Linden Lab "Very Profitable Company" With Sansar Gone, CEO Tells Engadget, Says Cloud Deployment & Other Improvements to Second Life Still in Works

Good long Engadget interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg just posted, who addresses much (if not all) the speculation around the recent acquisition of Sansar by an unknown company called Wookey, and how it will affect the future of Second Life. I've heard much Internet chatter that Linden Lab or even SL itself is now facing dire times, but in contradiction to that, Ebbe is ebullient:

With Sansar off its books, Linden Lab is now "a very profitable company," according to Altberg. "Second Life is an older, very established cash machine that works really well, and right now, we're seeing some tremendous growth happening as we speak. Whereas Sansar is a VC, more long term, need-more-investment-type-of-thing. Mixing those two within one small studio like Linden Lab was kind of tricky, so it was easier to have them go separate."

...  Linden Lab, meanwhile, is going to double down on Second Life. The company is currently in the middle of moving its cloud-based infrastructure to a third-party platform. "Instead of having to nurture and build and maintain our own infrastructure for a lot of things, we're going to be able to rely on someone else doing it for us," Altberg explained. Linden Lab is also working on a number of user-facing improvements, such as the ability to customise worlds and "trade environments in ways they haven't been able to do before."

Good to know the cloud deployment of SL is still happening, though kind of odd that it's moving to an unspecified "third-party platform", when the project was originally specified as going to Amazon Web Services.

As for Wookey, the mystery of what it is and how it will turn Sansar into "a new generation of online AR/VR experiences" (Linden Lab's words) remains, though I suppose Ebbe drops a few hints there:

Altberg describes the company [Wookey] as a "really scrappy investor type of player" who wants a challenge and is prepared to let the Sansar team drive its own agenda. Wookey's CEO also lives in the same town as Altberg, which probably helped seal the deal.

The current Wookey executive team lists no prior experience in the game industry, virtual worlds, or VR, but I guess the CEO living in Ebbe's neighborhood is a big plus? In fairness, Sansar's blog suggests that core operations and development will continue unchanged.

Much thanks to Argo Nurmi for the tip!

Comments

[vwfan]

"The company is currently in the middle of moving its cloud-based infrastructure to a third-party platform."

In the recent Lab Gab video (https://youtu.be/qlHxoxJMXUI), Ebbe was talking about a significant improvement in their use of SL in the cloud. I would be curious to know what kind of % improvement we're talking about here on average or is he just exaggerating it? I've even noticed a few veterans on the SL forums suggesting there would be little to no difference in improvement moving to the cloud.

An interesting part in the Lab Gab video is where he talking about getting the cloud uplift process done and stop letting it drag out because of competing resources, etc. If they're very profitable and have been in the past, then why haven't they hired more resources to finish the jobs so they don't get drug out?

"though kind of odd that it's moving to an unspecified 'third-party platform'"

Probably just his way describing AWS and/or Google Services which he refers to in the Lab Gab video linked above.

"Linden Lab is also working on a number of user-facing improvements, such as the ability to customize worlds and 'trade environments in ways they haven't been able to do before.'"

I believe he's referring to EEP (Environmental Enhancement Project) here. You can customize Windlights or atmospheres/skies ("worlds" is exaggerating it) and apparently trade these Windlights with others as inventory assets.

[Kanomi]

Good to see they are focused on maintaining a long-term profitable business.

[Avadale Wompkins]

"Second Life is an older, very established cash machine that works really well"

To bad for they last 5 years they took that ATM for granted,and if Sansar had seceded? Enough Said.

[Anne Frank]

Color me skeptical. I have about as much faith in these plans as I do that the US is moving in a good economic direction. It just assumes that the little people are always going to be along for the ride.

Why should I care about "the cloud"? Why should I care that their power structure is preserved after their huge failure? Why should I care that moving some free Windlight settings might become a commodity? Let's all hold hands and get stupid together. I didn't hear anything about "names". I guess now is not the time to want anything more than making sure you don't get less. Yay for us.

This is an unimaginably horrible time in our history, but we can celebrate an uptick in SL business. It's all good, babe. We're here for you and we're not planning to do a damn thing to make your experience better in the future.

Did I hear about any generous economic incentives to actually encourage broken people to engage in their tired old game? What are they giving to the future?
They seem to be giving their own well-being and we're supposed to be happy about that and give them our resources.

If ever there was a time for vision, it's now. If ever there was a time to lay the foundation for a better world, it's now. My god, the message LL should be sending is one of hope and compassion to it's users. It should be sending an invitation to rally the troops to build, network, and engage. LL should be engaging directly with it's base and it's world.

No, it's all vanity. It's all about them. I'm willing to bet that Strawberry Linden would be a better CEO than Ebbe right now. At least she may have an inkling of vision and what's possible if you reach out to users and appeal to their sense of being a human. She might understand what users need and what they need to do to get it. She might still have some connection to what it means to be a person.

I'm probably suffering from quarantine syndrome. It just seems like there is a unique widow for SL to actually serve a purpose and it is being squandered by leadership who is clueless about what their job is and what they are holding in their hands.

[Alicia]

I have read the articles and can conclude that they're nothing more than fluff pieces designed to deter, deflect, and fool SLers for the umpteenth time. In fact, I'm betting that the questions were all soft toss questions.

Any move to the cloud... 2018 when it was supposed to have happened... and now is completely redundant as it still won't help their situation. It could quite possibly cost more for them to even move to the cloud than anything at this point.

Granted, Linden Lab sold Sansar off to some company no one's heard of that's ran by a person who lives near Ebbe… and could quite possibly know him? Sounds quite fishy if you ask me. There's way too many questions that these articles bring up and I'm on the inclination that everything points to trouble.

[Maxine Robespierre]

I have to agree with Alicia on the Sansar sale. It sounds like they're throwing the corpse in the woods and calling it summer camp.

Seriously, "cash machine"? Ebbe just can't stop dumping on his customers to save his life. What an absolutely callous way to refer to the entity that has taken years of abuse and neglect and finds itself in such devastating circumstances.

[Avatar]

" It sounds like they're throwing the corpse in the woods and calling it summer camp."

LMFAO!

[Foot Held]

Ebbe's in the country club as vice president of golfing, it allows him to make connections. just imagine how far he could go if they had a ski school in SF.

[Summer Haas]

Whoever bought Sansar must have been hit in the head with one of his stray golf balls.

[Alicia]

@Summer Haas, it was a company called Wookey that bought Sansar.

[Cathartes Aura]

Empty Words. Meaningless BULLSHIZ...

At this place and time, do something useful with any press releases coming out of LL - if you're out of Toilet Paper use it to wipe you AZZ with. That's the only thing they're good for. Wiping your big, fat, lumpy butt with...

Mmmmmmm... Every day this corrupted, rotten, corpse of SL gets even riper and stinkier. Carrion Eaters circling now, slowly but surely swooping down onto SL's rotting corpse. To pick it clean... ;)

[Ephemeracrawford]

"Ability to customize worlds." Would it be possible to have an environment where everything is downloaded once, client side, and further calls to the server are not necessary? Or could it be spinning off "worlds" separately, like open sim. You wouldn't need to be connected to all of SL, just that single world? Just asking.

[Alicia]

@Ephemeracrawford, that wouldn't be possible.

[Candy68]

Well what they didn’t take into count is most on sl are old and not going to wear head gear to play second life. That’s why it failed so bad. Will it do good sure with the younger group. But your not going to get the real long time players to move over. So fix what you have in second life.

[Pam]

OMG!!
I'm so disappointed he hate's the SL community so much to make such a cold hearted comment like that

it's just ridicules this guy is still employed

[Iggy 3.0]

"Instead of having to nurture and build and maintain our own infrastructure for a lot of things, we're going to be able to rely on someone else doing it for us," Altberg explained.

was that not known six years & used as an excuse to close the last CEO's successful push to make linden lab a game publisher.

[Nobody]

Unbelievable

[VRChatIsWhatMarketWants]

"Altberg describes the company as a "really scrappy investor type of player" who wants a challenge and is prepared to let the Sansar team drive its own agenda."

But... this is what contributed to tanking Sansar to begin with. Wookey are complete numbskulls if they let the same people who destroyed Sansar continue on.
The numbers since release on Steam declined under these people and how they managed the platform. They failed to market well, they failed to keep their creators, they failed to keep their users....

Won't be long before it shuts down. Can't have incompetent people still at the helm and think you can succeed.

[Soda Sullivan]

"Second Life is an older, very established cash machine..."
And if you keep referring to us like that, it can all be gone tomorrow.

[Gabe Ghiby]

for the record, I also agree with Anne Frank, well said, I couldn't have said it better...

[Gabe Ghiby]

my little two cents is that

they, today's Lindens are a shame to what was once the core crew creating, launching and maintaining the SL... back then, residents had the option to choose a last-name for free...

now, with employees hired with less than 6 months seniority, or on average 2 years and they barely heard about SL until they got hired, they are all clueless about what SL was meant to be from the start...

Ebbe claims he is in touch regularly with Phill, and that may be true, but if it is, he's learning absolutely nothing from the founder and this hurts us all that in our foolishness are still using SL and putting in real money...

what the heck, he's a newcomer from Australia, what is he to know about what happened when SL was launched way back in 2004... or what was the vision, the strategy to grow and serve the SL residents... he has no clue and with him, all under him...

that is not to say he may be an incapable or unskilled manager, not at all, far from it, but he's far from understanding the SL community, that made Sl what it is today and that still makes SL that "cash cow" that's producing them big, fat salaries... are you aware they make at Board levels in the range of $200 per hr..??.. all while trying to full us... first with Sansar, now with the move to the cloud, yet they're not capable enough to implement a name change feature... they're dragging their feet with this name-change feature for over 2 years now... how hypocritical is that..??..

we're doomed if we put too much trust in the new crew of Lindens...

in my opinion, for what its worth, it's good they got rid of Sansar, and on the other hand, will be a big fiasco they move the grid to the cloud, because the grid will now be in someone's else hands, yet, still SL will charge us for it... and they charge us quite a lot... that's sad...

it's also sad there is no other reliable and viable alternative to SL... OpenSim it's OK, but it's fragile and far behind...

[Gabe Ghiby]

disclaimer,

no offense intended to the Australian origin on Ebbe, but just ask yourself what was Ebbe doing back in 2004 when Phill and his basic crew was launching what we've come to know now as the SL world..??.. Ebbe was nowhere near the concept design and the vision behind it, to my knowledge...

(but, hey, I may be wrong, I hope Ebbe will come here in person to slap me with his own words...if he's not busy golfing his salary we all pay him... )