SL Users in Regions That Ban Skill Games -- Are You Being Auto-Banned from Regions Even Though They Don't Host Skill Games?

Adeon Writer, a virtual world explorer whose real world home base is Arizona, was recently searching for games to play in Second Life and found himself unable to access a Second Life region because it had been tagged has having Skill Games -- i.e. a non-gambling game which has a L$ payout. (See above.)

And the thing is, he wasn't going there to play a Skill Game, just a standard game without cash rewards. "I usually expect to get blocked from ones that say Casino'" in the description, as he puts it, but this particular one only had "Play Games" in the region name.

I noticed lately I'm getting auto-banned from more Second Life regions due to my Arizona IP address (due to LL complying with state laws), as new regions seem to be tagging themselves as "gaming" regions, even though they (apparently) don't contain any L$-payout gambling systems.

— Adeon Writer (@Adeon) June 10, 2021

This isn't the only time this has happened to him, though he's not quite sure why:

"I'm continuing to be banned from more and more regions in SL as they (possibly) uselessly flag themselves as gaming sims, which Arizona IP's get auto-banned from."

From the Linden wiki, here's the US states that prohibit its citizens from playing Skill Games online:

• Arizona
• Arkansas
• Delaware
• Florida
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maryland
• Nevada
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee

If you live in any of those states and are banned from an SL sim, even though it's not actually a sim with Skill Games, please let us know in Comments!

There could be another process at work that involves a broader crack-down, by the way, but more on that next week.

Comments

[Joey1058]

I never knew IP could be so micro-managed.

[Holger Gilruth]

i dont understand what is your problem?
When the owner to decide to set it to a skill region then he can do it even if at the moment there is skill games placed.

[Nodoka Hanamura]

Holger, This feature should only be used for regions hosting Skill Games. Denying users based on geolocation for no good legal reason is unjustifiable and should be punished as abuse of the region management system.