We are happy to announce that we have restored the ability to accept and decline offline friendship and group membership offers.

When a recipient isn't online, offers are stored for later retrieval. Their number and duration of storage is subject to certain limits.

When the recipient does log in, stored offers are retrieved and remain active for up to 24 hours or until the region restarts.  The offers present to the recipient as Notifications.  Friendship offers also appear as Direct Messages from the offerors.

Please note, offline offers can only be acted upon while in the region one logged into.  

The server-side generation of Calling Cards when a friendship offer is accepted has been removed. This feature moved to the Viewer several years ago and now accepting friendship offers creates, at most, two Calling Cards, one for each party.

Please enjoy the return of this feature!

To celebrate Mother’s Day and all the mothers in the Second Life community, we are releasing new limited edition last names today, only available until May 13th:
Mamacita
Mommy
Madre

Here is the full list of current last names available:

We will continue to make additional updates to the available last name pool, so if these options aren’t for you, stay tuned for future updates. You can also suggest your favorite name on our suggestion form, the new names were chosen from there!

For more information about the costs and how-tos involved in name changes, read the Changing your username FAQ. Click to change your name now!
 

We are pleased to announce we have added MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) protection to the Viewer. Recently we added MFA to web login. Now it works with Viewer login as well.

To start using it, you will need to enable MFA for your account on this page: https://accounts.secondlife.com/mfa/status 

For more info about how our existing MFA works, see Introducing Multi-Factor Authentication for your Second Life Account and the Knowledge Base Article. 

You will need to download and install an MFA-enabled Viewer: https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer/6.5.5.571282.html 

When you try to log in with an MFA-enabled Viewer, you will be prompted to enter a token from your authenticator app. If you have chosen to save your password information, a valid token will be saved for 30 days.  After 30 days your next login attempt will require another token.

For now, if you try to log in with a Viewer that is not MFA-enabled, nothing will change, and you will still be able to log in without a token.  However, if you have opted in to MFA then a token will be required for all Viewer logins beginning in the near future.
 

PLEASE READ OUR UPDATED EVENT REGIONS BLOG POST: https://second.life/eventregions

Greetings Second Life Community!

We are excited to bring you a shiny new land product: presenting “Event Regions”!

Have you ever dreamed of being able to hold large scale events in Second Life? Have you ever wished you could keep the lag monster at bay during large events? Perhaps you just want your scripts to all go vroom?  Well wonder, wait and wish no more! Sporting the latest upgrades in grid technologies that have been enabled by our migration to the cloud, these regions have been tested running large events in real-world scenarios such as those really big monthly shopping events, and live performances! Our tests saw nearly 200 avatars successfully able to shop and party in these regions.   

We are really excited to present this new region offering to you today.  Here are the details on the capabilities and what is included with the Event Regions type:

• A maximum avatar limit of 175 per Event region
• Up to 30,000 land impact
  *Region will support up to 30,000 Land Impact. During performance testing, Linden Lab has identified a few cases where exceeding 20,000 Land Impact will degrade performance with a large number of concurrent visitors.
• Extended chat ranges upon request, allowing chat to travel further across the region
• RaaS: Rollbacks as a Service - Request to restore your region to a previous state as needed. Some restrictions apply
• IaaS: Instancing as a Service - Request to have your region duplicated to another region
• White glove Concierge service
• Over 20% Improved script performance

Pricing Details:

For initial release, we are pleased to offer an introductory price of $599, with no additional setup fee through June 6, 2022. Following the introductory pricing, event regions will have a set-up fee of US$999 (includes first month), and a rate of $899/month after the first 30 days.

Here’s how to order:

• Submit a request via our support ticket system here: https://lindenlab.freshdesk.com/support/home
• Select Land & Region > Order Events Region
• Note that you may order multiple Event regions on your ticket

If you would like additional information, please contact support and we’ll be happy to help.

Happy April Fool’s Day! The following Limited Edition last names are available until April 15th:

Joker
OwO
UwU
Hoax
Quirky
Shenanigans

Here is the full list of current last names available:

We will continue to make additional updates to the available last name pool, so if these options aren’t for you, stay tuned for future updates. You can also suggest your favorite name on our suggestion form, the new names were chosen from there!

For more information about the costs and how-tos involved in name changes, read the Changing your username FAQ. Click to change your name now!

Linden Lab strives to make positive change in the world by helping people connect, discover themselves, and grow both personally and financially. Ultimately, we build and support communities. Therefore, it is especially shocking to see the actions in Ukraine, to see the unwarranted attacks on people – on communities. We are heartbroken and horrified by the situation in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis it has perpetuated. We are a proudly diverse team, and many of us have ties to these events - historically, emotionally, professionally, and socially. Our products reach worldwide, and many of our partners and customers are directly affected by this crisis. 

As a leadership team, this crisis has challenged us to better define and embrace what we believe to be the core principles at Linden Lab – our TAO so to speak.

Specifically, our TAO says:

MAKE CHANGE ON A GLOBAL SCALE

Our work brings people together, builds communities. Our work helps people understand who they are, helps them be better. Our work brings empathy, helps people see the world through others’ eyes. Settle for nothing less than changing the world for the better.

We intend to live up to this principle, and while there is much work to be done, we are starting with: 

• Providing financial support for humanitarian crisis aid through a donation to the Red Cross Ukraine and HIAS
• Supporting independent journalism in Ukraine through a donation to Keep Ukraine’s Media Going
• Supporting free speech in Russia through a donation to Meduza and OVD-INFO 

Effective Monday, we will be further supporting our eligible Ukrainian-based community members by granting them a temporary 30-day moratorium on recurring account fees such as Premium Membership and Land Maintenance fees.  We will review this again after 30 days and assess what we can do as next steps where necessary. We invite any of our Ukraine-based community members to contact support with any specific questions they may have.

Finally, we encourage our community to look at ways that they can help show their support. It is heartening to see the Second Life community come together to support each other with numerous inworld events and helpful initiatives that bring us together as a force for good in both the physical and virtual worlds.

We have been very pleased to see the response and feedback for last names. Thank you for all the suggestions sent in for future last names. 

Today some of the older last name options were removed and the following new ones were added from your suggestions:
Foxpaws
Captain
Starchild
Blep
Grumpypants
Jackman
Kiko
Norbert
Ayashi
Corvinus
McGregor
Marques
Rizzo

Here is the full list of current last names available:

We will continue to make additional updates to the available last name pool, so if these options aren’t for you, stay tuned for future updates. You can also suggest your favorite name on our suggestion form, the new names were chosen from there!

For more information about the costs and how-tos involved in name changes, read the Changing your username FAQ. Click to change your name now!

Ever since Second Life’s inception two decades ago we have seen many local, state and federal governments impose new ways to collect tax revenue from internet-based businesses. The Wayfair Sales Tax case decision by the Supreme Court was when prior rules about sales tax really changed.  Since then, we have done our best to shield our residents from these taxes as long as possible, but we are no longer able to absorb them.

As of March 31, 2022 we will begin charging sales tax in the U.S. For the time being we will charge taxes only on recurring billings, such as premium subscriptions and land fees. The amount of tax charged will be communicated clearly in the receipt or invoice.

We will continue to absorb the taxes at point-of-sale purchases such as one-time L$ buys, first-time premium subscriptions, and name changes. At some point in the future we will need to begin passing those taxes on to you. We will make another announcement when those charges are phased in.

Your individual charges will be determined by your local jurisdictions. There are more than 13,000 sales and use tax jurisdictions in the United States, with great variation in their rules and tax rates. Tax amounts are also affected by other factors such as the type of goods or services being purchased. To determine the charges, we will be relying on an automated third-party system which closely tracks local tax laws, so the tax amounts are always up to date.

This is news we don’t enjoy sharing, but for the health of the business and of Second Life, we can no longer continue absorbing these tax burdens.

Thank you for your understanding and your continued support of Second Life.
 

We are going to be introducing an additional way for you to keep your account safe! When we detect that your viewer is being accessed from a new device, we’ll send you an email that looks like this:

          SUBJECT: Important: [FIRSTNAME LASTNAME] accessed Second Life from a new machine.

          Your Second Life account has been accessed from a new machine. If you recently logged in to Second Life from a new device you may ignore this mail.

               Account: [FIRSTNAME LASTNAME]
               Time: [TIME IN SLT, example 2022-02-11 09:09.00 SLT]
               Originating IP Address: [IP ADDRESS OF NEW COMPUTER]
           
          If this was you, you don’t need to do anything. If not, we will help you secure your account: What To Do If Your Account Has Been Compromised

We are pleased to bring you this industry standard to help protect your SL account. Make sure to verify your email address to receive these notifications.  

We recently introduced Multi-Factor Authentication, another industry standard, as another layer of account protection. Read about it at https://second.life/mfa 

UPDATE: This feature is available as of 2/28 for accounts with a verified email address.

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, we have released new limited edition last names today!

The following valentine-themed names are only available until February 17th:  
Cupid
Lovely
XOXO
Desire
Enamour
Cuddles
Snookipuss
Schatzi

These names for Valentine’s Day are seasonal and may come back around this time next year, for a limited time.

The following is a screenshot of the full list of current last names available:

We have been very pleased to see the response to our limited edition last names. We will continue to make additional updates to the available last name pool, so if these options aren’t for you, stay tuned for future updates. You can also suggest your favorite name on our suggestion form, most of the new names were chosen from there! 

For more information about the costs and how-tos involved in name changes, read the Changing your username FAQ. Click to change your name now!
 

As 2022 begins, we are looking to set new goals and make Second Life Residents happier! 

Later today and in the following weeks, research@secondlife.com will be emailing thousands of Residents with an invitation to complete a survey and give feedback. Please keep an eye out for it, and feel free to share your thoughts on how to make Second Life a more pleasant experience for all. We’ve also been conducting qualitative research with a smaller group over the past few weeks. If you participated in that research, you are still eligible to take part in this survey.

Also, for Residents active on Flickr, the Flickr team is conducting its own independent research on the Second Life community. Flickr has sent some of its own users an email in the last few days asking for feedback and suggestions to make their website a more seamless and engaging experience for the Second Life community. The email also mentions 360 Snapshots and Flickr’s new efforts to help connect Second Life Residents on their platform. If you received this email, please consider participating! And if you haven’t already, make sure to follow our official Second Life account on Flickr and join our official Second Life Flickr Group. 

So check those spam folders and don’t hit the delete button. We hope you take this opportunity to have your voice be heard!

In other news, we are really excited to see the response from the community on Philip Rosedale’s return. We’ve received hundreds of questions from all of you and are including many of them in the forthcoming “Lab Gab.” We should be announcing the streaming date for “Lab Gab” with both Philip and Oberwolf in the next week or two. Keep an eye on the Second Life Public Calendar for the date!

Happy new year!  We released a change this week that hopefully will help fight the winter blues.

Uplift has been an ongoing adventure for a number of engineering teams, but the goal of improving the SL experience for all residents has not changed.

Uplift brought in new hardware and the ability to reconfigure it quickly to react to changing circumstances. A few months ago, we quietly changed hardware configurations to provide better performance for the simulators, but our job was not done there.

After this upgrade our engineering teams dug deep into the simulator to modernize it and take better advantage of AWS capabilities. We referred to this as our “Tooling Update,”  which allows LSL scripts to run more efficiently. Regions with heavy script usage will likely see more scripts run and even some spare time returning to the simulator.  The release also includes a modernization of our compiler and supporting runtime.  Newer tools allows for better code generation and awareness of modern CPU designs.

While the news is mostly good, a word of caution that with more scripts running, other areas of the simulation environment may be driven harder.  Scripts that were already approaching throttles or other limits may find a throttle engaged; this also applies to remote services accessed via llHTTPRequest. We do see the possibility of revisiting these throttling limits as a result of these improvements. They could see higher request rates as scripts perform more work.  

We hope that you enjoy the additional script performance for your regions. Anecdotes from region owners on the RC channels before release were generally positive. We are keeping an eye on the data with expectations that these improvements are here to stay.  We hope that as the regions improve performance you will find ways to create and explore in ways that you could only dream of before.

SSL Support

Library upgrades include more recent SSL support.  Removal of old protocols and obsolete ciphers is underway and some new restrictions are in effect for llHTTPRequest, llRequestURL, and llRequestSecureURL functions.  With this release, SSLv3, TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and related
ciphers are deprecated for these functions. This does not change the login service in any way.  These changes are restricted to simhosts.

We hope you benefit from this update!  As ever, we welcome your thoughts.

Have you heard the news? Second Life founder Philip Rosedale is back!

With today’s announcement about High Fidelity’s investment in Linden Lab, we’re excited to welcome back Philip Rosedale in the all-new role as Second Life strategic advisor. Philip is a recognized metaverse pioneer who led the early days of Second Life to help form and inform the now-mainstream concepts of virtual economies, cultures, and communities. In his new role, he will bring his vast virtual world experience and vision to help shape the future of Second Life. 

Philip will be joined by Linden Lab executive chairman Brad Oberwager in an exclusive “Lab Gab” community Q&A in the next couple of weeks – and we want your questions! To submit your questions in advance for consideration by both Linden Lab’s executive chairman and the Internet’s original metaverse pioneer, please use this form no later than midnight (Pacific) at the end of Sunday, Jan. 16.

This special edition of “Lab Gab” will be streamed on our socials in late January – so stay tuned to this blog and follow our social channels for more information!

UPDATE: We received hundreds of questions and Oberwolf and Philip have covered many topics in the interview. Watch this special pre-recorded edition of Lab Gab on Monday, January 31st at 9am PT on our YouTube channel. 

A Year of Transition

2021 was a year of transition for the Second Life team. While there were many accomplishments worth celebrating that helped to improve our collective Second Life experiences, we want to start by acknowledging the many contributions of and pay our respects to Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, who passed away earlier this year. 

Ebbe embraced all aspects of Second Life, learning about its many nuances to understand the impacts of decisions we make.  He put tremendous effort into understanding the community, and many of us who are deeply embedded in Second Life. Ebbe’s goals for Second Life included promoting Second Life as the world’s best virtual world, community and platform. Ebbe would be very proud of our accomplishments today. There is no doubt in our minds that he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

We miss Ebbe but his spirit lives on through many of the initiatives and features he championed during his many years leading Second Life.

More Changes
The year 2021 had several hellos and goodbyes among the Second Life leadership team. Former VP of engineering Oz Linden retired mid-year. Oz was an instrumental force in driving key decisions and implementations of Second Life’s development for over a decade. Oz left on a high note, having successfully completed the tremendous effort of migrating Second Life into the Cloud. We have felt his absence, celebrated his tenure, cast him in bronze, and used extensively his blanket permission to blame him for everything that goes wrong.

We have been thrilled to welcome Oz’s replacement Andrew Kertesz (better known as Mojo Linden) in August. Mojo has a wealth of experience building teams and launching PC, mobile, and console game products – and we are already seeing him work his magic on new initiatives for the coming year. Spoiler alert: Keep reading for a peek at our 2022 roadmap!

We also welcomed new ownership this year as Oberwolf Linden (a.k.a. Brad Oberwager) stepped in as Executive Chairman following the successful acquisition of Linden Lab by an investment group he leads with Randy Waterfield. Earlier this year, Oberwolf made his debut on “Lab Gab” – if you missed it, we recommend you check it out to hear directly from him about his vision and enthusiasm for Second Life.

Since that appearance, Oberwolf has not wasted any time in allocating new resources to Linden Lab, including the addition of several new engineers and developers, as well as other key leaders to help us further improve and grow faster. Among the newest hires are several established industry veterans including a new Chief Marketing Officer, Chief of Staff, Chief People Officer, and Chief Information Security Officer. 

So many changes…but that leads us to some exciting plans for 2022!

2022 Roadmap

We are already hard at work on several new features and improvements for the coming year. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s underway:

• Avatar “expressiveness” that brings camera-based gestures and movement to your avatar for a whole new level of interaction and connectedness
• Premium Plus - a new upgrade option with added features and extras
• A new mobile viewer to enhance and improve your Second Life experience
• Improved group chat reliability
• Viewer and script performance improvements 
• New user avatar customization and improvements
• Updated mesh optimizer
• Search engine improvements
• Improved materials and terrain
• Adding web marketplace variants
• …and much more!

We can’t wait to unveil more details on these and other improvements in 2022. We’ll be sharing more specifics on a future episode of our streaming video show “Lab Gab” and our blog soon.

2021 Highlights

As we prepare for the coming year, we also want to reflect on key accomplishments for 2021. 

Migration to the Cloud
The year started strong with our successful migration to the Cloud, which was completed in January after many years of careful preparation to minimize disruption to the Second Life community. We can’t emphasize enough how complex and delicate this transition was, but we were all happy to breathe a sigh of relief upon its successful completion. We have spent a good part of this year optimizing our infrastructure in the Cloud to better take advantage of the new possibilities. 
 
Performance Improvements
We’re proud of the many Second Life performance enhancements that launched in the past year including investments in our infrastructure to further improve speed and cadence of updates, overhauling the onboarding experience for the newest Residents, various UI and search cleanup improvements, and backend work to ensure compliance with multiple regulatory requirements. As an example, we’ve seen some of our lowest viewer crash rates ever – a 35% decrease in crashes from a couple of years ago! 

Over the last few months we have been busy optimizing our viewer and simulator, too. We have already made good gains that we are eager to share with the community as we deploy in the new year. An area of emphasis and success for us has been improved avatar rendering; initial test results show an increase from 25fps to 55fps with our new viewer with 20 avatars in the scene. 

We have also seen great script performance improvements with our last set of server upgrades and move to AMD hardware. There is yet another significant server upgrade in RC now and rolling out to the full grid in January. 

New Features
Are you in a lot of groups and getting too many offline messages in your email, but still want to see offline IMs? No problem. Receiving group notices to your email while you are offline is a new preference that you control separately from your offline instant message preferences. You are now able to choose between getting only IMs, only Group notices, both, or neither through email while offline.

Based on popular demand, we unveiled several new limited-edition “Last Name” options over the past year including some specialty-themed and holiday offerings. UwU or OwO, anyone? (We counted the paws. It’s UwU. Some of us knew that all along.)

Another popular request from our community has been support for multi-factor authentication, and other additional account security improvements to help protect our Residents. There’s also the new 360 Snapshot Tool that enables more immersive 360-degree snapshots to be taken within Second Life and shared externally. Many people in the community are already testing out the new feature – check out these images taken by our own Alexa Linden on Flickr.

Improving the New User Experience
We recognize the importance of first impressions to Second Life, so we’ve invested in enhancements to the new user experience including an all-new Welcome Island and related New User Guidebook. We continue to iterate on different approaches to onboarding. 

Improvements to Search have also started to roll out. We recently gave Search a visual refresh this year, and that’s being followed up next year with an investment to improve the quality of Second Life search results.

Let’s not forget the many improvements to the Marketplace! In 2021, we shipped over 140 Marketplace updates and fixes. Highlights include tying Marketplace into the overall single sign-on (SSO) system, adding a “Save For Later” feature in the shopping cart, adding bulk redelivery for merchants, as well as fixing several issues and improving speed and stability. There is still a lot more in the works for the Marketplace in the coming year. 

Linden Homes

2021 saw the release of of two different Linden Homes themes and the introduction of a third.  In March the Chalet type Linden Home was launched, and in August the Fantasy type Linden Homes were launched. 

The newest theme, Newbrooke will be joining the available new Linden Homes very soon. 

Marketing the “Metaverse”
So, perhaps you have heard of this new thing called the metaverse?  Unless you’ve been living under a rock (virtual or otherwise), you probably already know that Facebook recently changed its corporate name to Meta as they work on their own vision and version of a “metaverse.” While we appreciate that this development has super-charged interest in virtual worlds, we also know that there is genuine concern about Facebook’s plans in this space given its spotty reputation on many issues including consumer data privacy and protections.

At Second Life, we’re proud that we don’t monetize, sell, or share consumer data - and we’ve been heartened to see the mainstream media reevaluate our own virtual world amidst the heightened interest in all-things-metaverse including a renewed recognition and celebration of our pioneering contributions to the concepts of virtual economies, cultures, and communities.

As a result, we had one of our strongest years ever in mainstream and specialized media coverage - with over 15,000 articles and broadcast outlets referencing Second Life in 2021 according to PR tracking service Cision. Mainstream media highlights for the past year include prominent coverage across the globe including BBC News, TIME Magazine, The Telegraph, VentureBeat, Business Insider, Right This Minute TV, France TV, and many, many more.

2021 was also a “year of experiments” for Second Life marketing including a few “out of the box” ideas to draw attention to Second Life through new partnerships and content initiatives.

We recently tested a limited roll out of our first mainstream commercial “Children of Creation,” which won both top prize at the 2021 Telly Awards and a top 2021 Clio Award (the advertising industry’s equivalent of the Oscars). Elements of the commercial can be seen on our newly-revamped homepage, but you can also check it out on YouTube.

Over the past year, we’ve aligned with several community content creators and external partners to collaborate on new cross-promotion opportunities that aim to broaden the appeal and awareness of Second Life. Partnerships span a broad range of communities including fans of indie comic books (Zenescope), indie films (Film Threat), sports (NFL Alumni Association), and animation (Titmouse). 

So, what’s next? In the coming year, we’re allocating even more resources to help us better proactively capture new PR and media opportunities. We’re also gearing up for several exciting new community promotions and social media content initiatives. 

Happy Holidays from Second Life

We’re sincerely grateful for the support and loyalty of the entire Second Life community - and we will continue to work hard to improve your virtual lives in the coming year and beyond.

Have a great holiday,

The Second Life team

P.S. We just posted on our socials a new year-end video that spotlights several of our community members as they share what Second Life means to them this holiday season. Check it out!

To celebrate the winter holiday season, we are releasing new limited edition last names today!

The following winter-themed names are only available until January 5th:  
Snowflake
Kringle
Yule
Fruitcake
Ninnymuggins
Humbug
Hollyberry
Jinglepaw

These names for winter are seasonal and may come back around this time next year, for a limited time.

The following is a screenshot of the full list of current last names available:

We have been very pleased to see the response to our limited edition last names. We will continue to make additional updates to the available last name pool, so if these options aren’t for you, stay tuned for future updates. You can also suggest your favorite name on our suggestion form, most of the new names were chosen from there! 

For more information about the costs and how-tos involved in name changes, read the Changing your username FAQ. Click to change your name now!
 

Happy December! 

We will soon be adding an option to email notification preferences. Currently, you can choose to receive IMs in your email when you are not logged in to Second Life. There will now be an additional setting that controls whether you receive Group notices in email.

These settings are moving from the Viewer Preferences window to https://accounts.secondlife.com/change_email. A verified email address is still required for receiving these notifications.

We are rolling this change out in stages. If you change your settings, it may be up to two weeks before it takes effect.

The default for the new setting affecting Group notices will be OFF. If you wish to receive Group notices in email, you will need to visit the web page and opt in.

This change is motivated by feedback from our community as well as residents frequently marking Group Notice emails as spam.  We want emails to our residents to be as relevant and useful as possible! 

________________________________________________

When the full rollout of the change is complete on December 15, residents will have the option to opt-in or out of offline communication preferences separately for offline IMs and offline group notifications.  In the past if residents requested offline communication you would receive both IMs and group notifications when you were not inworld; with this change residents will not receive offline group notifications unless they explicitly ask for them.  They will still receive offline IMs if they subscribed to offline notifications before the change.  

The web page for opting in to receiving group notifications will go live on December 8, 2021 but some preference updates will not be applied until December 15.  If a resident does not explicitly sign up for offline group notifications before December 15 they will stop receiving them after that date.  Any preference changes made after December 15 will go into effect immediately.

If a resident has requested no offline communications the preference will not change.
 

December has begun and we have lots in store for you this holiday season, including our annual snowball fight, exclusive premium gift, swag for all, the magic of Winter Wonderland, SL Christmas Expo, and more!

WINTER WONDERLAND IS OPEN

Winter Wonderland

Discover an exciting snowy adventure in this winter attraction by Linden Lab. Enjoy some holiday gifts in the Village of Lights, then make your way to snowboarding, snowmobiling, ice-skating, or snowball fighting in the snowball fight arena. If you’re in the mood for something a bit quieter, take a breath-taking trip on the Ferris Wheel and catch incredible views of the twinkling lights and shimmery snow.

Visit in Second Life

Winter Wonderland is back in all its beautiful glory with interactive fun that you won’t want to miss! Start your adventure in the Village of Lights, then make your way to snowboarding, snowmobiling, ice-skating, and of course, the snowball fight arena. These activities are more fun with friends - so grab your besties and plan to spend a few hours catching everything that Winter Wonderland has to offer. If you’re in the mood for something a bit quieter after all that running around, take a breathtaking trip on the Ferris Wheel and catch incredible views of the twinkling lights and shimmery snow. (You may be prompted to opt in to the Winter Wonderland experience in order to participate in the activities - be sure to read and accept the experience.)

LINDEN & RESIDENT SNOWBALL FIGHT

Linden & Resident Snowball Fight

Get in the winter spirit for the most epic snowball fight in Second Life. Come with a group of friends and meet new people - either way, you're sure to have a blast as you toss snowballs at other Residents and even Lindens! The annual Snowball Fight event will be held on December 17th at 10am to 11am PT and another one at 2pm to 3pm PT.

Visit in Second Life

‘Tis the season for some snow-slinging shenanigans at the Winter Wonderland Snowball Fight Arena.

Get your warm clothes and throwing arms ready - it’s time for a Lindens and Residents snowball fight! This snowball showdown means you're free to pelt your fellow Second Life Residents and Lindens with a bevy of sparkling snowballs - launched fresh from the snow-arsenal available at the arena.

The battles take place on Friday, December 17th from 10am to 11am PT and then again from  2pm to 3pm PT. Spots are limited, so be sure to get there early to grab your free snow launching weaponry from the vendors around the arena. 

Mark your calendars, assemble your dream squad, and be there!

WINTER SWAGINATOR HUNT

Winter Swaginator Hunt

‘Tis the season to be jolly - and what could be more jolly than new gifts? From now through the end of December, Second Life will be giving away 4 exclusive Linden Bears for everyone! Pick up your HUD at the Meauxle Bureaux and make sure to complete the gift hunt in order by following the clues in the HUD and local chat. Happy hunting!

Visit in Second Life

The Swaginator is back with seasonal gifts for everyone! Pick up and attach your Swaginator HUD, and follow the clues in local chat to find each of the four exclusive Linden Bears, handcrafted for this special occasion!

NEW WINTER PREMIUM GIFT

Premium Gift Collection Spot 1

Premium members can grab the newest gift at this convenient kiosk, located in Unttan.

Visit in Second Life

Premium members - we have something special for you - a limited and exclusive Premium-Only gift that’s sure to delight and add a little extra holiday charm to your inworld adventures. Drop by one of the Premium Gift kiosks and take it for a whirl!

Included, you’ll find a Premium Member Token and Premium Member Token HUD, which are the keys to Premium Only snowball weapons at the Snowball Fight arena in Winter Wonderland. The HUD will give you access to some upgraded snow arsenal. Remember to attach your HUD at the arena to access and rez your snow-slinging artillery. 

Get your Premium Gift at one of the Premium Gift kiosks inworld - before they disappear!

THE 11TH ANNUAL SL CHRISTMAS EXPO TO BENEFIT THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY

11th Annual SL Christmas Expo

Visit the 11th Annual SL Christmas Expo, held December 3-14 in support of the American Cancer Society's fight against childhood cancer. This 14 region shopping extravaganza features 170+ Merchants, 3 Breedable Regions, and many holiday activities including Twirl & Whirl Hunt, Lights of Hope Decoration Contest, 100+ hours of live entertainment, and more! Linden Lab will reveal the next edition of the coveted Linden Home series at the Expo and provide a Limited Edition Christmas item and special surprises. For more info, visit: slchristmasexpo.com

Visit in Second Life

This year’s SL Christmas Expo is bursting with bright and merry delights - all for supporting the American Cancer Society and the fight against childhood cancer. From December 3rd through the 14th enjoy many holiday activities at the expo and donate for a good cause! 

Linden Lab has also joined in on the fun! Watch out for these Linden-themed activities at the expo:

• Vote (by donation to a special ACS Christmas Expo Kiosk) for your favorite decorated Linden Home at the annual Lights of Hope Home Decorating Contest. 
• Pose with Santa Patch and his Molelves! A very special opportunity to pose for a picture with our VP of Product Operations, Patch Linden, and his team of Molelves - on Friday, December 10th from 12pm to 3pm PT, in the main SL Christmas Expo region!
• New theme of Linden Homes will be revealed on Monday, December 6th -> watch this space! 
• A new Limited Edition Christmas Item -> Patch on a shelf, available here.

Head over to discover the magic of the holiday season and the joy of giving!

2021 HOLIDAY SHOP & HOP

The 2021 Holiday Shop & Hop returns on December 8th with 240+ participating Merchants across 12 regions. Your guide to the Shop & Hop, including early access, can be found here: https://second.life/2021HolidayShopHop 

WINTER ATTRACTIONS ON THE DESTINATION GUIDE

If you’re looking for even more winter activities, there’s already close to 100 wintery themed locations in the Winter Attractions category on the Destination Guide. We’re adding new regions daily, so if you have a spot you’d like to invite other Residents to explore, make sure to check out the submission guidelines and submit yours today!

Wishing a safe and happy holiday season to everyone in our virtual community!

Hello, and Happy Monday!

Today we’re excited to announce that we’ve updated the look of our inworld and web-side Search feature to bring it more in line with the look and feel of our viewer and the direction that that rest of our web properties will be going (see the new Join page, and the new secondlife.com landing page - they’re excellent). 
 

New Search home page in the viewer.

Our goal was to clean up the interface and provide a more streamlined and user friendly Search feature that maintained all the functionality that we’ve all come to expect and rely upon. Helpful tool tips will guide you in getting the most functionality out of your searches, and will update as we add more options for more sophisticated searches.
 

Search options are detailed in the search bar tool tip.

Once you’ve begun your search, you’ll find that all the familiar options are still available so that you can refine your search for Places, People, Events, Groups, Land to Buy or Rent, Classifieds, etc. We have not changed the algorithm that our Search feature uses in any way. We have simply tried to present the information in a more pleasing and useful manner.
 

All your favorite functions are easy to find.

All searches can be filtered by the convenient maturity dropdowns.

We’re extremely excited to be rolling this out today in time for all of our Holiday searching. We hope that you’ll enjoy the new look and feel just as much as we do, and we look forward to unveiling a host of new features for Search to go along with this facelift in the new year! Happy Searching!

Hello Residents!

Just a friendly reminder during cyber security awareness month about the security measures you can take to protect your avatar, your land, and everything in your inventory!

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Even if hackers guess your password, they won't be able to access your personal info or move money if you have MFA. More info on MFA - or just get started in setting it up.

Verified Emails: If your account is compromised, there are steps to reclaim it. But we need a verified email address to help do that. To see if your email address is confirmed, go to your Account -> Change Email page, and look for the √ Verified next to your email address.

Password Security:  Please practice safe password habits:

• Don’t share your passwords with anyone!
• Keep your password unique and special to Second Life. Reusing the same password across different platforms or websites makes your account vulnerable if one of those sites suffer a data breach. 
• Choose a secure password with upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, and symbols, and avoid common dictionary words or phrases.
• No Linden will ever ask for your password. Likewise, there is never a reason for you to enter your password to unlock an item, receive a discount, or anything else.
• Use only the official Second Life Viewer, or a Third Party Viewer from the Third Party Viewer Directory. If the viewer does not allow you to log directly into your account for any reason, the viewer is NOT secure.
• You can read more about keeping your information secure on the wiki at Linden Lab Official: Password Protection

To celebrate Halloween we are releasing new limited edition last names today!

The following Halloween-themed names are only available until November 1st:  
Trick
Treat
Lecter
Pumpkins
Ghostly

These names for Halloween are seasonal and may come back around this time next year, for a limited time.

The following names have been removed from the available last names list: 
Primless
Knickers
Orlando
Aviator
Caboose

The following is a screenshot of the full list of current last names available:

We have been very pleased to see the response to our limited edition last names. We will continue to make additional updates to the available last name pool, so if these options aren’t for you, stay tuned for future updates. You can also suggest your favorite name on our suggestion form, some of the new names were chosen from there! 

For more information about the costs and how-tos involved in name changes, read the Changing your username FAQ. Click to change your name now!

After about 11 years at Linden Lab, Oz Linden recently took his much-deserved retirement and we miss him dearly. 

To celebrate Oz and his many contributions to the community, Linden Lab commissioned talented artist Bryn Oh to create a special bronze sculpture of his avatar as a retirement gift. Using an image of his avatar as a reference, Bryn created Oz in a very unique way -- the infamous Second Life “away” pose..

“I felt it was nice to make Oz in "away" because maybe retirement it's more of an adieu than a goodbye,” says Bryn in a recent Flickr post.

After keeping the project a secret for the past couple of months, Oz received the gift this week.

“I am overwhelmed. Bryn Oh! - I feel as though I have an original Rodin that I modeled for!,” he says.

We at Linden Lab also want to thank the lovely and talented Bryn Oh for creating this thoughtful piece for Oz. And to Oz, we miss you and hope you are enjoying your retirement! 
 

Today we’re introducing an additional way for you to protect your account!

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is now available to all residents on their accounts. MFA is an additional step to prove your identity before gaining access to sensitive information or actions on your account. It provides an extra layer of security to supplement your username and password. Widely adopted by many products, MFA is an industry standard.

How does it work? You can learn more about MFA, find out what you’ll need to do, and activate it in the knowledge base article!

You will need to take action in order to activate MFA. It is entirely opt-in. Go to accounts.secondlife.com/mfa/status and get started!

Note: MFA adds protection only to your accounts.secondlife.com login. MFA does not affect how you log in to the SL Viewer. If you activate MFA, you should continue to change your password regularly and choose strong passwords.

In future releases we plan to extend MFA’s protections to additional pages on secondlife.com, the marketplace, and the viewer. We are also exploring an email-based implementation.

Due to a changing regulatory climate, we’ve had to make the difficult decision to sunset a very popular sales mechanism for content in Second Life.  It’s widely known as "gacha", and is defined by a chance-based outcome as a result of a payment.  

We know that creators plan their content releases far in advance and will need to re-tool their products, so to mitigate the impact to those affected, we are giving a 30-day grace period, until midnight SLT on August 31.  After that time, selling content via gacha machines will no longer be permitted in Second Life.  Enforcement won’t start until September 1; after that date an Abuse Report for “Gaming Policy Violation” will be the preferred method of reporting this content to Linden Lab.  

We will continue to allow any sales where a payment is given for a known item, which means that items that had been purchased as “gacha” will be allowed to be re-sold as long as the buyer knows in advance the item and quantity they will receive. We will, of course, still allow fatpacks, and any other currently-allowed distribution mechanisms. 

We did not make this decision lightly and we understand that it will impact creators as well as event organizers and certainly the shoppers! We look forward to fun creative ways of engagement that will come instead.  

We realize that this announcement may leave the community with questions.  This forum thread is going to be monitored and we will answer any related questions in there. 

We have developed an FAQ to assist with answering some of the most common questions we are being asked.  This list is not exhaustive, and we will continue working to get answers and add them here.

Q:  Is it possible to extend the policy deadline?

A:  We are sorry that we are not able to further extend the policy deadline.  However, we have been able to extend the enforcement of the policy change an additional 30 days.  To be clear, starting on September 1 we expect gacha as a sales mechanism to cease. However we will start with warnings, and any enforcement of the policy as it would be applied on an account will not begin until after September 30.

Q:  How are breedables impacted by this policy change?

A:  This current policy change and deadline does not apply to breedables or other life simulation products.  At the present we are working with external counsel on the subject of breedables.  If any action is required we will make a separate announcement and have a separate timeline associated with it. 

Q:  Will popular games like 7seas be impacted by this policy change?

A:  No, because the purchase of bait to go “fishing” is a purchase being made of a known item, and also the fish you catch while playing the game are non-transferable.  To be clear, if they are not currently, they must be going forward.

Q: How are subscription boxes affected?

A: Subscription boxes are not affected as long as all subscribers are getting the same content box. Different items being sent to different subscribers on a chance basis is not allowed. 

Q:  How are Linden Homes affected?

A: Linden Homes are not impacted by this policy change.  Linden Lab owns the homes and they are not transferable.  

There are still several great questions which we are working to answer with our legal team.  We will update with additional information as soon as possible.
 

Additional FAQ’s for August 5, 2021:

Q:  Should any newly developed sales mechanism or newly created items be called “gacha” going forward?

A:  No, as we would like to eliminate any confusion with the usage of the term going forward.

Q:  Is a game that requires skill to win the prize you want permitted going forward?  For example, you throw a dart and you must hit a certain number to get the prize corresponding to that number.

A:  This would need to go through the Skilled Game review process and be presented in a Skilled Gaming region, if approved.

Q:  I am selling an item that is known, paid for and delivered to a purchaser, and for each purchaser they are entered into a prize drawing where randomly selected people who bought the item may receive a rare item as a result of the drawing, is this permitted?

A:  You must also provide a free, concise and easy way for anyone to enter into the random drawing with an equal chance to win.

Q:  Can I sell an item, and also then include an unknown random item attached as a bonus? For example, Like a buy one, get one free (BOGO), but the free item is the random/unknown item.

A:  No

Q:  Could a “conveyor belt” system work?  

Example:  The vendor board selects an item at random and displays it for purchase.  That item remains on display and available for purchase until a buyer touches the vendor which locks it to them for purchase.  This allowed the buyer to purchase the item and deliver it.  The vendor unlocks and then selects another item at random and displays it for purchase and the cycle repeats.

Example image here and credit to Nadi Vemo for the approved vendor design.

A:  Yes, as long as the item currently being purchased is known. Note however that you should discontinue the use of the “gacha” term for these sales. 

Q:  But what about breedables (again)?

A:  If you buy a brown cat, and a blue cat (as examples), as long as you knew you were getting a brown cat and a blue cat at the time of sale, this is acceptable at the present including the various unknown traits they may come with or develop.  Secondarily, when those cats make little kittens with unknown outcomes, this is also acceptable.  Lastly, the resale of any breedables will require at the time of purchase that the purchaser knows what they are purchasing at the root level (for example, it is a blue cat).  

Q:  What about my specific idea, you didn’t cover it here?

A:  We wish we could cover all the great ideas we’ve seen proposed to date. Sadly we can’t address them all and if there are any questions or proposed ideas that would suggest any other permutations on the policy, we recommend a simple and thoughtful approach to stay within the boundaries of the policy.  Failing that, please feel free to contact customer support.

If we see more areas that we need to cover, we will look at doing another FAQ update next week.
 

We have been very pleased to see the response to our limited edition last names. We hope to do a lot more of them in the future. 

Today some of the older last name options were removed and the following new ones were added:
Vanlager
Wainwright
Tater
Skydancer
Primless
Vermilion
Morningstar

Here is the full list of current last names available until mid-October:

We will continue to make additional updates to the available last name pool, so if these options aren’t for you, stay tuned for future updates. You can also suggest your favorite name on our suggestion form, some of the new names were chosen from there! 

Look out for Halloween-themed limited edition last names in mid-October!

For more information about the costs and how-tos involved in name changes, read the Changing your username FAQ. Click to change your name now!
 

To celebrate Second Life’s 18th birthday and Father’s Day we are releasing new limited edition last names today!

The following names for Father’s Day are only available until June 25th.  
Daddy
Pop
Sire

These names for Father’s Day are seasonal and may come back around this time next year, for a limited time.

The following names are in theme with SL18B this year and are only available until July 9th.
Mystic
Fae
Mote
Woodsprite
Silvius
Fyrewik
Padfoot

We will continue to make additional updates to the available last name pool, so if these options aren’t for you, stay tuned for future updates. 

For more information about the costs and how-tos involved in name changes, read the Changing your username FAQ. Click to change your name now!