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Process Credit Fees Raised. Again.


Pamela Galli
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  • On January 3, 2018, the fee for processing credit transactions (i.e. paying real money into a PayPal or Skrill account) will be 2.5% per transaction, with a $3 (USD) minimum, and no maximum. This fee is currently 1.5% per transaction, with a $3 (USD) minimum and a $25 (USD) maximum.
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So, for example, Processing $5000,  previously cost  $15, now costs $25, in the future it will cost $125. 

Sansar looks like a flop, so take it out on LL creators?

 And yes Linden Lab knows very well that while the supply of products has steadily grown, the demand has steadily decreased along with concurrency. Great time to stick it to merchants.  Oh and be sure in return to continue to ignore merchant pleas for reporting tools and many other things we used to have with Xstreet.  Give us nothing in return for a huge fee increase. 

 

Edited by Pamela Galli
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57 minutes ago, Cindy Evanier said:

"we’re making multi-million dollar investments in Second Life"   and you are paying for it  was my first thought on the "exciting improvements"

LL should take a lesson from Google. Google once managed to present their "second rate sites" database (the one they use to fill up the bottom of their search results lists) in such a positive way, companies actually started asking how they could get their sites moved there from the main base. ;)

"Great news, we'll let you pay more!" simply doesn't cut it.

Edit: Come to think of it, didn't they say the transaction fees added up to so little it hardly mattered? Surely they can't finance a multi-million dollar investment that way?

Edited by ChinRey
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4 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

LL should take a lesson from Google. Google once managed to present their "scond rate sites" database (the one they use to fill up the bottom of their search results lists) in such a positive way, companies actually started asking how they could get their sites moved there from the main base. ;)

"Great news, we'll let you pay more!" simply doesn't cut it.

Edit: Come to think of it, didn't they say the transaction fees added up to so little it hardly mattered? Surely they can't finance a multi-million dollar investment that way?

It’s got to come from someplace, so creators it is!

This is like being a Texas teacher, so that when ever the state looks around for a source of funding it’s always on the teachers backs.

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it would be more exciting when they also would start kicking out the stolen items... improve the structure so we don't see hundreds of different colors from the same item... browsing purchases, redeliver possibilities on mp, and a few more.... strict keyword policy, better search, .. and again a few more....

 

don't slaughter the turkey for christmas too early... it's only november .... also on mp.. and clearly also no christmas at sansar yet.

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1 minute ago, Alwin Alcott said:

it would be more exciting when they also would start kicking out the stolen items... improve the structure so we don't see hundreds of different colors from the same item... browsing purchases, redeliver possibilities on mp, and a few more.... strict keyword policy, better search, .. and again a few more....

 

don't slaughter the turkey for christmas too early... it's only november .... also on mp.. and clearly also no christmas at sansar yet.

 If they spent a tiny fraction on SL of that they spend on Sansar, this would not be such an insult. 

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3 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Well this is clearly ALL the fault of the creators since most of us declined to hop on the Sansar bandwagon. :ph34r:

 Not that there seems to be much to hop onto, but we Mac users can’t hop anyway. 

I do hope the LL board notices what a CF Sansar is and arranges for someone to pay a price. Someone besides LL creators, I mean. 

Edited by Pamela Galli
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I just remembered that there were a fair amount of creators that got stuck with a bunch of money that they couldn't take out (their payout limits went down like mine). Some had many many thousands  of dollars in their accounts and it was going to take a long while to cash out .  LL wasn't being at all helpful with the issue. I am wondering if they are going to get ******* again. Very sad. 

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I was ok with the first raise, understanding of the second raise, but this upcoming one really ticks me off. It's not necessarily the raise itself that bothers me, it's their method of implementation. Its reminiscent of the way they increased our tier fees years ago, ushering in the mass exodus of land holders -- It's done in such an uncomfortable way.  

 

 

This is a really high increase in such a short amount of time. And this is on top of the exchange rate fees and overly high tier costs. 

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1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

it would be more exciting when they also would start kicking out the stolen items...

That gives me a poor excuse for a digression slightly away from the great news about increased fees. (Don't worry, I'll get back on topic at the end ;))

 

I've spent quite a bit of time on the hypergrid the last two weeks and I'm amazed at how much it has developed recently. ubODE may not be quite as good as HAVOK but it's close and far better than Bullet so all the really annoying physics issues have been solved. Lsl scripts tend to work well now and there are even a lot of functions not available in SL. Most the fashionable assets have been ported (those who think you can't copybot mesh, better think again) and is available for free. Stolen goods, yes, but since when did that bother the average SL'er? There is also quite a lot of good original content not found in SL. NPCs have been around for a while and does pretty much all the jobs LL seems to envision for animesh. At least some of the grids have servers and connections that seem as stable and performant as LL's. A sim costs less than one tenth of what it does in SL and you can make it 16 times as big as an SL sim if you like.

Those who try to make a few dollars from virtual reality has no choice. SL and T.A.G. are the only real options and T.A.G. is still way to small a market. And of course people who are well established with lots of friends here, don't want to move. But why would anybody else and newcomers in particular be interested in SL?

One of the most fundamental rules for any business is that you have to have something that sets you apart from your competitors. It doesn't have to be much and it can be a lot of different things but it has to be something. It's getting harder and harder to see what that something is when it comes to Second Life. It used to have the best content, not anymore. It used to have the best software. It still has but not enough to make a significant difference. It has mainland but it's been neglected for so long and most of it is in shambles. It has more people but they are getting more and more isolated from each other. It's been ages since I found a good party in SL - on OSG I can join one every Wednesday and every Saturday. SL used to have the stability but I'm not sure we can trust that anymore - it's very obvious that LL has had serious financial problems the last year or two. It certainly doesn't have any moral high ground when it comes to IP protection.

As far as I can see, the only significant competitive edge Second Life has right now, is its reputation. That may be enough for years to come but it's very fragile. And that brings me back to the topic here: No matter how serious the economic situation is, Linden Lab can not afford to offend significant parts of its user base the way they have done this time.

Offend is the correct word here. "Great news for you, you'll have to pay us more" is an insult to people's intelligence. So please, Linden Lab: if you are so desperate short on cash you have to bleed us for a little bit more, at least have the decency not to say it's for our own good. Nobody's buying it.

Edited by ChinRey
Lots of little typos
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22 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

As far as I can see, the only significant competitive edge Second Life has right now, is its reputation. That may be enough for years to come but it's very fragile. And that brings me back to the topic here: No matter how serious the economic situation is, Linden Lab can not afford to offend significant parts of its user base the way they have done this time.

Offend is the correct word here. "Great news for you, you'll have to pay us more" is an insult to people's intelligence. So please, Linden Lab: if you are so desperate short on cash you have to bleed us for a little bit more, at least have the decency not to say it's for our own good. Nobody's buying it.

This.

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I have never been one to complain about changes Linden Lab does and alot of the changes recently have directly affected me but this change is absurd. Really no maximum limit on the cash out fee just screams GREEDY. I appreciate them providing a platform where I can earn money during my years as a full time student but I can no longer invest in more land unless I start passing these fees on to my tenants which I really do not want to do and have never done. Ughhhh. Does anybody have a shoulder I can cry on? *sigh*

Edited by Lisa006 Baxton
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More nickel-and-diming until one day the point is reached

where it's cheaper to just let the whole crap go. On my end it will be reached soon, and that involves 30+ sims. Blabla about the great improvements...with 30 sims on a server they must be shoveling money. We are not.

Edited by MarmelaGramela Doesburg
typo
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This seems unwise. Given the decline in concurrency and private regions, stimulating the economy would normally be a better approach than attempting to squeeze it -- that can only lead  to stagnation in the long term.

I understand that LL has huge costs associated with the development of Sansar, and I realize that it hasn't become a real revenue stream yet. It's therefore logical that they attempt to increase revenues where they can. But simply increasing the fees on everyone -- especially creators -- is not likely to give them anything but a short-lived boost. It will not increase SL's popularity, concurrency, viability, or profitability in the future. It will, however, result in a lot of unhappy creators who are tired of fee increases and dwindling profits.

If LL had also made revisions to the tier model that might have offset the higher fees, it would have been a different matter. That would have represented a shift from the current (and weird) model where everyone pays very high property taxes but almost no sales tax, to a more sustainable and realistic model. As it is, this is going to cause a lot of anger and frustration -- and with some justification.

I'm perfectly fine with the Lab attempting to increase their revenue from  SL. But this is not a well thought-out approach.

 

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31 minutes ago, Cain Maven said:

But simply increasing the fees on everyone -- especially creators -- is not likely to give them anything but a short-lived boost. It will not increase SL's popularity, concurrency, viability, or profitability in the future

Yes and they must be aware of this. The current management does usually think ahead, they're not the kind of never-worry-about-mañana people who used to run the show. The fact that they keep coming up with all these short-sighted fund raising schemes can only mean that they're constantly running into serious cash flow problems and that is perhaps the most worrying aspect of this. It's especially bad when it happens during what is traditionally the most profitable season in SL.

Edited by ChinRey
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2 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Yes and they must be aware of this. The current management does usually think ahead, they're not the kind of never-worry-about-mañana people who used to run the show. The fact that they keep coming up with all these short-sighted fund raising schemes can only mean that they're constantly running into serious cash flow problems and that is perhaps the most worrying aspect of this.

I agree. Ebbe et al have been pretty good at the helm, as far as I can tell. Hiking fees repeatedly and knowing that you're pissing off one of the most important demographics in SL (important in terms of the platform's future economic viability) cannot possibly be the first choice in any reasonable management strategy. So it does hint at deeper and recurring issues. Let's hope we are wrong.

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Ebbe, if you are listening: Where else charges $125 to simply transfer $5000 to PayPal? That’s nothing but gouging.  I always defend Linden Lab against charges of being “greedy“ but not this time. This time you have earned it, and with it the enmity of many of the people who create this virtual world.

And btw, I pay tier on  a four region store, and almost $200 to sell the example $5000 worth of Lindens.  That’s  about 25% to you before I process credit. And that’s fair. But that’s enough. 

 

Edited by Pamela Galli
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4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I've spent quite a bit of time on the hypergrid the last two weeks and I'm amazed at how much it has developed recently. ubODE may not be quite as good as HAVOK but it's close and far better than Bullet so all the really annoying physics issues have been solved. Lsl scripts tend to work well now and there are even a lot of functions not available in SL. Most the fashionable assets have been ported (those who think you can't copybot mesh, better think again) and is available for free. Stolen goods, yes, but since when did that bother the average SL'er? There is also quite a lot of good original content not found in SL.

I just wanted to explain the "hidden issues" of Opensim where I split my time about half and half for over two years recently. This in part for anyone thinking of jumping off the LL Titanic for "better waters".  Most creators that come to Opensim have no idea how this works and find out sometimes after the fact. 

There is plenty of stolen content for sure. I am pretty certain I wore a stolen skin for most of those two years. I don't "know" that but ...

Even overlooking all the stolen content (mostly from SL elites like Trompe Loeil, LAQ and Dutchie along with tons of brands I don't recognize) there is legitimate content being made there WITH good LODs and physics models (oh my). NOT TONS, granted but some. 

There are two big problems -- or maybe they are just the biggest in my mind -- one is that there are three types of physics in play and folks have a CHOICE which they use. So all items don't work on all grids. And this "mine is better than yours" fight has been going on for years. THERE IS NO STANDARD.

The second is that anyone selling in Opensim to a personally run grid on the hypergrid is essentially selling full perm. Anyone with their own grid can take an item, use the God Powers of their grid and change the permissions AND list themselves as the creator.  

Now most folks are honest, but not everyone and there have been some HUGE exploits and exposees about this issue. I pretty much came to terms with the issue and I still sell though Kitely although I am no longer maintaining a presence in Opensim.  I mostly left not because of business but because people couldn't stop bickering and I finally just got too tired of it all. The fact that all my friends there had left played a big part also.

So should another one of the "to the lifeboats of Opensim" exoduses show up on the horizon, please folks --- do your research.

 

And to the general conversation. It seems very obvious (and has for awhile) that there is a cash flow problem because of Sansar. Since I don't cash out $5000 at a wack it isn't going to affect me as much as some, but it is still unfair and CERTAINLY no way to treat the folks that MAKE SL what it is. Anyone who has joined a new grid or a new platform knows very well that it cannot exist without content. Grids and platforms vie for content creators constantly. Right now there is no huge bright shining star for content creators to head for --- but there are MANY in the works. 

Too many bad feelings and the chances of Linden Lab keeping the folks that they want to keep get less and less.

 

 

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