Coming Soon to Second Life: "Premium Plus" Subscriptions Offering Free Texture Uploads, Expanded Land Tier/Group Limits, Much More. Watch Here!

Starting at around 24.00, Linden Lab's VP of Product, known in-world as Patch Linden, teased out a new Second Life product offering coming (hopefully) on SL's 19 anniversary of June 23: Premium Plus.

Offerings for the monthly subscription include:

• Texture upload fees eliminated
• Land tier expanded to 2048 square meters
• Up to 140 groups
• L$3000 sign-up bonus, L$650 regular stipend
• Special support phone line
• Group creation fees reduced from L$100 to L$10

All yours with a special introductory offer of $24.99, then moving to $29.99/month or $249/year. A pretty solid offer for core content creators, who end up paying quite a lot to Linden Lab.

Gorgeous Aurelia has a good comparison explainer here, with an infographic to boot. The full interview with Saffia Widdershins includes some interesting tidbits beyond that, including:

In recent testing, Linden Lab was able to get local concurrency for events up to 231 users. (As opposed to the usual 60-80.) And also, the small spike in user numbers and engagement during the peak of COVID has remained roughly stable.

Much more in the raw feed above!

Hat tip to Casja for the Gogo tip!

Comments

[sirhc desantis]

Calling BS on this. Quick CBA on the small group of shared premiums I am in (caveat - why yes I do have a premium alt and have been allowed to say this) says that 99 to 249 for free texture uploads.. means a saving of minus a hundred bucks (thats 200 per month == 48 bucks a year). For one member.
Alt of mine would have gone - 150? Why yes can stretch if there was a special intro to.. 175 even. As it was when 72 -> 99.
Fact that (I have been advised to be nice) Patch was floating this before possible official - smells to coffee
Now theres a memory lane for you.

[Adeon]

Still no grid-wide experience keys? I took my vacation from SL back in 2018 thinking surely I'd come back to having that one.

[Ilsa]

Cool,
I was paying 14.99 a month for Everquest back in the way way back, so I have always felt really good about 11.99 for SL or whatever it is.
Can we upgrade at any point? what will happen to our current stipend rate if we go from "super uber" back to regular paid account?

[Adeon Writer]

A texture upload costs 3.7 cents. I don't think anyone's going to be uploading enough textures per month to justify that price bump, it's almost laughable.

[Lord Anubis]

And what if you already a premium member? If you want to get this, you have to pay full price, or just the difference?

[Darla LeRoy]

For that price they could’ve included a free name change per year.

[奴隷 Lil pUnk]

For this price can we have a new Attachment Limit?

38 is not enough but 50 seems to be a good idea.

[Dee]

I am excited about the free uploads!!!! I was hoping for some sort of break on cash-out fees, but that would be asking a lot. As a heavy uploader this will be a huge boon for me. I spent about L$20,000 last month uploading all of the textures for a huge new furniture set I just put out (loads of options, too many lol). Insane right? I could save a LOT by doing the test runs in the beta grid, but I just can't be bothered. For me, at least, my savings in uploads is going to make all the rest of it just icing on the cake!

[Adeon Writer]

> For this price can we have a new Attachment Limit?

People are willing to pay for more attachment slots? That's just getting ridiculous. The cap is totally artificial, making it unlimited doesn't even require a server change. Viewers could do it if not for LL making it against the rules.

[Isa Garnier]

The free name change idea would be great, I'd become premium plus immediately♥

[Summer Haas]

@Adeon - I don't think anyone's going to be uploading enough textures per month to justify that price bump, it's almost laughable.

You would be completely wrong about that. For most content creators free uploads will make it pay for itself. Instead of spending $400+ US a year on uploads, it will be $300 for premium, minus the free Lindens every week, and pocket the extra $100 that would have been spent. Basically Linden Lab will be losing money on this for larger content creators.

[Syykyr]

Why the increase of premium to $249/year. This will limite folks from becoming premium members. Even the monthly payments can be too much for seniors and lower income players. People here in secondlife have tier to pay. Isn't it enough that Linden Lab take a portion from creators that have products on the Market Place. It seems the Linden Lab are pushing out folks with lower real life income from being premium.

[Syykyr]

I love the Blake Sea. I was wondering if there will be anything done about opening up more water sailing and scuba diving area.

[Riannah Avora]

Seems people are putting the emphasis on the texture uploads... that's not all there is to it. You get double the land... double the number of groups... double stipend... and only 10L to create a group. It all has value. I will have to crunch some numbers myself to see what is most beneficial.

Having more options is a good thing I think. Doesn't mean you have to do it, but is available for those who do want it. I would like to see a reduction in overall land costs though. Having a full sim/region is expensive.

One of my wishes is to increase limits for imported mesh. Allow OBJ formats and increase the vertices allowed. Decrease the LI applied for mesh also.

I also have wishes for scripting. Added events like before_delete. :)

[Riannah Avora]

Adding to my previous comment...

Another thing to consider with value and pricing is the physical location of the user... even within the U.S. The value of $249/year in Georgia is very different than in California, as an example. And you will see a more drastic value in between the countries.

There are a good number of people living in other countries that $249/year can be more than a months salary. I know it gets complicated, but I do wish that the costs could some how be more fair to all.

[FlipperPA]

This is going backward. I think it was 2004 when I proposed a tiered upload model for textures to promote efficient texture use. Uploading 1024x1024 textures for use on things like flower petals killed video card memory and efficiency. Imagine if it had cost L$5 for a 128x128, L$20 for a 256x256, L$80 for a 512x512 and L$320 for a 1024x1024; content creators would have a financial incentive to combat lag by being efficient. Being good neighbors in this aspect would help fight lag. And double the cost if there's an alpha channel!

[Summer Haas]

@FlipperPA - A lot of content creators make everything in 2048 or 4096 and let SL downsample it when they upload. What they need to do is add resolution choices to the upload process where you can pick 512x512 or 256x256, etc, as alternative options. Another issue is some creators work in PNG format and upload literally everything as 32 bit even when the alpha channel is blank. The viewer gives no indication of this or any option to force to 24 bit. These problems are as much the fault of the upload process as they are ignorant creators.

[daquari Stawberry]

$249 a year is a LOT for retired folks playing SL. The benefits look good, but the price is kind of high for those of us on a "set' income. I know this has been said, just confirming that I agree.

[Profesor Doktor Nauk i Ekspert]

all SecondLife prices definately are too high. If they would be cheaper many people come back. Now game is empty and going more empty. Now i hard to find any people from my country. Waiting and i have hopes to any alternatives, like this new trend with metaverses.

[Niecho Vollmar]

Linden Labs seems to think that membership perks should be directed towards content creators and those with teal life money to burn. In MMORPG games, they take the same approach in gearing things towards high end raiding teams, the elite, and towards "whales", those who spend a lot of money doing microtransactions which means more income for Linden Lab. Those of us on limited income (disability, retired, social security, etc) would like to be able to enjoy a "life" here as well, but the money grubby ways make it even more stressful, less fun. People have turned it into a way to support their actual live-- and while that might seem great for them, it puts the other 99% of us at their mercy or just saying, "screw this" and leaving altogether. Linden Labs, you're brought the hell of real life into Second Life. For shame!

[Senjata Witt]

I'd like some clarification about exactly what they mean by "limited time offer." I can't afford to throw 250 bucks at LL all at once. I've been happy with my $33 quarterly, and $25 monthly more than doubles that. Still, I'd really enjoy those benefits. But literally tripling the cost ($30 monthly) would be a bridge too far. So if by "limited time offer" you mean, that's the rate we will get for good, if we take the offer now, then I'd be all in. If it's going to jump to 30 after the first month, that's not even KIND of a bargain.

[Croue]

This really isn't a whole lot to offer.
I'm a content creator, and I've never had any issues with the 10 linden uploads.
I don't bother with loads and loads of groups.
I rent land fairly cheaply from other residents.

There just isn't enough, or anything super special, in my opinion, to warrant almost 25/30 USD.

[Ginniji san]

Also on a limited income and 250 bucks a year is just to much, though am currently orally pre. If they made uploads for free forgrandfathered accounts that would work fine for me

[Zan Nova]

I don't think it's actually as bad a deal as folks think it is if you really do the math and play your cards right. But it's also not for everyone.

The difference between the two is $150 if you pay year to year.

With that you get double the tier, or roughly 7 dollars of free land which you can always rent out or whatnot for additional lindens you can cash out. That's 84 dollars saved. Though you'd have to rent the land for 411 a week to break even, but if you rent four sky platforms at 110/wk you can get there and then some.

150-84 = 66 dollars.

You get 350 additional lindens per week. 18,200 lindens. You can cash that out for n/254 or something. 72 dollars or so.

That's 66 - 72. So... -6.

Then there's the free uploads and possible discount on uploading mesh. That's the icing on the cake and depending on how prolific a creator you are it might be lucrative. I'm not counting the one time sign on thing because it's one time so who cares?

That said, the price is a bit steep.