14 Second Life Creators Became Real Life Millionaires Last Year -- And Other Surprising Economic Stats Linden Lab Just Revealed

Originally published on my Patreon

Linden Lab just publicized a trove of impressive Second Life economic data through a new VentureBeat article which headlines the most impressive stat: Linden Lab has spent $1.3B building Second Life and paid $1.1B to creators.

Yes: The company has taken very little profit from Second Life over the course of the virtual world's 21 years, instead re-investing it into the platform, while giving the lion's share of in-world earnings to its grassroots creators.

This is great, though not completely surprising: As I reported in 2017, SL's grassroots creators were likely earning more money from Second Life than Linden Lab itself. Now we know the company is earning slightly more.

VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi frames these revenue splits in comparison to Roblox, which has vastly more users than SL, yet still shares far less earnings with its creators. (See chart above.)

Further, Linden Lab gives 90% of in-game transactions to user creators, while Roblox only shares roughly 30% of transactions with theirs. Philip Rosedale told me something similar in 2022, but it's good to see the company publicizing this story to a major tech business outlet.

Anyway, the economic meat that's likely to interest SLers most is much further down in the article:

• About 30% of Second Life creators earn over $1,000 annually

• 7.4% of Second Life creators earn over $10,000 annually

And in 2023, among Second Life creators:

• 21,152 made some income in SL

• 6,446 have made over $1,000

• 1,580 have made over $10,000

• 139 have made over $100,000

• 14 have made over $1 million

Yes: There are 14 Second Life creators who've become real life millionaires from their virtual world business, just during 2023. We know some land barons like Anshe Chung have already achieved this status, but I doubt all of these 14 are also in the virtual real estate industry -- at least some, probably half of these 14, are very likely to be in the mesh body/avatar enhancement business. (Which may be the most surprising revelation to me in all this.)

This also gives us insight into how many SL "businesses" (i.e. people earning income) there are, in relation to the whole: 21,152 out of Second Life's 500,000 monthly active users -- i.e. about 4% of the community.

Dean doesn't make it clear if these earnings are only from 2023 or cumulative, by the way, so I'm double checking that with Linden Lab. I would not be surprised if it was yearly. In 2009 (to take a random date) several SLers were cashing out over $1 million per year.

UPDATE, 12/23: Linden Lab confirmed with me that the 2023 earning numbers are not cumulative, but only reflect SL earnings for that year. 

This post brought to you by Patreon metaverse partner Hari Sutherland, author of the new coffee table book Second Life: The First, Best Metaverse in Words & Pictures.

 

 

This post brought to you by Patreon metaverse partner Hari Sutherland, author of the new coffee table book Second Life: The First, Best Metaverse in Words & Pictures.

Comments

[anonabum]

Very cool, thanks for sharing it :D

[sirhc desantis]

Some very interesting numbers there. It would have been nice if the Lab had actually bothered to tell us, the great unwashed who are merely - you know - users, but communications has never been their strong point. Maybe they should have a forum or some thing...oh wait thats full of the 'AI' npc fiasco. At least one staffer gets to tick another box on the CV =^^=

So we rely on NWN. And thats a good thing. Best wishes ser Hamlet

(Oddly enough I get to figure in those numbers. Insofar as our little mob makes enough to pay for 3 premiums and the odd cash out for birthdays etc. Yay us etc)

[Ilsa Hesse]

Cool,
I must ask, how many total millionaires from Anshe to today?