Linden Lab Asks Sansar Fan Blogger to Edit "Potentially Misleading" Post About Platform's Official Ready Player One Experience

From Ryan Schultz's original reporting of the Ready Player One experience in Sansar

Remember Tuesday's story about Linden Lab partnering with Intel, Vive and Warner Brothers to launch an official VR recreation of a scene from Steven Spielberg's upcoming Ready Player One? Ryan Schultz's Sansar News Blog got the scoop for publishing the first in-person description and photos of the actual experience. For many hours or more, therefore, he had an "exclusive" on that reporting and "early access" to the experience -- wording used in his post's original title.

Linden Lab, however, wasn't happy with that wording, and asked Schultz to edit his post.

"We love it when users post screenshots from any experience that is open to the public," Linden Lab communications rep Kayla Sirkin confirms to me, "as long as there is no claim to exclusivity, early access, other potentially misleading statements, or claims that are untrue or could be construed as an official statement from Linden Lab or Sansar. Fortunately, we’ve only had one situation where this was a concern. We are pleased that we were able to resolve that issue amicably and truly appreciate the ongoing support from our communities."

In a follow-up post, Ryan himself says the resolution was amicable -- but also notes that Linden Lab CEO "Ebbe [Altberg] has apologized to me personally". The apology seems to stem from how Linden Lab first communicated their objections, leaving Schultz -- a passionate fan of Sansar -- personally hurt and offended by Linden Lab's treatment of him:

I am still very angry. I bent over backwards to accommodate Linden Lab’s requests, quickly, as soon as I received them. I feel like an idiot for letting myself get into this situation in the first place, getting all excited about some stupid movie-tie-in experience and taking photos and spending an entire evening pulling together a blogpost about it all, being excited to tell everybody about it. It got well over 1,000 views, including a sizeable number of click-throughs to the Sansar software download page.

And then to have the rug pulled out from under me yesterday was an experience I would rather not repeat. It has left a very unpleasant taste in my mouth, and I am no longer feeling quite as accommodating as I was before.

Sounds like a matter of miscommunication and misunderstanding on both sides. However, having had personal interactions with Hollywood PR, a uniquely control-freaky enterprise, my guess is Linden Lab was being extra militant about how this official VR crossover with a Warner Brothers/Spielberg movie was being covered. But whatever happened, it's definitely not a good precedent to set.

Comments

[The Coffeehouse]

He could learn much from this blog on how be open to debate, ideas and concepts while interacting with multi communities along with those project leaders.

Many things he reported on the past was just that self reporting(Cold Calling) he should consider his actions in a way that not only communicates whats going on, but motivating people to get involved in an inviting personable way.

The reality is many in the official SL Forums & Fan Sites like SLU are very annoyed with him,'his constant linkbacks with a lack of no real conversation & reply's .. Also his defensive attitude combined with what many see as a spammer approach.

His quotes in his blog of peoples forum comments without consultation might have hurt some goodwill towards him, combined with his outsider approach were he seems to forget how to just chat and be part of a community,

Basically people in the SL Forums, Sansar Forums, SLU Forums & High Fidelity Forums mostly dismiss anything he says, not so much because the message, but because of the messager.

My advice is be a resident first, share your experiences without it coming across everytime as an agenda, otherwise people will feel your only their to manipulate and use them.

Also a monthly review post of events that happened on each platform is much better then everytime a pin drops in Sansar it needs to be reported,

Not every blogger is equal, in a way he does more harm then good for himself and the news he reports..hopefully in his return "from break" he considers a different approach.

Him taking a 'break'(responsibility) for his own actions means he is the only one able to improve(Fix) himself.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Because hey, when your product(Sansar) is a dud, double down on stupid and go after your customers.

Then again, anyone that falls for "democratizing VR" when game engines have been doing that all along has already been victimized once.

[Clara Seller]

Is this about selling something good or is this about an opportunity to sell anything to get two minutes of fame? Only the salesmen can answer that question.

It's kind of a timely story with today's pictures of Hollywood's victims in black.

Are we victims or participants? Will we be free when when stop all of the bad ones from using us or when we get the courage and integrity to walk away from being used? The game is over when everyone stops playing.

[A blog reader]

I've read through his entire "woe is me" post and all I've been left with is a belief that he needs to do some growing up.
This is how Linden Lab treats people. The kind of reaction he displayed is honestly kind of comedic, it reads like a blog post ragequit.

Furthermore, his attempts at blackmailing(lite) LL by threatening to rename the blog and start covering other virtual worlds will be futile, I can guarantee that. It reminds me of the way my teenage children behave when they don't get their way.

Maybe he can think long and hard about his behavior during the break he's taking, and learn some social cues as well. As another poster pointed out, this guy has a pretty bad reputation due to his constant self promotion and air of self importance (seriously, nobody wants to wear a t-shirt with your Real life face on it)

[Ryan Schultz]

The only thing I am guilty of here is being overzealous in cross-posting blogposts from the Sansar Newsblog to places like the Sansar forum on SLUniverse and the Sansar for Second Life Users forum on the official SL user forums. I have received negative feedback on that, and I have accepted the criticism as valid. I have since pulled back from cross-posting in places where it is not appreciated.

As a new blogger (less than six months) I am still getting my bearings, please bear with me as I work my way up the learning curve and figure out what works and what doesn't.

Kayla and Jenn have been professional, friendly, and proactive in dealing with the situation I created, and I still have a lot of love and respect for Linden Lab. Ebbe Altberg did not have to apologize to me personally yesterday evening, but he did and I do appreciate it.

Also, I make every effort to obtain permission from people *before* I quote them directly on the Sansar Newsblog. I apologize to anybody whom I may have quoted in the past without asking permission first.

I take full responsibility for my role in this. Frankly, I'm tired after all this and I will be taking a break from blogging, until Linden Lab issues their new brand guidelines for the Sansar product. There's really no point in continuing to blog if I will be forced to rebrand.

[Ryan Schultz]

And if you don't like the T-shirt, hey, don't buy it! Simple.

[Wagner J Au]

Ryan, I read your original post -- there was nothing in it that could be misconstrued as an official statement from Linden Lab. And you did have the exclusive on the RP1 story when it was published. Maybe the language could be more precise, but it's odd for a company to reach out to its platform's first fan blog to request edits.

Fun fact (possibly relevant): I once wrote a satire for Salon about Julia Roberts being a fan of Halo, and even though it was clearly labeled as satire, within hours a Hollywood publicist who was not even Julia Roberts' publicist called me up threatening to ruin my career over it. Hollywood, man.

[Ryan Schultz]

Oh, wow, Wagner, that's INSANE.

You must have some interesting Hollywood stories to tell...

[perry]

SL and Sansar are just inviting people to swim with lawyers/sharks who will bite you at every opportunity.

They should just rename their VRs 'Lawyer Land'.

[Amanda]

Lawyers ruin everything they touch.