Are lucky money chairs against the new TOS?

[Rolig Loon]

There's no skill involved in "winning" at a lucky chair and you don't pay anything to play either.  It's a promotional gimmick, handing out free gifts to random passersby.  If you examine the Gambling Policy or the Skill Gaming Policy, you'll find nothing in there that makes Lucky Chairs illegal.  Having said that, Lucky Chairs are nowhere near as popular as they were back in, say, 2007.  Then again, neither are in-world shops in general.  In world merchants seem to have moved on to other marketing ploys.  Hunts are much more popular than they used to be, and so are various "member only" specials, and there are a lot more blogs than there once were.  Maybe Lucky Chairs are passe. 

[Rolig Loon]

There's no skill involved in "winning" at a lucky chair and you don't pay anything to play either.  It's a promotional gimmick, handing out free gifts to random passersby.  If you examine the Gambling Policy or the Skill Gaming Policy, you'll find nothing in there that makes Lucky Chairs illegal.  Having said that, Lucky Chairs are nowhere near as popular as they were back in, say, 2007.  Then again, neither are in-world shops in general.  In world merchants seem to have moved on to other marketing ploys.  Hunts are much more popular than they used to be, and so are various "member only" specials, and there are a lot more blogs than there once were.  Maybe Lucky Chairs are passe. 

[Lindal Kidd]

I have very seldom seen a Lucky Chair that pays out $L as its prize, but I have seen a couple of them.  Most Lucky Chairs give out merchandise.

As far as I know, a Lucky Chair that gives out a cash prize is not against LL's gambling policy.  

[Prokofy Neva]

"Money chairs" that pay out money to avatars who sit in them are exactly the same thing as "camping chairs" and will be treated the same as them by the Lindens.

Indeed they are outlawed by the TOS -- it's not about gaming, but about "traffic enhancement":

See here:

6.3 Additional rules of conduct apply to users of Second Life:

In addition to the rules set forth in Sections 6.1 and 6.2 above, you agree that you will not:

(i) Use robots or other automated means to increase traffic to any Virtual Land;

It's not only about bots here; the chair itself is the 'automated means' giving out money and enabling traffic injection.

What's been provided here is merely an answer from a fellow resident on their guess as to how this might apply under gaming; I'm also merely applying my common-sense interpretation of the TOS, but at least I'm pointing out that this isn't about gaming but about traffic manipulation.

The Lindens will ultimately rule on it and my bet is that they will not allow it, because it's traffic manipulation.

But they may simply not bother to enforce it. I'll be happy to abuse-report it when I see it as will others, and maybe they will pay attention.

Years of effort went into getting the Lindens to eliminate the manipulation of traffic -- it's far from free of elimination but at least the obvious gaming is now in principle removed and able to be enforced, i.e. boxes of bots. 

Search is distorted and the market is not free when people can game traffic to create the false impression a site is popular and has sales when in fact it doesn't. The Lindens' search algorithms compensate for some of this anyway and themselves arguably constitute a form of unacceptable market interference but that's another story.

The bottom line is that paying people to stay on your land thereby driving up traffic results is something still punishable under the TOS, and it's not about gambling.