Mismanaged to destruction by Linden Labs, Second life dies.

Blog by: River Ely
Date: Nov 24th, 2008.

River Rock was sold tonight for the cost of transfer, VAT and a couple beers. Two years ago we started Rivers Rock as a we had moderately good land sales on the mainland and my partner had about six sims of her own. In those days, as we bought a sim, we would divide it into lots, sell them in a couple days or so and from the proceeds, fund the next sim. We literally had people falling out of the sky snapping up the lots as quickly as we could mark them out and price them.

Some days we would all join forces just to deal with the influx of visitors all hungry to buy the land at whatever price we set it for. At about this time, the Lindens broke the land search gizmo and we noticed other sellers dropping out of the sky onto our property too, staying for a few moments, and then leaving. They wanted to know our secret. We found that customers were drying up, so we set up arrival mats that greeted the customer in their own language and underneath the mats; we set the land for sale for a dollar a plot to raise it up the land listings on the land search.

The mats worked. It found us customers and ensured that we had our islands filled as quickly as we could without needing four of five of us babysitting the land for sale. In those days we snatched it back right away, else some of the people that bought out land set out for sale again so that they would get the profit without owning it. Heady days!

Towards the end of last summer, we found that selling land as a ¼ sim bought our land higher up the search ladder and that many Second Life users were keen to own safe land with a high prim count. The margins were ok as well. Life for a while was good. Even with the onset of last winter, sales were slow, but were working if you babysat the land for long enough. Then the Lindens changed the rules on the voids. Voids were low prim islands, and you needed to buy them in fours, and at least one, had to abut your main sim. The change was to enable the sims to be sold individually and without the need to butt up to a primary sim. They upped the prim count to 3750 and dropped the tier to 75USD month.

We watched helplessly and inexorably as tenants that had been with us for so long slowly migrated to the new open sims. The fact they were laggy, and sharing servers seemed to be offset by the ability to have loads of space, a good prim count and a very low tier.

Our sims began to show more and more open places, with sales not being taken up by customers. The land sales gizmo was page after page of open space sims, as fifteen thousand open space sims flooded into the market like some kind of candy confectionary currency. The lindens must have made a fortune selling them.

Finally, the Lindens, realised they had missed a massive market potential and giving away open sims was brought to a halt. Additionally they hiked the tier by 66% causing an instant massive swing away from open sims. Sadly, this was one more failure on the part of Linden Labs and instead of users returning to the normal sims, they elected to leave SL. The economy is ripe for giving up luxuries and as the USD, EURO and GBP fall in free fall on the worlds markets, food and light is more important. We paid the tiers on the islands, and the lack of income from missing tenants came from our surplus in the hopes of hanging onto the islands until the residents realised they needed real land again. The erosive nature of paying for others to play has now eroded my bank account surplus to zero and there is no more honey in the pot to sweeten the experience for those few who stayed loyal.

So tonight, I approached a lovely lady and close friend and invited her to buy the sim from me for the cost of transfer, VAT and a couple beers, she accepted. I enterd the word 'SOLD' into the status box on my spreadsheet, and logged out, for the last time, as a sim owner in Second Life, a company mismanged to destruction by Linden Labs.