Linden Lab CEO Confirms New Round of Layoffs; Cuts Include Kona Linden, Company's Last Link to Second Life's Glory Days - UPDATE, Linden Lab Publicly Addresses Layoffs, Claims They Won't Negatively Impact Second Life

Pictured:  With Kona Gurion & his dog Moxie at Linden Lab in 2008; inset, Discord announcement from Linden's current CEO from yesterday 

Update, 2/13: On its official blog, Linden Lab finally acknowledged the layoffs, claims they won't negatively impact SL, and suggests there was some recent notable hires of past Linden staff to help:

[W]e had to say goodbye to a few employees, but at the same time we also strengthened our team by bringing back some heavy hitters who will help make Second Life better than ever. 

So, Second Life is still here and still strong. We’re continuing to invest in its future and you’ll see the results of our commitment this year as we roll out a new mobile companion app, new Linden Home themes, performance and usability improvements, and a number of other new features and enhancements. The ability to change names will be available in the next few weeks, too. 

Original post below:

Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg yesterday posted on the official Discord channel for Sansar, the company's new social platform, confirming reports (from virtual world blogger Ryan Schultz) of a new round of layoffs, but denying rumors that Sansar itself was closing:

So, I’m only going to say this tonight as it’s late. We can pick up the conversation in the following days. Yes, there were layoffs today. A truly wonderful group of people. But as you can see Sansar is up and running. We are still in discussion about next steps. Including with the wonderful group of people. More to come. Don’t give up yet. Go create and have fun. Not much point in speculating until we can tell you more.

Among the layoffs, I am sad to personally confirm, is Kona Gurion (Kona Linden in SL), who was a member of Linden Lab's QA team for Second Life for 16 years. I knew him even before that, during my own time as Linden Lab's embedded reporter in SL, when Kona was among Second Life's first talented, passionate early adopters. With his layoff, Linden Lab loses its last known link to Second Life during its founding, and glory days of 2006-2008.

This new round of layoffs comes only 3 months after another round of Sansar-related layoffs, when the platform was reportedly operating with just a skeleton crew.  

I have reached out to Linden Lab for an official statement and will update this post when and if I get a reply.  

Comments

[Ilsa Hesse]

I just spoke to Kona the other day and got their bear
:-(

[TD Gunner]

How about we layoff Ebbie. He seems clueless.

[Michael W Parks]

Have they laid off the person who came up with the idea for Sansar?

[Steve Somebody]

Speaking of turmoil at SL, do you know why Corrade - the API for creating automated bots on SL - was very abruptly shut down this week?

[Wagner James Au]

Looks like lots of comments were removed due to the NWN comment algorithm around civil conversation.

For the record, I have no knowledge of which Linden staff were laid off or how many were laid off, and the only Linden that Kona confirmed to me had been laid off was Kona himself. The official confirmation that it was a group of Lindens is from Ebbe's Discord statement.

[Beth Macbain]

Deleting comments that don’t fit the narrative you invented, huh?

It’s been a long time since you were relevant to LL. You should really get some help with letting go and moving on with your life.

[Steve Somebody]

What does that even mean Beth? SL is imploding and you attack the guy who wrote a pretty good book about its early days and has kept up a blog for many many years?

[Jacko]

CEO makes dumb idea.
Company bleeds money.
Employees, who had nothing to do with said idea, get laid off.
CEO goes skiing.

What's the mystery here?

[Steve Somebody]

@James, do you know anything about that Corrade thing? I gotta think they’re related

[Anonymous]

SL is dead, RIP SL. You will not be missed!

[Other Anonymous]

Actually, SL is doing fine. It's Sansar that's (probably) dead.

[Seriously?]

If Ebbe's words had come from my doctor, I'd be making funeral arrangements.

It's like they've just let go of the wheel.

[Orca Flotta]

Ebbe's denial was the most unconvincing EVER! I hate to be the bitch who said "Told ya so!" but, really,I told you so.

VR is a good thing for many applications. But for leisurely virtual worlding it's total overkill. A virtual world like SL, were most people log on, using sub 300 $ laptops and crying for a mobile phone application - to force these people onto super powerful gaming PCs and exotic Octopus goggles, is economical suicide.

Good night LL. :/

[Orca Flotta]

@ Beth Macbain

"Deleting comments that don’t fit the narrative you invented, huh?"
Yep, I was victim of Hamlet's deleting practices myself, once. I guess MarkTwain White used allhis ower to pressure him into deleting the orca truth-machine. ;)

"It’s been a long time since you were relevant to LL. You should really get some help with letting go and moving on with your life."
A veeeery long time. Still for most of us the weekly visit to NWN is a guilty pleasure. We know it's not good for us, potentially even hazardous. But, at least me, I can't resist the pull of the dark side/NWN.

[Fionalein]

OMG, Beth MacBain the fangirl has found her way here into the comment sections,... was poisoning the climate of the official Forums not enough for you Beth?

You will find that LL has no influence over others outside their own little cosmos - and if we like to discuss matters unpleasant to the Lab they won't be able to silence us down here.

[Beth Macbain]

Steve Somebody - It means that Hamlet has been trying to ride the coat tails of LL for years, and it's really pretty sad. This entire blog is an ode to his bitterness about not being needed or wanted by LL. SL is not imploding - people have been saying that for 16 years and it's yet to happen. Slowest death EVER.

Ah, sweet little Fionalein. I'm well aware that LL cannot dictate what is said on the internet, just as Hamlet, and you, cannot dictate what I say. Funny how that works both ways, huh? Hamlet has an agenda. Everyone knows that. You're right about this place being "down here", though. This blog is the Second Life equivalent to the Daily Mail or the National Enquirer. A lot of bluster, misinformation, and misdirection carefully constructed to fit Hamlet's negative view of everything LL does. It's a piece of shit - it's no wonder you're so comfortable here.

[AdriaLace]

never be over ambitious.. improve secondlifes graphics... it won't be beat.

[Shit up Becky]

I see no agenda here, just facts. A linden lab employee was fired, and confirmed that fact. I love Second Life, but I despise the constant fangirling by some residents. Give it a rest! Barf.

[Anonymous]

Scamming people with secret sim tier reductions for years...............

Letting employees have doggies in the office .............

Putting up stupid text messages in some discord channel instead of posting proper press releases to your userbase.................

Stupid pricing structures, constantly juggling with every possible price you can (is that your job?).......

Not a clue about how to run an economy...........

Lindex dropping 10 points without a word of explanation to your users .........

and the list goes on an on.

Yes keep firing your staff EBBIEEEEEE because they are not very effective are they?

What is next for this june? MORE FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS ?

[Raska]

...does anybody give a damn about Sansar? Anybody?

[D]

@Steve Somebody,
Corrade was a third-party thing, right? grimore.org? so the premise is that whoever ran it was (secretly?) a laid-off Lab employee who pulled the plug? Or... what's the connection here? (I guess the CasperLet folks would know the whole story if anybody would)

[n0p]

lLinden labs reach is strong. they will also go deep and invade their customer's private discords and befriend people and capture their screens to use against them and to forward to their favourite commmunity members as well. they operate in obscurity using discord as cover from public scrutiny and have conflict of interest having employees with alt accounts in sansar everything you say will be used against you and if they suspect you are trouble they will go to great lengths to find dirt. sansar staff caught in private discords lacie and galileo worst of the worst for after hours games spreading gossip and rumours then going back to work with private personal info they wouldnt have ever got in rl

[Ciaran Laval]

Linden Lab need to hang on in there whilst developments in virtual computing start to make the sort of strides that could lead to a platform like Azure being a reality for remote computing and affordable.

[Kaitox]

P L E A S E for the love of linden, drop Sansar, all the money going into Sansar could've done SL SO much better for improving the game. and we have barely anything to show for it.

[The Oracle]

Haha, the civil discourse algorithm = whatever Hamlet doesn't agree with. Free speech, freedom of the press -- but only for me, of course. That's ok, Hamlet. We'll see where you end up.

[Steve Somebody]

@D - Good job Googling what I was referring to! Good lead about CasperLet though. Anyways, Corrade not only stopped development and support, but they removed the product and API documentation. The rep and group on SL were deleted. There was no explanation or warning. It happened on the same day as the layoffs that Mr. Au documented. Things don't happen in a vacuum and things don't happen overnight. Lawyers were probably involved.

So, I came to the comments hoping to find answers, or at least insight. All I found was a bunch of trolls. Trolls who probably drink too much. Losers. Good-bye. Mr. Au knows my email if he wants to reach out to me.

[John_Westra]

I've said it before; you can't launch a product or service (High Fidelity, SANSAR, etc.) that's not at least as feature rich or significantly better than it's competition (@SecondLife) and expect it to succeed.

[Leelee]

Let's be honest ,sl is not as fun or interesting as it use to be but there are always new members joining and as many are joining there are more leaving. I have sansar account and I'm not pleased with it.to me sl is not stable as it use to be . Linden labs are always interested in getting more more memberships but not creating better servers or more servers . Stop focusing on linden homes and focus more on the quality of the game.

[pixels]

Add to what Jonn said, Sansar was doomed from the get go when they went forward without MAC inclusion shutting out a lot of SL users and new users. Also promising portability of some SL inventory was misleading and never happened.

One possible path forward to vastly improve SL or make Sansar useable to more people if Linden Labs could cut a deal with NVida and find a way to utilize their remote gaming servers that allow gamers on crao computers and mobile devices to play graphically intense games.

Sorry about Kona and hope he lands in a fab place.

Whoever the LL heavy hitters are lets hope they do a monthly meet and greet for residents to bring new ideas and discuss issues.

And LL needs to reinstate LEA. It doesn't have to be as big but should have a better layout and bring back the LEA sandbox too.

[Cathartes Aura]

"They" can't say "they" weren't warned. EVERY decision made since grandfathered tier was imposed on SL residents by LL in 2006 has been an utter disaster. Had "they" simply done the opposite of whatever was being considered at the time they'd be in great shape today.

"They" took an economy that was a level playing field where anyone could create and compete and replaced that with one mirrored on the real world Crony Capitalist economy where "pets" are favored. Where conditions are RIGGED to benefit an extremely small number of residents at every other residents expense. And how did that turn out after all these years? More profitable.
More people. It's been an Utter Fu$king Disaster. And who's responsible?

The LL Board of Directors. They're clueless and so has been the long string of CEO's that have cycled through LL.

I used to relish the idea of LL/SL going down. Finally getting what "they" had coming. Karma. Now... "They're" kind of pathetic. Pitiful but absolutely not pitiable. "They"(LL's Board and every CEO they've had)" are a bad joke and SL is a "dead man walking". Still up on 2 feet but obviously done for.

These days when I think of SL at all it's to remember those golden years when it was a wonderful place to be. Not like it is now. On Life Support...

Just pull the plug on SL. It's over with. RIP...

The rotting smell from what's left of the corpse of SL is too stinky for even this Ole Carrion Eater to enjoy eating. Whewwwwwww...

[Han]

I don't even understand why Sansar is still a thing tbh. No one i know logs in there or even wants to.. If Ll closes it will be because of stupid Sansar, they should cut their loses while they still can. Sansar is a loss. I am not invested in Sansar & i do not care about it tbh but i am heavily invested in SL, most of us are..

[No one you know]

LL is being put up for sale, EA is in negations to buy LL. but from discussions they want to buy the intellectual property to add as expansion packs to Sims 5 & 6 but do not want to operate secondlife/sansar as games they currently operate as just the branding.

Ebbe contact was renewed 1 year to find a buyer and one of the first steps is balancing the books by reducing internal costs.

[sirhc desantis]

Lurking over in discord (now there is an apt name for that piece of stuff) has been informative. Very glad I nuked my account some time ago (complete with plaintive note in response, but I decided to not keep going back for another try) as the level of toxicity raised even my eyebrows to the extent I was worried about young Ryan Blogger, happy to see they opened up for a guest post though.
I was expecting in fact hoping the Lab to do a lot better with this, they have (or should) major advantages after all these years, would hate to be sitting in on meetings right now. No, realised early that this was never going to be SL 2.0. That was never in the cards despite what the fluff seemed. I know why it lost its appeal to me but not sure how that reflects on the whole thing.

Side note : this is how you generate hits and comment spikes, complete with conspiracy (selling to EA - again), missed voices and even from an anti Au forumite. A master class - well played, ser Au.

[Big Daddy]

While the ground may indeed be collapsing around us, it's nothing to worry your $5000L mesh heads about.

The future looks bright. $40.00 names are coming and we're working on some new public housing projects to fight over.

Keep on rolling, you little Ubers.

[Mondy]

@No one you know - Sources? links? references?

Talking cr**!

[Fionalein]

@Steve Somebody: grimore.org is back, guess it was down for other reasons than suspected.

Conspiracy therory prone SL citicens might want to check if there are checksum/hashkey differences between the binaries before and past downtime though.

[Avi Arrow]

This is terribly sad news. In addition to maintaining a daily in-world presence, Kona worked tirelessly to make Second Life a better place for us all. His infectious alacrity and upbeat nature helped to propel Second Life through the ages along a path that was ever more full of fun and joy. It may very well be that upon his gravestone it will read, "He was a grand old bug hunter."

[jira junkie]

What happened to Torley Linden?

[Clara Buyer]

When they go to shut down SL you might get less then a weeks notice, before that happens look for signs like no recent inworld meetings, weeks without region restarts, grid crashs that last whole weekends, lots of sudden website issues that take the forum offline, temporary suspensions of cashouts for most residents. Sudden huge policy changes they refuse to comment on, a change in management unknown to residents.

[Clara Buyer]

Secondlife 2.0 already happened it was called cloud party something linden lab should have copied instead of blue mars.

[Adeon Writer]

Running Second Life is pure profit. The servers cost them nothing, and people pay with deep pockets for them. No matter where you are in Second Life (with very few exceptions) you're logged into a server another player is renting. They'll never have a reason to shut Second Life down.

[Porky]

Linden Lab is, by all appearances, a company positioning itself to be sold. Laying off staff, removing unprofitable divisions, raising fees to generate more cash on the books - and than glossing over these changes with carefully crafted promises (that are just a rehash of the same promises given for the past two years) is a warning sign of something big to come. All signs point to a company looking to sell. It's just a matter of time.

Want further indications? Look at the top major brands in Second Life. In the past few weeks they are all setting up stores and spaces in Sinespace. A few already know. Most likely from inside connections within the Lab.

[Adeon Writer]

FYI the commenter above me is using my name to spam. That’s not me.

[Adeon Writer]

Both of the above are not me.

[Adeon Writer]

You clowns are really going to make me link my Twitter account, huh? Yeah, I'd never recommend OSGrid or Kitely, or anything like that. I've never used them, and never will.

Now, VRChat. If you see me shilling that, it's probably me. Maybe.

[Wagner James Au]

Spam account nuked by the algorithm!

[A**** W***** from O*****]

First of all i am not spam having used MY NAME since being in There.com and having used that name in osgrid for over 12 years, just because someone took my name years ago then became more popular then me does not mean they hold copyright over it. I did go out of my way to say i was from osgrid!

[Vanna]

Wanted to let you know it was Phillips dream to make second life like sansar the hard drives could not take the second life back then the computer was not fast enough in those days he had in his head since the 90s. I went the second life museum did my homework they started from scratch but it took many people to help. Sansar was a test later to see if second life could be rebuilt but it take a lot of work doing every inch of the platform they would need Philip back and some the older times of the time. Best to look at the little things and educate yourself what is going on. Best we stick together instead of fighting second life is a getaway its been around a long time make beautiful as all way's has been. Some people may been sent off they still come on sl may been their time to retire but they all way's come on their other accounts or volunteer. People do have real lives behind these they grown have family now so time place for everything.

[Avi Arrow]

This one really tugs at my heart. It appears Torley Linden is among those who was let go. His name no longer lists in search and his regions Torley, Is, and Here are gone. I know that Torley has been over at Sansar for the last 2-3 years. Despite this, I have not the words right now to express my deep sorrow over this great loss.

[Steve Somebody]

re Corrade / grimore, there is definitely some drama going on there. Their support group is off and on, their bug tracking is empty, there's no answers anywhere. I don't think that grimore.org being active means s***

[We Are Not Amused]

Don't you just love how they so blithely announce lay offs and then immediately follow it up with 'oh but it won't impact SL'?

I don't give a toss about SL but I do care about those who've lost their jobs because of LL's chronic incompetence.

And how dare they blame Torley for Sansar's failure (read that on some other thread somewhere).

I can't stand LL - Ebbe can go 'love himself' to death - and I hope every last one of those bas***ds gets a taste of their own medicine. No, not a mere taste - an overdose of their own medicine.

How many more are they going to 'lay off' in the name of protecting their greed?

So glad I kissed my premium membership goodbye. Fkers.