Linden Lab Unveils $25/Month Second Life Subscription to Replace Eroding Revenue of Virtual Land

As hinted at in a recent in-world Q&A, Linden Lab just announced Second Life's new "Premium Plus" subscription plan, with greatly enhanced content and features for $24.99/month or $249.99 a year -- see above, with a helpful compare/contrast with the existing Premium Plan. As my heated reader commentary suggests (some choice samples below), this new offering is sure to cause controversy. But it's a necessary move by the company, nudging players toward a sustainable revenue base built on user subscriptions, versus unsustainable sim tier. (Also reflected in the new event region offerings, high capacity sims designed for short term use.)

Or to put it another way on this day, which happens to be Second Life's official 19th birthday: If you want Second Life to be around and still active for SL30B, better consider getting Premium or Premium Plus.

Reader feedback below:

 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! -- Posted by: Dee  

Why the increase of premium to $249/year. This will limit folks from becoming premium members. Even the monthly payments can be too much for seniors and lower income players. People here in Second Life 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. -- Posted by: Syykyr

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. -- Posted by: Riannah Avora 

Much more feedback here.

Comments

[Cindy Suminski]

you all are forgetting something....This is a CHOICE. you have the choice to stay a regular premium player or an extra premium player. so why get upset about this?

[Summer Haas]

In before all the texture upload bots for "discounted" rates cause LL to put a limit on how many free textures per month.

[Dee]

For anyone with a Linden ear they can whisper into, it would be a VERY desirable thing to add the ability to roll one (or more) avatar accounts under the umbrella of this new premium plus subscription. Few people want to have multiple premium accounts - but for someone with both a "business/store" avatar account and a "just me" avatar account - being able to to have the advantage of the extra groups and name changes would be great.

Also handy to be able to designate the secondary account to own the land, not double land, just a choice if both accounts were registered under a single membership. At the end of the day it doesnt matter which account we are using, we are still the same human behind our avatars.

I think this idea could bring a LOT of folks with a few accounts to the table for this new higher priced membership, especially if the name change is in there.

[Iggy 1.0]

Regular premium works for this Rip Van Winkle.

The Premium-Premium, I mean Premium Plus should lure some folks to the arid stretches of the Mainland (thank the gods it's not Super Premium, as I hate that *%&^ overused word "Super").

So while I'm not super-excited (#$%%^) I think it's a super (#%*^) move for LL to make.

[Holger]

So no animesh without premium plus

[Luther Weymann]

I have a free account.
I have a 2048 store in a private region for monthly rent.
I have product development that I upload textures at L$10 each.

Suppose I buy the $249/yr premium plus, move my 2048 store to the mainland, get the weekly stipend and sign-up bonus, and stop paying for texture upload. In that case, I spend about $100 a year for the premium. I already pay about $100 a year for the SL Market sales commission. So I would go from paying SL $100 a year to $200 a year, and I only gain more groups.

[Mint]

Full disclosure, I cashed out of SL a few months back. My account is still there if I want to go back, but I didn't think it made sense to leave money there I could be using elsewhere.

At least among the players I knew, I don't think Premium Plus would've been a good deal. Many rented land cheaply or off mainland so the land bonus doesn't mean much. They're not creators so free uploads wouldn't be enticing. It seems to me that the new plan attracts a certain kind of user but leaves out others.

$249 USD is $319.42 CAD at the current exchange rate, excluding tax and currency conversion charges. $32.06 per month at the limited time promotional price and $38.47 at the regular price. Ouch!

I understand that LL needs a way to bring in revenue, but if I were still active on SL, there's no way I'd pick this up. The cost is very steep when compared to other hobbies of mine and I personally feel that other hobbies provide me with more bang for my buck.

[Namе]

I'd gladly pay 249 usd a year on top of 1500 i currently pay for the sim, but only if SL was going forward in terms of technology. Paying this much just to keep this stagnant mess afloat is a bit eeh. SL needs to bring some real stuff to the table before asking for more money. Twisting residents arms with "pay up or we close" is a questionable business model.

[That Geezer From The Pub]

" If you want Second Life to be around and still active for SL30B, better consider getting Premium or Premium Plus."

Do you work their marketing department or something? Either way anyone who thinks Second Life will be around for its 30th Birthday is deluded, irrespective of more extortion, it's not evolving enough to attract many new users and there are alternatives, even if those alternatives right now, don't offer everything that Second Life has.

A lot of the new accounts in Second Life are just the alts of people who have found it necessary to start over. It has an aging population of users who want be forever young, so don't be fooled by all those youthful avatars and individuals lying about their age.

As others have said these Premium accounts are not for everyone, in fact they will benefit very few. Yes content creators are important in a virtual world, but so are the rest of its users and there seems little to benefit them, the land offered is only a small amount and restricted to the mainland, perhaps if its value could be used towards land elsewhere, it wouldn't be quite so bad.

I do create and even have a few items on the MP, but my sales pay for my next uploads and goes towards the land I rent from a third party.

Land prices in Second Life are extortionate, I don't know if by unsustainable the article was trying to imply there was some kind of loss being made, because the opposite will be true, it's only unsustainable because of greed, if land were more reasonably priced, more Second Lifers would be able to afford it.

To the individual who mentioned having different prices for texture uploads based upon resolution, it's not 1024 textures that cause texture lag, it is the unrealistic minimum system requirements for accessing Second Life. It would be better to have multiple resolutions assigned to a model and then those whose systems can't cope with 1024, can have an option within the viewer to only see 512 or 256 resolutions. Those of us who have invested in a decent graphics card, should not have to suffer a degraded visual experience simply because others can't afford to or don't want to upgrade their system.

The majority of lag in Second Life is caused by script over usage within sims anyway and because some don't bother to remove resize scripts etc from their avatars clothing, it has little to do with textures or triangle amounts.

Linden Labs need to rethink their strategy where premium is concerned, what's on offer needs to be both good value and universally appealing and importantly as somebody else has already mentioned, the revenue should be going towards advancing the technology instead of just lining pockets.

[Wagner James Au]

> anyone who thinks Second Life will be around for its 30th Birthday is deluded

Active Worlds is still online, it's been around for 27 years:

https://www.activeworlds.com/

For that matter a version of Habitat is still online, that's been around for 35 years:

https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2017/06/habitat-virtual-world-open-source-randy-farmer.html

So, yeah, I expect Second Life to be around for 30 years and more. Especially because unlike those worlds, its concurrency is still quite strong.

[That Geezer From The Pub]

@Wagner James AU
You can't continue to thrive if you don't continue to evolve, simply continuing to add more bells and whistles without addressing the dated underlying technology expected to support those bells and whistles, is doomed to fail.

I am being a little unfair on Linden Labs, in that the users of Second Life are half the problem, because too many of them fear change, the place doesn't only need an overhaul now, it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Something they would face resistance to, from the more institutionalised members who think it can continue forever as is, like I say, deluded.

The comparisons you made are irrelevant, just because one platform survives for so long, doesn't mean another will.