Private Second Life Sims Fall Below 16K For First Time in a Decade -- But Overall Sim Loss Greatly Slows

Very interesting new report from Tyche Shepherd, a senior statistician for a renowned multinational corporation who tracks Second Life economic activity for fun here.

"Private [SL] estates now number 15,980 -- first fall below 16,000 in 10 years," she reports. Seeing as private estate sims make up the vast majority of Linden Lab's revenue from Second Life, this is definitely big news. This drop is due, she adds, to 40 sims disappearing from Second Life in the second week of May -- the largest drop this year:

Among those 40 gone are RL education-themed sims like LMU Engineering Island and Loyola University Maryland. Tyche adds: "Some of the loss is down to the 15 or so Fantasy Faire regions leaving as well as a couple of Relay for Life ones so these were expected. Other losses included 5 1920's New York regions and a couple of Gor themed estates." (We know about Gor roleplay in Second Life-- but apparently there was Prohibition-era gangster roleplay too?)

"A loss of 40 is actually one of the smaller 'big' losses over history," Tyche tells me. "It's enough for a couple of smaller multi-region owners to shut up shop to cause this. It isn't a jump in losses - just a one-off high weekly loss in line with ones we've seen in past years, just part of the current natural decline . If its sustained over several week's then it will be a jump."

There's an upside to all this, however, and it's just as interesting: While total sims keep dropping off the grid, they're falling away at a greatly reduced rate:

Teach, Tyche: "Current net losses [for 2018] stand at 126 regions (0.8% down ). My gut feel is that we'll see around a 2.5% loss by the end of the year (~400 regions )."

That would be much less than last year: "2017 was a 4% loss for the year."

And in the previous years: "2016 is 5.6%. 2014, 4.4%." (See charts above and below.)

So overall sim loss has more or less slowed to a trickle. It's inevitable to see some sims going away every year, if only because their owners retire in real life and can no longer afford them, or literally pass away. But this greatly reduced attrition suggests that the virtual world economy as a whole is more or less stable, and has several years of relatively healthy life in it, at least.

Comments

[Clara Seller]

This is a shame because there's a ton of good ideas and a willing crowd to help change this trajectory, even within the walls of LL itself.

It may never stroke the egos of those at the top, but driving it off a cliff blindfolded is just mind-boggling.

[Carlos Loff]

Where are the good news ?

Im trying to open a Photography School on SL, people just need to help my crowd fund with 10$ and I will open a real life Photo weekly classes - Please be so kind to let me share the link, thanks in advance, let´s keep it up and evolve SL - https://gogetfunding.com/photography-school-gallery-in-real-time-virtual-world/

[Adeon Writer]

Always prefer to see these with mainland included. LL is really pushing mainland lately, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the losses are just shifting there since it can be a better/cheaper deal for non-full sim owners.

[Lestat]

sims are just to expensive a full sim depending who you rent from by the end of the month will almost run full real life rent in some places

[E]

Full regions are $295 USD a month. That means you either have a lot of disposable income on you, or you are one of the rarer ones who manages to make it up with group joins or stores.

The one thing I'll never understand, however, is the lack of support for educational institutions within second life.

[Kouki Elska]

My last home cost USD$250/mo, making the monthly cost of a sim more expensive than my monthly essential living cost and food stamps combined.
Even with my current home rent being higher $330, it's way too crazy for me to even imagine paying for a sim.

I remember years ago I met a disabled guy who lived in a trailer because he was apparently using his social security monthly living cost on his sim. So sad.

Social security gave him only about 1000 monthly.
I'm getting $735 monthly, and already can't afford much non-essential things... so I can imagine he must have given up a ton irl for a sim.

For myself I am satisfied with just my $5 parcel on mainland.

[Ricco Saenz]

Are you serious that you didn't know about NY 1920s? If not, I'd recommend you to search for pictures of it - there are many in Flickr.

[Granger]

Optimism is useful when warranted... misleading when it's not based on reality. It is difficult to look at the trendline of that graph and find anything of positive validity. SL dropping "only" 2% as compared with a prior 4+% is putting icing on a mud cake. The reality is it is still dropping.

When we drop the optimism, a more productive and realistic route is to try to figure out WHY it is still dropping. That trendline is still significantly downward and all the optimism in the world isn't going to change that. So we do well to address the issues rather than say, "Well, it's not as bad as it could be..."

Staring the problems in the face:
* People are realizing it's some kind of idiotic to pay such excessive fees for virtual ground. Are they excessive? Yes... absurdly so. LL net profits measure in the $millions per month.)

* The system has an extremely high learning curve on viewers that are poorly designed, difficult to use and regularly malfunction.

* Despite a decade and a half of operation the reality still exists that even simple things still malfunction: simple text-based group chat still doesn't work properly, group notices don't get to everyone, 2D textures still don't load correctly, mesh malfunctions regularly, etc etc.

* SL still has arbitrary limitations on prim count, link limits and region backup that does not exist on other grids. They still have not enabled regions larger than 256m. The lag of region crossing is still unbelievable. People still crash regularly.

This is the extremely short list of extremely major issues with SL. Maybe the reason private regions have dropped below 16,000 is the simple fact that SL users are getting smarter-- and realizing that a piece of pixelized ground isn't worth the price of leasing a new car. Maybe they're getting tired of LL putting a new coat of paint on a rustbucket that misses on half its cylinders.

The above is by no means pessimistic or negative. It is a *realistic* statement of grid affairs. After all this time it would seem the only thing Linden Lab has learned from its many experiences... is how to deposit money in the bank. As long as they continue to do so these problems will still exist... and we can expect region counts to keep dropping. Not that it matters to the company; how long can they exist on a 2% drop and still be happily profitable? At $300 a sim... I'm guessing quite a while. As far as LL is concerned, they're making ungodly amounts of money. 40 regions is a drop in the bucket. Why be concerned about user experience? "So long as the dummies keep paying us, we'll keep taking their money."

The reason for the declining trendline seem pretty obvious.