Why did all large RL companies leave SL?

Madelaine McMasters · June 19, 2013

Miko Kuramoto wrote:

financial and..........

the sexual reputation that is tagged with SL. As a gamer (wow, swtor, lol, tera, gw2 just to name a few), most other non-SL gamers that i know think this is an erotic rpg. Big RL companies won't be associated with that. I miss them, they had fun sims.

I think SL's reputation for sex preceded the arrival of big RL companies. If they left because of sex, why did they arrive in the first place?

Freya Mokusei · June 19, 2013

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Miko Kuramoto wrote:

financial and..........

the sexual reputation that is tagged with SL. As a gamer (wow, swtor, lol, tera, gw2 just to name a few), most other non-SL gamers that i know think this is an erotic rpg. Big RL companies won't be associated with that. I miss them, they had fun sims.

I think SL's reputation for sex preceded the arrival of big RL companies. If they left because of sex, why did they arrive in the first place?

This! Well put, Madeline.

SL begun as a virtual world for grown-ups, and stayed consistant with this initially. Adult content was a predictable use for SL, and one that pretty much everyone expected. It's well-known in the media industry that adult content is a precursor to profit and mainstream success (see also VHS tapes, the Internet) - it wouldn't have scared anyone away.

The only reason that this was eventually softened was because of the cost of operating the Teen Grid as a separate entity, and the gigantic marketshare that the <20y/o audience has in virtual spaces.

I would put forward that LL's inability to remain consistant with this starting objective (a virtual world for grown-ups) has damaged its standing with RL companies more than adult content ever has. Companies could never be sure that their existance would be tolerated in SL tomorrow (as happened with Gambling, Education, Charity), or whether SL would eat them or cut them out of the market (GOM, XStreet), whether they'd need intense re-training and widespread IT support to get their employees back online after viewer or server upgrades done without warning (Windlight, Viewer 2, other poor quality releases).

Czari Zenovka · June 19, 2013

Bree Giffen wrote:

I really don't think it was the sex that caused them to leave. It was the fact that SL did not live up to the hype. The hype was that SL would be the next evolution of the internet. The internet had just started moving into web 2.0 which was having websites not powered by host generated content but powered by user generated content. We see that now like tumblr, youtube, facebook, etc. SL was thought to be the next thing after web 2.0 as a kind of virtual internet where instead of just browsing a website you would have an avatar that could visit 3d virtual sims. A company sim would be like a company website. I think there was a point when the ball was rolling and the bandwagon was being hopped on but people just didn't stay because SL was too hard to learn and the system requirements were too high.

Guess what improvements have been made to SL? Make it harder to learn and make the system requirements higher.

This response makes the most sense to me and I do recall all the talk about web 2.0 when I began SL.

Theresa Tennyson · June 19, 2013

The 3D environment of SL is in many ways a remarkably flexible building toy. You can make a simulation of just about anything you can imagine and it's more accessible than "professional" tools. BUT - it also limits how good any particular simulation can BE. Ir also wasn't designed with the durability that real-world major commercial applications need.

Basically, it's LEGO, okay? And I'm not saying for a moment that LEGO isn't awesome, but it is what it is. If you read every article about the "failure" of Second Life and substitute LEGO for Second Life you wouldn't wonder why the platform failed, you'd wonder why major companies put not only eight-year olds but apparently rather SLOW eight-year olds in decision-making positions.

Miko Kuramoto · June 19, 2013

I googled the OP's question and found this from here http://kryptonradio.com/2012/09/24/linden-lab-leaving-second-life-behind-with-pattern/ about LL:

"In recent weeks, third party observers have noted that Second Life, after peaking in 2010, has been slowly losing its edge. Users of the popular open-ended shared-experience 3D social and creative environment have lamented what seemed like bizarre customer service decisions, including:

Abusive pricing for virtual real estate, and a dizzying bait-and-switch 66% increase on Homestead sim pricing
Dramatic drop-off in in-game platform administrator activity and accessibility
Dramatic drop-off in response to abuse reports filed by citizens
Failure to maintain their previously aggressive zero-tolerance stance on griefing and the presence of cybergangs in-world
Discontinuance of the discount offered to educational institutions
A recent decision to remove the ability of the official Second Life client to connect to other grids, such as OSGrid, InWorldz, Avination or SpotOn3d
Arbitrary changes to the third party viewer policy that make it extremely difficult to create and maintain interoperable viewers"

Freya Mokusei · June 19, 2013

lol kryptonradio.

Finding any facts on that website would be accidental.

Dillon Levenque · June 19, 2013

Yep. Clearly it is all but over. Time to hang up the pumps and call it a day, I guess. Or not.

I love an article that says something about things "in recent weeks" and then leads with a link to something that happened four years earlier.

Madeliefste Oh · June 19, 2013

Sy Beck wrote:

I can tell you one main reason and I write with a little authority on the matter as an organisation that I once worked for sent me to SL in late 2006 to investigate marketing and exposure opportunities in SL. We quickly concluded that SL had near zero marketing and exposure opportunities. Apart from one off occasions of having LL flag up the news that your organisation had taken up a presence in SL to its residents or that RL media publicise that you have then that was the apex of any publicity and exposure you were going to get in SL.

In real life you can place commercials in newspapers, on TV, billboards or establish a shop, which you know will have at least a certain amount of traffic through them. In SL there is no such captive traffic and even the busiest places will rarely have over 100 people passing through them.

I think you hit the nail right on the head.

What I would like to add is that there were also compagnies, who did not sent their own employees to investigate the possibilities in SL,but they were talking into it by their marketing agency. Those came up with figures like 25M+ residents, growing by so and so many a month. Only thing they forgot to tell is that there is not way to reach the population all at the same time, and marketing only starts when you have build up your sim.

Sy Beck · June 19, 2013

Madeliefste Oh wrote:

Sy Beck wrote:

I can tell you one main reason and I write with a little authority on the matter as an organisation that I once worked for sent me to SL in late 2006 to investigate marketing and exposure opportunities in SL. We quickly concluded that SL had near zero marketing and exposure opportunities. Apart from one off occasions of having LL flag up the news that your organisation had taken up a presence in SL to its residents or that RL media publicise that you have then that was the apex of any publicity and exposure you were going to get in SL.

In real life you can place commercials in newspapers, on TV, billboards or establish a shop, which you know will have at least a certain amount of traffic through them. In SL there is no such captive traffic and even the busiest places will rarely have over 100 people passing through them.

I think you hit the nail right on the head.

What I would like to add is that there were also compagnies, who did not sent their own employees to investigate the possibilities in SL,but they were talking into it by their marketing agency. Those came up with figures like 25M+ residents, growing by so and so many a month. Only thing they forgot to tell is that there is not way to reach the population all at the same time, and marketing only starts when you have build up your sim.

That's why I said at the end of my post that the only way to attract them back, as advertisers or a presence, is to monetise the chat function and/or the viewer because it's the one way that you can have the whole of the online SL population as a captive audience at once.

If I was them [LL] I'd imagine they would start by placing pop up ads in the chat and viewers of free accounts. Then I would move on to taking away the free stipend from premium members if they didn't want ads in their chat or viewer or paying a larger stipend if a premium member accepted the ad/product placement pop ups in chat or the viewer.

Nuhai Ling · June 21, 2013

I hate to burst everyone's bubble but Real Life companies left SL in 2008 after Linden Lab changed their TOS policy concerning copyrights and ownership. At the time there were several legal questions being raised about copyright infringment and ownership of virtual property on Second Life servers. In response, Linden Lab ammended their TOS. What drove companies out almost immediately was this gem:

7.2 You grant certain Content licenses to Linden Lab by submitting your Content to the Service.

You agree that by uploading, publishing, or submitting any Content to or through the Servers, Websites, or other areas of the Service, you hereby automatically grant Linden Lab a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicenseable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the Service.

You understand that this license enables Linden Lab to display, distribute, promote, and improve the Service. You agree that the license includes the right to copy, analyze and use any of your Content as Linden Lab may deem necessary or desirable for purposes of debugging, testing, or providing support or development services in connection with the Service and future improvements to the Service. The license granted in this Section 7.2 is referred to as the "Service Content License."

Following sections also allowed Second Life users to use any content displayed in public areas as if they were licensed to do so. This completely killed the concept of Real Life advertising in-world. The sections were:

7.3 You grant certain Content licenses to users of Second Life by submitting your Content to publicly accessible areas of the Service.

7.4 You also grant Linden Lab and other users of Second Life a license to use in snapshots and machinima your Content that is displayed In-World in publicly accessible areas of the Service.

In short, no company was willing to give up their property rights to Linden Lab and its users just to have a virtual world presence. At the same time there were also the lawsuits brought against Linden Lab by Stroker Serpentine (the infamous SexGen cases) which started in 2007 and concluded in 2009. In short, Linden Lab was scrambling not to be the target of mass legal actions and consequently distanced themselves as much as possible from offering any binding property rights to SL residents.

This happened before the economy tanked and users under 18 years old were allowed on the main grid. As logical as it seems that companies like Coca-Cola and H&R Block left SL because they could not afford it and were afraid of naked avatars on their sim, those issues had nothing to do with their decision to abandon SL. Sorry!

As a side note, Linden Lab's aversion to legal battles was not limited to the copyright cases. Before that they eliminated in-world gambling because of congressional and legal inquiries, and more recently they changed their policy about third-party linden exchanges to avoid running afoul of federal regulations. No matter how innovative Linden Lab is, they are a company focused on making money rather than being a crusader for virtual reality.

Perrie Juran · June 21, 2013

Nuhai Ling wrote: