutting down. I used to think that LL stepping in to "save" amazing builds like this was the way to go. It's what I argued for in the case of the SS Galaxy. But after seeing what LL has done with that beautiful ship I changed my mind.

I would rather see these builds go down than to see them under LL control. Look what LL has done with the Galaxy. It sits there as a ghost ship. Once so full of life and people. Now sitting empty and unused. What a waste! I would rather remember what it once was than to see it like this.

For over a decade folks who advocate for a level playing field in SL have been disrespected and their concerns poo-pooed. How's that arrogance and hubris working out for ya now, Mitch Kapor?

If you rig the economic system, Grandfathered Tier/Atlas/etc., to benefit the 1%'rs at the expense of everyone else then do not act surprised or shocked when the system collapses. Joe or Jane Average may be slow but they aren't stupid. It's called voting with your feet and intelligent residents began to do that years ago.

The idiots, Mitch Kapor being the prime example, sitting on the LL board will never admit they made moronic, short-sighted, greedhead decisions over the years that led us all to this place. They are incapable of admitting that they made bad decisions. In their thinking, if they tell us all the sky is green and the grass is blue then we are all supposed to go along with that because they know what's best for all of us. Even though we all can see with our own eyes that the sky is blue and the grass is green. We are supposed to disregard what we all see and mindlessly and blindly submit to their decisions.

The fact that Joe/Jane Average wised up about how the LL Board rigs SL in every possible way to benefit the 1%'rs absolutely burns their beans. They(the LL Board) have given all of us the finger over the last 10 years and now all that arrogance and hubris is coming back to bite them in the behind. Karma is a BITCH!

And the Turkey Buzzard goes... Hissssss ;)

[metacam oh]

some of this stuff is hilarious. So they have to pay 295 a month in tier, and keep rebuilding and keeping their content up to date, all for what? to break even? SL milks everyone dry. If it hasn't happened to you, it will eventually.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Everything has a time and a place.

Roleplay venues all end up being too much of a clique. Its human nature that the longer a place is around the harder it is to break into a community. And then over time a community will trickle down in membership. For a roleplay venue where the venue is a shared story of the members this is going to be an even harder trend to fight.

The other great value of the location was as a mall for science fiction goods. And SL's marketplace has largely supplanted the need for most malls.

They COULD have survived by running a 'monthly sci fi fashion and goods' event. Something like the Kustom9, Epiphany, Mesh-Body-Addicts, We-Love-Roleplay, and so on events... but specifically catered to sci-fi and doing regular sub-genre themes like 'This month is Cyberpunk, next month is Space Opera'...

- But that takes a VERY different kind of energy that is not as community.

[The Spam King]

@ catnap

Great to see you sharing you're thoughts with us again.while myself wholeheartedly agreeing with your analysis. Just a few extra points to add from my end here...

1. They got grandfathered pricing that was $600 monthly not $1200

2. They developed a defeatist attitude that without the founder the community would not survive.(was it really a cult of personality?)

3. Looking a gifthorse in the mouth considering the exceptions the lindens made for them.

4. Being willing to adapt they could have changed some area functions with new themes and events as you pointed out.

5. Failure of the community to make it there own(see no.2)

[Carlos Loff]

If all the stuff they have in there is build and scripted by them, is not difficult to migrate it all to Opensim

I pay 180$ for a private server and my lands are all run ancd connected by the main grid, so I don´t have to by tecky or risponsible by folks inventories - I Have 20 Var-Regions of 4X4 Sims each and 40K prims each

[JohnC]

It does not matter how cheap you make land in the desert, no one will buy it, "There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing."

[Rei]

In my experience Insilico was not the most welcoming of places. I get that the them was supposed to be a hard edged cyberpunk city, but after a couple of weeks of trying to get into some RP there, I gave up... Heck, I never was even able to rent an apartment there.

Despite that, I am sad to see it disappear. It was a good looking sim that really tried a lot of cool things. SL will never be able to simulate a city. With no NPC's to speak of and population caps of 50 people or so, you cannot simulate much more than a neighborhood bar.

[Sc]

Well now - THIS has LL written all over it.

How many different ways can those at the top of the LL food chain bury their heads in the sand?

Apparently, rather a lot.

[Aliasi Stonebender]

Eh, it's sad, but the folks crying doom and gloom - as said, no new products, a build that for many would be old laggy and impossible to navigate... these things penalize you, and SL has no pity and no nostalgia.

I'm not happy about it, but that's more because I feel this could have been avoided, not because I think Linden Lab is a bunch of greedy grubs who can't maintain their software.