New World Notes

Linden Lab "Very Profitable Company" With Sansar Gone, CEO Tells Engadget, Says Cloud Deployment & Other Improvements to Second Life Still in Works

Good long Engadget interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg just posted, who addresses much (if not all) the speculation around the recent acquisition of Sansar by an unknown company called Wookey, and how it will affect the future of Second Life. I've heard much Internet chatter that Linden Lab or even SL itself is now facing dire times, but in contradiction to that, Ebbe is ebullient:

With Sansar off its books, Linden Lab is now "a very profitable company," according to Altberg. "Second Life is an older, very established cash machine that works really well, and right now, we're seeing some tremendous growth happening as we speak. Whereas Sansar is a VC, more long term, need-more-investment-type-of-thing. Mixing those two within one small studio like Linden Lab was kind of tricky, so it was easier to have them go separate."

...  Linden Lab, meanwhile, is going to double down on Second Life. The company is currently in the middle of moving its cloud-based infrastructure to a third-party platform. "Instead of having to nurture and build and maintain our own infrastructure for a lot of things, we're going to be able to rely on someone else doing it for us," Altberg explained. Linden Lab is also working on a number of user-facing improvements, such as the ability to customise worlds and "trade environments in ways they haven't been able to do before."

Good to know the cloud deployment of SL is still happening, though kind of odd that it's moving to an unspecified "third-party platform", when the project was originally specified as going to Amazon Web Services.

As for Wookey, the mystery of what it is and how it will turn Sansar into "a new generation of online AR/VR experiences" (Linden Lab's words) remains, though I suppose Ebbe drops a few hints there:

Flickr Forbids Free Account Users From Promoting Any Commercial Activity -- Including Virtual World Commerce from Second Life

We talked about how Flickr has been pushing its users to go Pro to stay in business, and now the company is apparently stepping up that pressure, forbidding free users from posting images which promote any commercial activity -- not just real world commerce, but virtual world commerce too. That move has roiled the huge community of Second Life users who rely on Flickr for sharing their virtual world screenshots, much of which feature SL fashion. 

"For free accounts," as a Flickr representative recently informed an SL content creator (see screengrab), "linking to a store in Second Life is considered commercial activity. Linking to a blog that links to a store is also considered commercial activity."

Many SLers are upgrading to Pro accounts while grumbling; others are vowing to no longer include any links in their Second Life fashion images on Flickr, and just list store names in the credits. Some leading fashion brands in SL, which typically offer free content to bloggers who feature their works, are no longer stipulating that their blog images be posted to Flickr.

Whether this is a good way for Flickr to stay afloat is subject to debate, but it's notable that the Second Life community is large enough on the image sharing platform that the company is actively setting policy around virtual world commerce:

Virtual Currency Transactions, Real Tax Compliance: Inspired by a True Story

UK Second Life Users Likely To Be Hurt By Brexit Fluctuations on US$-to-Pound Exchange Rates

Last year, many Second Life users based in the UK celebrated their impending Brexit from the European Union with a party in the virtual world (above). But ironically, British SLer Michaelatv Destiny makes an interesting point about Brexit in the official forums:

I'm just getting some feedback from my fellow Brits. In 2016 I had an affordable [SL] homestead I could keep under my present retired income. We were getting $1.49 to one GBP. Our currency crashed big time after stupid decision to leave.

In no time at all it was down to $1.35, which added £6 a week extra on my tier, which I could not afford. So been waiting 3 years for GBP to recover back to $1.49. Again. This hasn't happened, and I really losing hope I will ever be able to buy or rent in the near future.

Brexit happens any day now, and there's no doubt in my mind that our GBP will go into free fall. I conservatively predict the pound will be almost worthless, crashing to about $1.10 to one GBP. That would push up the price of a homestead to £9 -£10 a week, from-pre 2016 levels.

More conversation here. For the many older British living on a pension, especially, even a small change to the British pound-to-US dollar exchange can adversely impact their discretionary spending (i.e. entertainment, i.e. Second Life), so she's probably right. I'm not any kind of expert on exchange rates, but this analysis from Capitol.com does suggest sharp fluctuations and a downward trend for the British pound against the dollar, greatly accelerated by Brexit:

No, Making a Baby Yoda in Second Life Without Disney's Permission Isn't Actually Fair Use (Comment of the Week)

When I wrote about the sudden spike in Baby Yoda content on Second Life's marketplace last week, I ironically closed by saying they were on sale now "[u]nless or until Disney's lawyers deploy a totally uncool interpretation of fair use fan art". I.E., uncool in the sense that it would probably stand up in a court of law.  As reader Zoey explains:

This wouldn't be a fair use, it in no way is for a transformative purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody or even for educational use, The only purpose is for the creators to make money off a copyrighted item which is not fair use at all. This would fail in court in at least 2 of the 4 factors. Factor 1 Transformative: being the purpose and character of your use, being you are taking a copyrighted figure to make Money. and Factor 3 Substantial of the Portion Taken, its a 100% copy of the copyrighted material with no changes. It's not a totally uncool interpretation of fair use for Fan Art. The creators are profiting off or have the potential to profit by cashing out on a copyrighted character.

Fan Art is drawing your own interpretation of a character and posting it, not selling it for profit. IF I turn around and made my own Baby Yoda fan comic and sold it I would be sued to death by Disney and rightfully so. IN order to rightly create and sell a Baby Yoda product in any medium one has to get permission from the copyright holder period.

I am not a lawyer but that all sounds about right, except possibly the "sued to death" part -- a takedown request to Linden Lab (in the SL Baby Yoda case) or a stern letter from Disney's lawyers is way more likely. (Ask the creators of an SL community for Frank Herbert's Dune.) And in any event, Fair Use is not an instant bullet proof defense. As the lawyer for a major game company once told me, "If you want to end up in court, claim fair use."

Oh yeah, another slight demur to Zoey's comment: Even getting permission from the copyright holder might not protect you. Ask a YouTuber named Toos:

Yes, You Can Buy a Baby Yoda in Second Life (Until Disney Doesn't Buy Baby Yoda Even Being There)

Everyone wants a Baby Yoda from The Mandalorian for Christmas, but Disney won't sell them until next year. 

One possible solution: Second Life.

In keeping with the hoary virtual world's long tradition of instantly recreating the latest Internet-powered meme (potential copyright violations be damned), there are already over a dozen baby Yoda items in Second LIfe's official online Marketplace. (Albeit of highly varied quality.)

Best ones are probably those pictured above, thoughtfully enabling you to cart Baby Yoda's little green ass around Second Life like his au pair or maybe adoptive parent:

Was Second Life's Move to Mesh a Mistake? (Comment of the Week)

Pictured (via NPIRL): SL fashion from the pre-mesh era in 2008 created by Eshi Otawara -- which sold in a Relay for Life fundraiser for a $1700 donation 

Reader Madeline Blackbart made a point recently I've been wanting to bring up for quite awhile:

Remember when everyone cried that mesh would ruin Second Life, and we all laughed like they were just chicken little?

They were right, to be honest.

While mesh did help keep SL up with the times graphics-wise, somewhat, it is definitely the cause of its monopoly issues. The skill level required to create mesh just makes it damn near impossible for your average user to make marketable items.

And once mesh body monopolies (here's looking at you Maitreya) took over, the creative freedom, variety, and artistry of the masses, offered by the freely available and easy to learn building tools in SL, were a thing of the past.

Sure, also learning building tools is difficult -- but it's nowhere near as difficult to learn as 3D modeling. And your average user doesn't have time for that, let's be real.

So mesh was/is a double-edged sword: Needed to keep up with other modern games, but the cause of the death of a lot creativity in Second Life.

She made this observation around the same time a longtime reader (Patchouli Woollahra) reminded me of some SL fashion brilliance (above) before mesh was introduced in 2011. And while I've seen much mesh-based fashion made with great skill,  it rarely reaches that pre-mesh level of innovation -- and for that matter, rarely steps outside the standard fashion template you'd see in a real world shopping mall, or in a real world fashion magazine.

At the same time, whether or not mesh has improved or hurt Second Life as a creative platform, it definitely hasn't grown its userbase:

Readers Puzzle Over Linden Lab's SL Marketplace Commission Increase

Good conversation over the recent SL Marketplace commission increases and the developers who (mostly) worry about them. Readers Indyra Seigo and Petite Maison make this point in response to Linden Lab saying the price hike "remains significantly lower than most digital content commissions across the industry. Apple and Google charge a 30% commission on sales in their app stores..."

Not so fast, they retort:

It's a false equivalence that they are comparing themselves to Apple and Google in order to explain the doubling of their Marketplace commission. Apple and Google have hundreds of millions of individual users. SL has less than .1% of that. This increase can neither be justified by how many items there are for sale nor can content creators ever expect to make Google and Apple marketplace like profits on the SL Marketplace. The comparison is absurd. I predict sellers will simply pass the cost on to buyers in the form of higher prices.  

Then again, if sellers do pass on the prices, that means more SL consumers buying more Linden Dollars (making more money for Linden Lab).

Rather than do that, however, Clara Seller has a different proposal -- low commission for developers who are Premium subscribers/land owners:

Impact of SL Marketplace's Increased Commission Rates: Meh to Massively Catastrophic, Depending Which Developer You Ask

In case you missed it, Linden Lab recently introduced an increase in commission rates to the SL Marketplace, going from 5% to 10%:

On December 2, 2019, commission rates on Marketplace sales will become 10% of the item price. This will be the first commission increase since the Marketplace debuted a decade ago. This new rate remains significantly lower than most digital content commissions across the industry. Apple and Google charge a 30% commission on sales in their app stores, as do many other popular virtual worlds, VR and gaming platforms, such as Oculus and Sinespace. This fee change helps offset our costs as we invest heavily in new Marketplace features and improvements, which remains the Internet’s largest user-created virtual world Marketplace with more than 5 million items. 

From one point of view, that's just an increase in 5% -- from another, it's also a doubling of the commission rate.

What will the impact be on the SL economy and to individual content sellers? I asked several well-known owners of SL brands in recent weeks, and their answers ranged from meh to massively catastrophic on a personal/professional level.

In roughly that order, here's Daeberethwen Arbenlow of ANATOMY, Max Graf of Rustica, Anke Hatchuk of Dysfunctionaliry, and Froukje Hoorenbeek of Dutchie Furniture & Homes:

SLer Survey: Over 1 in 4 Willing to Pay Extra to Change Their Avatar Name

Here's the results of that pre-Thanksgiving survey on Linden Lab's new name change payment option, set to launch early next year. With 373 SLers responding -- a very large sample, relative to surveys like this! --  over 1 in 4 (i.e. 27%) say they will pay extra to change their avatar name. That includes 14.4% who are already paying for a monthly Premium subscriptions (a pre-requisite for the name change option), and are still willing to pay a bit more.

Of course there's alternate, prim-is-half-empty way to read these results: