Bowing to User Anger, Linden Lab Reserves Plan to Limit Group Memberships for No-Subscription Basic Accounts

If you read New World Notes reader comments over the last few days, this won't come as a surprise: Linden Lab recently reversed its plan to limit group memberships for Basic accounts:

We’ve since heard strong and convincing feedback from many in our community about the impact of changing Group Membership limits for Basic accounts. For example, many Residents have shared how they rely heavily on Groups to stay informed about new product releases as Merchants use this feature to regularly communicate news and updates to their customers, and how much Groups are used for keeping communities active. We hear your concerns and, as a result, Group Membership limits for Basic Residents will NOT be reduced as part of our Premium Membership changes rolling out on June 24. While Basic Members will continue to have an unchanged limit of 42 groups, all Premium Members will still see their limits increased from 60 to 70.

This shift clearly reflects a disconnect between how group memberships are actually used in Second Life, and Linden Lab's assumption of how they're used. As reader Susan Wilson put it:

I've done business in SL for 11 years now and have never had a premium account simply because it didn't offer anything I needed or wanted. Now I feel I'm forced to have one to get enough offline messages to serve my customers - something that does not cost LL anything. 25 was already cutting it close but limiting it to 15 would have hurt my business which is very customer service intensive. I don't feel I'm gaining anything because of this membership that I didn't have before the change so it's an added expense. 

It's not just SL merchants who complained. To judge by what Clara Seller says, there's many active users who are not Premium subscribers, but still pay quite a lot as Basic members:

I didn't grow up with alcoholic parents, but being a resident of SL for 12 years has made me feel like an adult child of an alcoholic. Up until the last service charge increase for buying Lindens, me and my husband were dropping in excess of $5000.00 per year in SL. That was primarily for land and being paid directly to Linden Lab on our bill. That petty service charge inspired us to drop premium accounts, property, and scale back our spending 50%. We're still paying LL $2500.00 a year and we just lost 7 groups each because we're not valued customers. We've never cashed a penny out because earning money in SL isn't our thing.

We know we're not special or valued. If LL hasn't been clear about that through their actions, then they have plenty of co-dependents to drive that point home in various blogs, forums, and social media. A $2500 dollar household is to be shamed, spit on, and driven into the mud.

How insane and reckless is the management of this business? God knows $2500 a year for a game shouldn't earn us a gold star or a thank-you for 12 years of loyalty, but does it really deserve a smack in the face over 7 petty groups?

There are tons of "basic" customers who outspend "premium" customers X 10 or more. LL just hocked a loogie on every one of them.

Anyone who spends $2500 a year on Second Life (i.e. over $200 a month) should be treated like royalty by the company. I'm just perplexed that there doesn't seem to be any outreach to reward users like that. Shouldn't any Basic user who, for example, buys over $50 a month in Linden Dollars, automatically get bumped up to Premium?

Comments

[Summer Haas]

"Shouldn't any Basic user who, for example, buys over $50 a month in Linden Dollars, automatically get bumped up to Premium?" -- Was this comment even thought out for 2 seconds? Most of that money goes right back to other players. It's not like LL is making $50. They may see a dollar or 2 of that total, hardly worth giving someone free premium services over. For that matter you could just buy $50 worth of Lindens and then immediately cash it out and gain premium for just a few dollars in transaction fees.

[Clara Seller]

Thanks Hamlet. There's two SL players in my household and things start adding up and go unnoticed. We, as separate players, are nothing special in SL. Right now, we are renting land and doing our own thing. We're actually on a budget and living a pretty modest SL compared to a lot of landowners and renters that I know and observe. Sometimes I think it's very easy to forget that it's the cumulative little people that do help make the world go around. When we buy play money, our RL credit and debit cards are billed to Linden Lab, not some land baron or content creator. We pay a fee to LL to buy play money on top of that.

During all of the play money merry-go-round, LL is holding all of the real cash. The cash is being supplied by everyone who has a charge on their credit card and it doesn't matter what type of member or what type of attention they get in the game. Everyone has their place, but it has to be up to LL to not let their customers get "lost", even though they may be completely invisible inworld.

[Clara Seller]

Summer Haas is making a good point about the potential to rig the system, but there's this big dismissal of a customer who is spending $50.00 freakin' dollars a month. This is a horrible perception problem. Fifty dollars is fifty dollars no matter where it gets funneled to in your business. That fifty dollars pays for the sims that hosts events, stores, rental properties, etc. That fifty dollars pays LL contractors and brokers, which is what content creators and land barons are.

It's probably not important to most $50 customers that they get a premium badge or that they impress Summer Haas, but it's a crime when LL is not impressed with a $50 dollar customer. LL is content to serve a potential $50 dollar customer an oldy-mouldy avatar with a generic last name in a world that is going to treat them as a free-loading bottom feeder. Gee, I wonder why it's so hard to get new users?

[Joey1058]

I'm going to compare this concept to paying taxes in the default world. The US is paying a buttload of taxes, ranging from a percentage at your local store, to the feds demanding their pound of flesh. If you look at LL as the government, then this is normal behavior for them. We don't get a large return for our money from the government. So is there a solution? In the default world, it's called "buy your own island". In VR, it's called OpenSim. Or to be even more specific, SoaS with hypergrid enabled. If a person is dropping $50 US a month in SL, they really should consider their options.

[wrdbrn]

My monthly massage subscription is $75. Needless to say I know that pays for more than the therapist. (just a quick compare/contrast)

[Summer Haas]

I don't understand who exactly is being dismissed? People who choose to spend $50 on virtual goods from other players are not giving that money to Linden Lab. This is like buying a $500 couch off Ebay and expecting Ebay to give you special treatment because you spent a lot on their platform. The amount of entitlement in that is ridiculous.

Not to mention that if you are regularly spending $50 on Linden Dollars to give to other players, you should really consider why you aren't premium. For $72 a year you get back $62 worth of Linden Dollars and you can buy a 1024m parcel of land somewhere and rent it out making a net profit every week. Even at the new higher annual rates, if you can rent out your 1024 parcel for 200L a week, its still profitable to have premium. But no, instead people whine and cry that they aren't getting more than they paid for, which is literally nothing as a free-to-play account.

If Linden Lab needs to put limits on free accounts, surely there are technical reasons involved, especially when you consider the amount of bots and abusive accounts on the grid. This is not Linden Lab dismissing their customers, it's them protecting the platform and ensuring it survives for their actual paying customers, which you should be if you are spending that much on other players goods every month. As I demonstrated above, you are foolish not to do so.

[Summer Haas]

Here's a breakdown for those who don't want to do the math:

Spend $50 USD a month on approximately L$12,200

Instead

Spend $41.75 USD a month on approximately L$10,100
Spend $8.25 USD a month on Premium and get L$1,300

Total spend: $50 USD, same as before.
That gets you L$11,400 which leaves you L$800 short

Now take your 1024m tier you get and buy a cheap land parcel
Rent that out for L$200 per week and you are whole, except now you get Premium as well.

If you are really smart you can scale that up with multiple premium accounts. Quit buying Lindens off the Lindex and just use the stipend you get. Then take the land you get from the 6 premium accounts and start a small rental business.

Either way, if you are spending $50 a month, quit crying about being dismissed and open your eyes to other opportunities.

[Clara Seller]

Summer has so eloquently laid out a proper plan for how to turn your entertainment into a chore.

There's a customer with fifty bucks a month to spend on your business. Call them "foolish", "whine", "cry" insinuate that they're stupid, lazy, and not an actual customer if they don't want to work the system.

Not everyone enjoys being a coupon or Groupon shopper. Their money is just as valuable. LL wouldn't need so many apologists if they would just learn how to say "Thank You".

[Karl Jacob]

I´m thinkin about going premium again, cause the group limit of 42 drives me crazy since a while, and I cannot find anything official about how many groups we can have exactly nowadays with premium. Could anybody tell me please?