Sansar to Close Sandex, Move Platform to Steam in Search of VR Users

Well this is quite a virtual shoe to drop -- the end of Sansar's virtual currency to US$ exchange (called the Sandex), and a transition to  publishing the social VR platform on Steam:

The cornerstone of our growth effort will be to put Sansar on Steam. Steam is where more than half of the VR market goes to find software. It also is a huge pool of users who are interested in our space and are likely to have the hardware required to run Sansar. We anticipate being able to get onto Steam by the end of this year... n order to do this, we are obligated to make significant changes to how Sansar works, especially in how the Sansar Dollar and process credit system work. These changes, will also make the credit process for Creators far more consistent and predictable. The first change is that we will be discontinuing the Sandex as of December 4, 2018.

Sometimes I feel like Linden Lab's strategy is to do the direct opposite of what New World Notes just reported, because as I posted yesterday, Oculus and Vive usage appears to be flat or declining on Steam. And also, early this year: That only twelve of all the thousands of compatible games have attracted meaningful sales on Steam. And that when it comes to social VR on Steam, only VRChat has a (relatively) large user base, with the rest struggling with concurrencies in the two to three figures. But all that to one side, you can't blame Linden Lab for making what seems to be a hail Mary pass in the face of low user numbers.

Then again -- and this was years before Ebbe Altberg became CEO, and I'm not sure any executive from 2012 is still there, to tell him -- Linden Lab unsuccessfully attempted a similar strategy with Second Life: 

Announcing plans to publish SL to Steam in 2012, a plan that fell through the next year due to unspecified "complications". (Quite possibly due to Steam's stringent regulation against Adult content at the time, a policy that's been greatly relaxed as of last month.)

Ultimately Linden Lab is right that the core userbase that is able to meet Sansar's high hardware requirements is almost completely on Steam, so it makes sense to go after them there. And if Linden Lab can market Sansar as, say, "like VRChat but far better", they may have some chance at success. The real challenge, probably, is convincing developers who've committed to developing and selling their content on Sansar to deal with Steam, instead. (And Steam can be a harsh taskmaster.)

Hat tip: Ryan Schultz.

Comments

[Luther Weymann]

Hey, come on guys. Look at Linden's history, it's simply awful. How many times during the history of SL did Linden upgrade the builder’s tools set to something wonderful that encourages the core content creators in SL? Never? How about that huge enhancement to LSL, did that happen? What about land prices and number of prims, that could keep more residents to stay. Nope, too little too late. And now Sansar with no path from SL to Sansar. SL has had at least forty million people register and most have left but did Linden Research put their money into a Sansar upgrade of SL in order to attract those forty million to give it another try. Nope. In the history of Silicon Valley/Bay Area software companies, these type of decisions is notorious for how stupidly bad they are. You simply cannot do business like this and now Linden Research may eventually have a total loss with Sansar, because for almost twenty years it has been one poor decision after another, and each one followed the same path, which is "we know better than our customers". That's what they have bet the farm on, that they know better than their user base, and they came to that conclusion by not really using their own product. Go figure.

[Chic Aeon]

This has of course been a very hot topic with just enough info for most everyone to be very confused :D.

I mentioned the SL on STEAM debacle and was assured by an official folk that they had learned their lesson and had been talking to Valve a lot on this (have no idea what that really means but ).

Also official they will only be using the Steam Wallet so that folks with Steam credits can buy things on the STORE easily. The cashing out of money will still be via Sansar; the STORE will work as normal.

Some fees are going away. Conversion rate is changing. Some folks will get a grandfathered (better) conversion rate.

It was a shock for most but when ALL the information is dispensed it may not be as big a deal as it seemed. Anyone that wants to keep abreast can to to the Friday Project Meeting or watch on Twitch OR hopefully Inara will have written notes (always nicer for me).

From what I have seen on DISCORD most creators are in a wait and see mode while we shuffle though the information and dis-information and find out what is really going on.

See the DISCORD channel (sansar) for all that has been talked about.

[Chic Aeon]

ALSO there was a much longer explanation (than the email) on the website and on Discord.

There was no mention of HAVING to login via STEAM (that may or may not be the case).

As a "reporter" it is always good to INVESTIGATE BEFORE POSTING which of course you seldom do LOL. So perhaps, on the off chance that you want to be more credible, you might actually ATTEND that meeting and give us some first hand insights on the subject.

Just sayin'.

[Jipsy Jupsy]

Sansar is garbage, when video games flop one of the last attempts of a company is to put it on a game platform hoping to get some visitors, still the product is garbage and steam users are not stupid. You have to be an complete fool to invest time or resources in Sansar.

[LinuxGamer]

Valve debuted 'Proton' it's Windows application layer just recently. Search on Youtube 'Steam Proton' and you'll find linux users running windows only games. This means Sansar has a good chance it will now run in Linux. Valve is also working on supporting VR on Linux. I think this is important enough to be included with articles reporting Sansar on Steam but so far it hasn't been mentioned. Proton is in Beta but I think it's worth mentioning because it changes the game as far as gaming in Linux is concerned.

[Clara Seller]

Well, LL is trying every trap and snare they can think of to get bodies into their creation, even when people will chew their limbs off to avoid it.

As Luther Weymann pointed out, everyone had to pay a very high price for this narcissistic "content creators are king" kingdom. How much do you want to bet that the final narrative will be an attempt to blame this failure on everyone except the people who created it?

This whole Sansar project would make a great Twilight Zone episode featuring the Linden book of "To Serve Customers". I can see poor little Patty Resident waving her mesh attachments and screaming from her broken mesh head "Don't get on that ship...To Serve Customers...it's a cookbook!".

[Formerly known as BTE]

lol lmao Clara i can see ebbe as that big headed alien on the ship:)

[Susan]

Anyone who has a VR Headset knows about Sansar already. There just aren't that many VR platforms out there and if you've invested the money in the gear you already know about them all.

Steam isn't going to get new VR users into Sansar because Steam is for gamers. There is nothing in Sansar that compares with a real game. Steamers are going to chew this up and spit it out. Sansar is not a game and it's not even a very good virtual world and it's way too unfinished for Steam no matter how they position themselves.

Sansar seems to be deliberately avoiding it's biggest opportunity. Instead of trying to be a gaming platform dependent on users to create games for them or a weird virtual museum with very limited interaction, they should have concentrated on what you can BE in Sansar. This is what other games lack - character customization in most games is nothing like it can be in a virtual world. But the limitations on the avatars in Sansar is a joke. A real game can get away with that because it has other things going for it, but not a virtual world.

Sansar is a beautiful world with a lot of potential, more than the other virtual worlds, in my opinion, but they seem determined to make it something it just will never be and they are shooting themselves in the foot.

This Steam move smacks of corporate theatre - they are doing "something" about the problem - it won't work but they have to do something. I wonder how many lost their jobs over the closing of the Sandex? That would save them some money - see, that's "something" too! And they are getting more for a sand dollar or whatever they call it - that's also "something". I was once very hyped up on Sansar but I have to admit, I've lost hope.

[vwfan]

It will be interesting to see what the Steam reviews say about Sansar. Linden Lab does have a discontinued pay-for game listed on Steam called Patterns and the reviews are very negative. That doesn't help Linden Lab much since some Steamers do research, but I assume Sansar will be free for starters so we'll see. Although, I have to agree with Susan's and Luther's thoughts.