BREAKING: Sansar, Would-Be Second Life Successor & Metaverse Platform, Is Offline -- Staff Reportedly Furloughed Since September (UPDATE, 12/23: Sansar Website & Platform Back Online)

Live Sansar platform pic from 12/23 afternoon PT via @wurfi.

Update 3, 12/23, 1:40pm PT: The Sansar platform is reportedly back online. @wurfi  (teddy bear in hat) just sent the in-world pic above as confirmation.

Update 2, 12/23: As of at least 12:35PM PT today, the Sansar website is back online. However, going by user reports in the official Discord, the world itself is still not accessible. (Hat tip: @Wurfi.)

Update 1, 12/23: I have e-mailed officials at Sansar owner Wookey twice, yesterday and this morning; both times, my e-mails were bounced back with a "550 No Such User Here" message from the Wookey server.

Good if sad scoop from Metaverse blogger Ryan Schultz: Sansar's homepage is currently offline, as is the platform: "You can no longer get into the social VR platform, and the Sansar website has been taken down."

A former Sansar staff member tells me that employees have been furloughed for as far back as September. I'm now reaching to officials at Wookey, the company which acquired the social VR/metaverse platform from Linden Lab in March 2020, for an official comment, and will update this post when and if I receive one.

This is somewhat surprising news, as Sansar was announcing live concert events as recently as August, and was touting itself as a pandemic-era concert/festival solution back in 2020, with top artists signed for shows on the platform. It's also a sad coda to the passing of former Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg earlier this year: For years, Ebbe had worked to turn Sansar into Second Life's official successor. The platform, however, was optimized for use on premium VR headsets, and when sales of those stayed slow, so did Sansar's growth rate.

More from Ryan below, including an error page which suggests more on Sansar's fate:

Error message with speculation as to the reason (shared with me by a friend who told me the news): pic.twitter.com/yXbJih95Fz

— Ryan Schultz IS NOW TRIPLE VACCINATED! (@quiplash) December 22, 2021

I hope this still leads to Sansar being bought by another suitor, and that the furloughed staff see a better resolution before the New Year.

More analysis here: What Went Wrong With Sansar: Victim Of VR Hype & Failure To Learn From Second Life's Mistakes.

 

Comments

[Lex4art]

RIP Sansar, although this end was expected for a while...

[Medhue Simoni]

It is sad. Sansar never allowed creators to really make money. The commission rate was 62%, and never once was it changed in any way. Us old timers got a grandfathered rate, that always ended at the end of the year, with me having to complain to get the grandfathering to get extended another year. At a 62% commission rate, it's impossible to have an economy. It would be like the US putting a 62% sales tax on everything. I begged the whole time I was there to get that commission lowered, but not 1 person even considered it. Bye Sansar! BTW, to any other 3D artists out there, I'm currently creating for the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Unreal has a 12% commission rate. It's awesome. I love it there.

[Cindy Bolero]

Before leaving SL in 2016, I was already trying out Unity-based virtual worlds. I bypassed Sansar completely because it was not built on Unity or another simular versatile game engine. When you're involved with a proprietary platform, expect outmoding or unfavorable business decisions over time.

On the other hand, my Unity game engine scenes/environments/regions and custom or licensed props and game art, doesn't suffer virtual world obsolescence or platform dependence. Unity-based virtual worlds have came and went, such as Jibe (2011-2013), and I was able to easily migrate my scenes and worlds over to VRchat.

From 2014-2016 VRchat was a lot of fun, but that user-base was not ideal for my concepts although that community loved the work I did, as I loved their creativity (Meanwhile VRchat prevails with serious growth). When that VR/desktop platform stopped supporting MacOS, I next went to SineSpace Beta in 2016, and have been there since.

Several of the "experiences" (regions & content) I created in Jibe and VRchat, were easy-peasy converting to SineSpace. Some interactive props needed script conversions, but was not a big deal.

There was no whining about leaving behind time and money investment. When I needed to move to another platform, my stuff came with me. Except for custom content made by others in a platform, but I'm not dependant on inworld marketplaces.

I build environments that are continent size, with thousands of plants, buildings, and props. For me, Unity's portability is the way to go. For content creators who make furniture, structures, clothing, and vehicles, migration is a little more complex where you must adapt to a different clothing system, convert vehicle scripts, etc. But hey, its another store/world where your products are offered. And Unreal Engine is catching up with Unity's concepts, and has SDK possibilities emerging. We'll soon see UE-based virtual worlds as well.

[camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra]

Medhue: " At a 62% commission rate, it's impossible to have an economy"

ROBLOX: *laughs in 70% commision rate plus minimum 1000 USD cashout*

(granted, ROBLOX's economy is not going to last in its current state, especially once people figure fully what a gyp it is)

[betty tureaud]

Yes its all about profit :p that's why it doesn't work as a social platform

[Randsome]

Simply put, Sansar could not continue to pay their bills, losing their Umbra license because they did not pay their license either on time.
Now they have less servers and bandwidth to use, which manifests in users being told that 'edit server is full' and even on a platform with only about 10 people per day being active - only the most dedicated and deluded members who are like the walking dead - not knowing that the ship has already sunk and that they are but ghosts in a ghost world.
Spectacular fail by Sansar, and even after Wookey purchased it, they simply carried along in their incompetent and non-visionary way, continuing the war against their own users until everyone either left, got banned, or otherwise disenfranchised.
Yet Sansar continues to use your stuff, and include it in the valuation it proposes as it tries to offload the platform to yet another sucker company, but of course at this point, and with it's concurrent user history - simply has NO value that can be sold to anyone.
So instead they choose to run it with limited access, a skeleton crew and paying deluded individuals with clout and status instead of real $$$ and just keep doing what they've been doing.
They're such a non-entity now, people don't even know who they are. Sansar search on youtube returns ZERO results, while VR Chat returns 1000's of recently made videos - all with 250,000 views.
FAIL FAIL FAIL.