With Support for Ozimals' Virtual Animals Gone from Second Life, Impact to Greater SL Economy Likely to Be Massive for Users & Linden Lab

Update to yesterday's announcement that Ozimals, an extremely popular brand of adorable virtual bunnies and other pets for Second Life (once partnered with Linden Lab itself), is about to go defunct due to a real life cease and desist order:

The announcement itself is now also defunct.

The Ozimals official company page is already down (that's what it looks like now, above), as is its Flickr page, as are its official locations in Second Life. (I can no longer find any listed in-world, at least.) The brand's owner, known as Malkavyn Eldritch, also seems to be gone. Before wiping all support for his animals from Second Life, Mr. Eldritch reportedly offered a magic "Everlasting" timepiece which would prevent these pets from going into a permanent coma. Owners who didn't get that timepiece in time, however, are not only in for some virtual tragedy, but left stuck with lots of virtual goods they spent many real life dollars (sometimes in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars) that are now useless. "I bought bunnies, I bought food, now I have hundreds of useless items that I would not have invested," complains one owner in the SL Universe discussion forum.

There's a lot about this story to unpack, but one major implication is the massive impact the end of Ozimals is likely to have on the Second Life economy as a whole -- and on Linden Lab as a company:

"So, one of the longtime reasons a lot of folks rented land is being closed," as SLer Nan points out in the SL user forum. "Just what SL needs now is a bunch of heartbroken people leaving because their pets are not breedables anymore."

She's not kidding: Back in 2011, I interviewed the then-owners of Ozimals and they shared some incredible stats:

• Ozimals currently has 1000s of customers in SL.
• At one point, Ozimals had over ten thousand customers in SL.
• Ozimals, the Alabama-based company, has nearly 30 employees (mostly part-time) who are paid wages in US dollars. (Employees also get, of course, virtual bunny fringe benefits.)

Those numbers have probably decreased since 2011, but this still suggests the company was making annual revenue in the six figure range. And Linden Lab now faces the danger of thousands of customers with much less reason to keep paying monthly virtual land tier. SL landowners are already giving up their plots at a rapid rate, and can't afford to lose any more of its core revenue source. But we'll sadly soon see how much Linden Lab suffers from the silence of the bunnies.

Comments

[Savannah Edge]

I know I used my free LL homes for breeding and others used small plots for breeding. Those will no longer be needed.

[Patchouli Woollahra]

A pointed and brutal reminder that When one is deprived of long persisting causes, SL Land Ownership ceases to have urgency or importance for them. Unless Linden Lab figures out how to put in a new money and/or land sink to replace that lost by the end of Ozimals, we could be looking at a sharp plunge on the map.

[sirhc deSantis]

Interesting and would love to see this in depth but yeah I know - legal stuff so never really will, let alone any concrete numbers. Thing is, not the only breedable in SL )or even in OS) by a long chalk and nary a day goes by when there isn't some new one or people in groups asking for 'help' in a new project (though I guess the pets category is a little different). People I have done the odd bit of work for have other erm 'livestock' but not bunnies.

[Carlos Loff]

The most magical aspect of Virtual Worlds was here the most harmfull - Sinergy - When 2+2=5 - One guy is just good in designing planes, one girl is just good in scrpting flight engines, a third guy provides affordable mall stores and sudently some fine flying planes show up for sale thanks to all 3 residents, now a 4th guy buys them and organises some plane races and many folks have fun on an rented airfield Sim - The whole economy and entertainment flourishes like in RL because many people bring original new stuff that can be gathered, improved and have new uses - On what I understand this Ozimals colapse would not happen if everyting was coming from one solo creator, but anyway it is still Sinergy that makes VWs more magic than anything else on the web

[creator]

There has been a posted rebuttal to the Ozimals's blog post. Reading through this, it certainly seems like they (Ozimals) brought about their own demise by terrible management and decision making.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-_7k-VigxufaTM5b18yVXpvZU0/view

[Summer Haas]

Was there really that many people still breeding on such a large scale that any land loss would be noticeable? I find that really hard to believe. What I do find believable though is that it seems the original owners of Ozimals we're very irresponsible and greedy.

[Abe]

Good. That breedable stuff caused so many issues when neighbor parcels all were using them.

[Bixyl Shuftan]

Some good news. Even if a bunny owner doesn't get the news until after hibernation, they can still save their pets. The package provided with the timepiece and other items was copy-transferable. You can get one by asking someone who already has a copy, such as the bunny fans in the "For The Love of Oz" group. I also have a crate of the items you can get a copy of at HV Community (135/85/25).

[Mike Kalber]

Did Ozimals ever get new owners since 2011? I didn't know that. I've always thought that Malkavyn and Aeron was the same person behind those avatars, and Aeron was just the "creator account". Him and "Candy" were the heads of the company since 2009, atleast that's what i was thinking all the time.
Did we (or i) miss something?