An Open Letter to LL from Content Creators

[kiramanell]

14 hours ago, ananoelle said:

Exactly @Kyrah Abattoir. 

The thing with petitions on change.org is you dont even have to be a resident to sign, because of that reason I cannot take those 3000 signatures seriously. People will sign anything why, because people want to say they were apart of something. 

 

Oh, I will be apart from this petition already, as in: as far separated from it as I possibly can. 😁

Seriously, I not a fan of such petitions: they invariably tell you not to speak for everyone, but then proceed to talk as if they do. Besides, if you don't believe in your views firmly enough to stand behind them, with your name(s), then I can't feel strongly enough to support you -- even if you did make a good case. Which they didn't, really. I was all kinda meaningless double-talk, like 'We understand you need to make money, but we resent you for doing so, after all.'  Or, 'We understand you are a business, but so are we.' Yeah, that's going nowhere.

[kiramanell]

5 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

If the customer wants to continue doing business with the company they better hope the company does what's best for the company or that company will cease to exist. That's not good for the customer either.

 

Precisely what I was thinking! If SL goes out of business, so do all their little stores. As in kaput, finito, the end.

[kiramanell]

6 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Is there not a list of signatories?

The claim of 3000+ signatures is a rather empty and suspect one if there is not. What's the point of "signing" anonymously?

 

No point. ' 3000+ signatures', when cast anonymously, is not different from 80% of all other statistics found on the net: just an arbitrary number picked out of their... hats (to stay polite).

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

 

No point. ' 3000+ signatures', when cast anonymously, is not different from 80% of all other statistics found on the net: just an arbitrary number picked out of their... hats (to stay polite).

5,236.3 forum posters agree. (According to Google.)

[ananoelle]

@kiramanell there was a space between apart I swear it lol 🤦‍♀️

[ThorinII]

I think everyone who makes their Real Life livelihood dependent on their Second Life business is to blame themselves by 100%. Not Linden Lab and their changes in fees and Premium Perks, not the other residents who might not buy stuff as often as they used to, only these creators or sellers themselves.

If they considered their Second Life income as some side-money coming from a hobby, not as their main income, then there wouldn't be a problem at all with those fee changes. 🙄

[ChinRey]

On 6/24/2019 at 10:17 PM, Qie Niangao said:

How do I get this list, so I know who to boycott?

Please Qie, don't go there. People have a right to have an opinion even if it's one we disagree with.

[Solar Legion]

3 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Please Qie, don't go there. People have a right to have an opinion even if it's one we disagree with.

Yes, and Qie's opinion - unless the quoted post was in jest - is that those who signed ought to be boycotted. By at least Qie.

People have the right to an opinion. They do not have the right to be free of consequence.

[ChinRey]

5 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Yes, and Qie's opinion - unless the quoted post was in jest - is that those who signed ought to be boycotted. By at least Qie.

I rest my case.

[Prokofy Neva]

The nature and tenor of the responses in this thread strengthen my conviction that the forums' regulars do not run viable businesses inworld; do not have any customers; do not even log into SL. Otherwise they would sympathize with "the little dressmakers," as they were once scornfully called when copy-bots first appeared. Adding $10 to a price can price some customers out of business. I would certainly not raise all my rental prices $10, not only is it work, it would just incur wrath from people who have paid the same price for years. I don't raise prices unless I am offering something new; I don't lower them unless I am packing in more rentals to a space, i.e. with skyboxes. $10 is not an increment that makes sense for rentals anyway.

I have never been wrong in responding to every single Linden change of this type by selling or abandoning land. You can never go wrong by paying less tier.

[Jerilynn Lemon]

This thread has been more constructive than what I imagined it could have turned into. Kudos to all for remaining civil.

I took a peek at the petition and ran a few names through SL search. The few that I looked at came back as not registered or showed no financial info on their profiles. ONE came back as having banking info, which got me thinking that a good number (looking at a ratio of 5-1; hardly representative, I grant you) of those who signed the petition probably don't even utilize SL for business or pleasure. Perhaps they signed it so they can say "I signed it".

Another point I wish to make is locally, if anyone wants a referendum included in an up coming election (county, city or state), a certain number of signatories must show up on said petition. An added plus is these signatories must be registered to vote. This way the signatures can be verified. Anonymous petitions can't be verified. By itself a reason I don't pay much attention to any petition coming from change.org.

With that said, thanks mods for not locking the thread. It has been a civil discussion, but just the same, I bring out kittens!

[kiramanell]

53 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

The nature and tenor of the responses in this thread strengthen my conviction that the forums' regulars do not run viable businesses inworld; do not have any customers; do not even log into SL. Otherwise they would sympathize with "the little dressmakers," as they were once scornfully called when copy-bots first appeared. Adding $10 to a price can price some customers out of business. I would certainly not raise all my rental prices $10, not only is it work, it would just incur wrath from people who have paid the same price for years. I don't raise prices unless I am offering something new; I don't lower them unless I am packing in more rentals to a space, i.e. with skyboxes. $10 is not an increment that makes sense for rentals anyway.

I have never been wrong in responding to every single Linden change of this type by selling or abandoning land. You can never go wrong by paying less tier.

 

'Adding $10 to a price can price some customers out of business.' Really?! Let's say I visit one of those "little dressmakers" (said most affectionately, in my case). And let's say a dress costs LL$ 300.00. And it's now available for LL$ 310.00 (and that's assuming the seller actually passed the increase along). That's a US$ 0.04 increase. Since I typically don't buy dresses by the thousands (at least not all at once *g*), are you telling me, with a straight face, that a LL$ 10.00 increase might 'price some customers out of business'? That the extra US$ 0.04 might put me over the edge?! Let me put it this way, if a US$ 0.04 increase is going to get me into trouble, financially, then I had no business buying stuff in SL to begin with.

Possibly you were thinking of retail stores, that buy dress-components from someone else (and then, maybe, indeed in the thousands). Still, like you said, there's no law says they need to pass along the price increase to their customers. A truly 'viable business' should not stand or fall with a 2.5% fluctuation in overhead cost.

Thing simply is, SL's business model needs to change a bit. They haven't shared all the details with me, of course, but the upshot of it all seems to be, that they're seeing dwindling income from land sales, and need to make up for the loss elsewhere. So that everyone can stay in business, including "the little dressmakers" (who I love). Not everyone will be pleased with this change, but way it is is the way it is.

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

Yes, and Qie's opinion - unless the quoted post was in jest - is that those who signed ought to be boycotted. By at least Qie.

People have the right to an opinion. They do not have the right to be free of consequence.

Admittedly, I wasn't serious because I assumed the signatories were anonymous, which was what I really hoped to point out with the post. (Also I rarely support boycotts because they're almost universally ineffective -- at least towards their intended targets.)

I am, however, sick and tired of being told that everyone must support all SL creators regardless of how short-sighted and self-serving they may be. I'd be much more concerned if 3000 random residents of SL quit spending on the standard mix of Land and user-generated content than if 3000 creators felt so sorry for themselves that they left the creating to others.

[Zeta Vandyke]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

The nature and tenor of the responses in this thread strengthen my conviction that the forums' regulars do not run viable businesses inworld; do not have any customers; do not even log into SL. Otherwise they would sympathize with "the little dressmakers," as they were once scornfully called when copy-bots first appeared. Adding $10 to a price can price some customers out of business. I would certainly not raise all my rental prices $10, not only is it work, it would just incur wrath from people who have paid the same price for years. I don't raise prices unless I am offering something new; I don't lower them unless I am packing in more rentals to a space, i.e. with skyboxes. $10 is not an increment that makes sense for rentals anyway.

I have never been wrong in responding to every single Linden change of this type by selling or abandoning land. You can never go wrong by paying less tier.

I do not run a viable SL business, but do run a viable RL business. And though RL and SL are not comparable in every field, I do think its quite normal and accepted that prices on products increase over time due to increase in other costs and inflation. You say L$10 increase is bad, but your talking about a maybe 0.05 cents? Prices on fashion have increased much more in the past years. Compare what you payed for an outfit in 2007 and now. This 10 L$ increase will change nothing.

That you do not increase rent prices if your own cost rises is in my opinion nice of you, but not necessarily the best business model unless the competition has the same policy. Unless of course your margin is already big enough to take that loss without really feeling it.

[ItHadToComeToThis]

On 6/24/2019 at 8:38 PM, SLcontentcreators said:

 

tl;dr version : They don’t like the 5% change. That’s what the whole open letter pretty much amounts to.

I do wonder how many of the signatures are TheirAlt1, TheirAlt2, FriendsAlt1 😅.

You really should have done this from a more credible account. As it stands your account is a random noob account with 0 credibility. Good luck though, I remember back in the day when Homesteads were first released, cost the same as a 1/4 sim and could hold as many residents as a full sim. Then the lindens changed all that by restricting the number of residents allowed, upping the cost etc etc and we had petitions, in world protests, angry virtual world news columns, upset residents gnawing the corners off their keyboards. And you want to know how successful we were? Not..at..all..

I may not like the 5% fully but it’s not THAT much of a big deal. Raise your prices by 10-20 lindens and it’s covered. At the end of the day the lab is a company and a company that doesn’t have the resident base it once had. It’s a company that is trying to stay a float in a world where the threat of being over taken or rendered fully obsolete is very real (see Sinespace for a possible example).

The lab doesn’t just need money to keep the world working, they need money for wages, rent, cover the cost of all of the workers, bills AND try to make a profit. These improvements they keep rolling out don’t come cheap. You rant off about “kids” and “making a living” but you don’t consider that behind second life is a seriously talented team of individuals who all have their own kids, their own bills and their own rent/mortgage. And each one of these are sat there day after day trying to figure out the best way to keep second life going, make a profit and also KEEP it profitable for the residents. 

In my personal opinion looking at what we had In 2007 compared to what we have now I think the lab has done a smashing job really. Sure they stumble and sometimes they fall and sometimes they have to backtrack but looking at what they have actually managed to pull off over the years I can honestly say I’m nothing but impressed. Sure I would like things to be cheaper, free, land to be $50 a month. But if that happens chances are second life would go bye bye pretty quickly so this...what is happening right now..is fine by me.

@Ebbe Linden

@Patch Linden

@Oz Linden

@April Linden

Thank you for your hard work and providing a beautiful wonderful place for all of us to feel safe, explore, create and make connections. Please keep this up so that we can enjoy our virtual home for many years to come!

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

The nature and tenor of the responses in this thread strengthen my conviction that the forums' regulars do not run viable businesses inworld; do not have any customers; do not even log into SL. Otherwise they would sympathize with "the little dressmakers," as they were once scornfully called when copy-bots first appeared. Adding $10 to a price can price some customers out of business. I would certainly not raise all my rental prices $10, not only is it work, it would just incur wrath from people who have paid the same price for years. I don't raise prices unless I am offering something new; I don't lower them unless I am packing in more rentals to a space, i.e. with skyboxes. $10 is not an increment that makes sense for rentals anyway.

I have never been wrong in responding to every single Linden change of this type by selling or abandoning land. You can never go wrong by paying less tier.

As it happens, I have made dresses in both real life and in Second Life - not as a retailer, I admit, but I understand the process.

Let's say need to make US$2000 a month by selling dresses. Every dress I make has 2 yards of fabric at $4.00 a yard, and takes 2 hours to sew; I pay my stitchers $21 an hour (we're pretending that I'm not actually contracting it out to someplace that has a sweatshop full of 12-year-olds in a third-world country.) This puts my marginal cost per dress - the cost I need to make one more dress than I had before - at $50.00.

To make $2000, I need to actually make that amount in profit, which means I can either sell 200 at $60 ($10 profit per dress), or 1000 at $51 per dress ($1 profit).

If my cost of fabric per yard goes up to $5 per yard, making my marginal cost $52 per dress, I need to sell 250 dresses at $60 and I can't sell them at $51 or I'll be taking a loss, so my retail price can't go lower than $53.

Now lets say I need to make L$2000 a month from Second Life dress sales and I use templates. I've already paid for my template and textures - my marginal cost per dress is zero. I have a full range of prices I can charge: anywhere from L$2000 apiece, which means I have to sell 1 (to a sucker) to L$1, which means I have to sell 2000. My important factor will be demand - can I find someone to pay L$2000 for a SL dress? Can I consistently find 2000 who want this dress at all?

Now, if I need to make more than L$2000 I can either increase my prices or I can lower my prices and hope that enough more people people are willing to buy my product than they were at the old price. This is much easier to do than in real life because I don't need to price over a marginal cost.

[Luna Bliss]

These are all interesting topics in their own right (Theresa's profit margin examples, Zeta's ideas about increasing prices for content, and Thorinll's belief that SL income should be considered hobby income), but the main issue this petition brings up for me is -- how can LL have a dialogue with the creators in SL? I can't say I agree with every part of this petition (as I don't know how they would determine representatives or if they have better ideas about how to increase LL's income), but I do agree with the spirit of the petition -- they want to open a dialogue with LL. This last part, the spirit of the petition, can't be anything but good as there's no way for LL to know the concerns of the creators without communicating with them.

Aside from whether SL income is needed RL income, an economy where people earn money for their effort is a big part of SL for many people -- it is a big part of the 'game' they are playing (participating in an economy), and they might lose incentive to play if they feel they are being treated unfairly. Not all would, of course, but how many would? What would it do to SL if it's no longer seen as a place where you can at the very least 'pay your way' through your efforts.

Can anyone think of a better way in which the concerns of these creators can be addressed other than this petition, or think of how the petition could be modified so as to be more acceptable?

[Beth Macbain]

7 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Please Qie, don't go there. People have a right to have an opinion even if it's one we disagree with.

Of course the creators have a right to their opinions, as do the consumers. I have every right to boycott a creator or company whose actions and policies I disagree with. I have quite a long list of them in real life AND Second Life. 

Everyone has a right to their opinions, and everyone who chooses to verbalize those opinions is subject to consequences as well. I've no doubt that I've probably been banned from at least one store due to my opinions on this particular matter.

I can live with those consequences. 

[Zeta Vandyke]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

how can LL have a dialogue with the creators in SL? I can't say I agree with every part of this petition (as I don't know how they would determine representatives or if they have better ideas about how to increase LL's income), but I do agree with the spirit of the petition -- they want to open a dialogue with LL. This last part, the spirit of the petition, can't be anything but good as there's no way for LL to know the concerns of the creators without communicating with them.

Well to be very honest, I doubt if there's need for communications or dialog. Each creator in SL will look at this from their own point of view and in their own interest, not the bigger picture.

LL runs a company for their profit, not ours. Of course they will need to keep the player base satisfied at large, and even though each change like this will get a lot of noise, there will be no noticeable amount of people that quit over it. This new business model is investigated by people with all the inside information, models, calculations and what not, and is considered the best option for them to keep SL profitable and thus keeping it running.

You will never satisfy everyone, and opening up a dialog about changes with the player base will either give false hope, or set a precedent for each change they want to implement.

[Selene Gregoire]

7 hours ago, Jerilynn Lemon said:

The few that I looked at came back as not registered or showed no financial info on their profiles.

One of the reasons I'd like to withdraw from that petition is because I didn't realize I was logged in with my RL name until it was too late. So some of those names could very well be real names and not avatar names.

[Blush Bravin]

I think it's important that LL hears the concerns of the residents. I think it's also important that they weigh those concerns when making decisions on how to move the company/platform forward; however, I don't think there needs to be a "dialog" or conversation between the lab and the merchants residents. It shouldn't be a debate about what's best for the company/residents.

I also believe that there's lots of history showing that Linden Lab does listen and take to heart the concerns of the residents. We see it time and time again. They even reverse decisions that might be better for the over all health of the platform in preference to the desires of the residents.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Blush Bravin
correct misuse of merchants

[Beth Macbain]

15 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

I also believe that there's lots of history showing that Linden Lab does listen and take to heart the concerns of the residents. We see it time and time again. They even reverse decisions that might be better for the over all health of the platform in preference to the desires of the residents.

Thank you for verbalizing something that has bothered me, but that I haven't quite been able to put my finger on. LL has shown over the past few months (and I only know this because that's when I started paying attention to what LL does) to be very open to hearing from residents.

I'm not sure why the creators feel that they are entitled to any more dialogue or communication than a non-creating consumer resident. There are numerous platforms and channels for anyone to communicate with LL. I use what is available to me and I'm not demanding a sit down with @Ebbe Linden(or @Quartz Mole for that matter... hi, My Favorite Mole!) to discuss my concerns or issues above and beyond the platforms already provided to me as a premium account holder. I use the methods LL has already provided and I've gotten responses to every inquiry or question or comment I've made. Things may not have always been resolved to my complete satisfaction, but I know they heard me, and I think that's perfectly fair and should apply equally across the board.

[Blush Bravin]

11 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

I'm not sure why the creators feel that they are entitled to any more dialogue or communication than a non-creating consumer resident.

 

34 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

I don't think there needs to be a "dialog" or conversation between the lab and the merchants

I think perhaps I worded this wrong. I didn't mean to say just the merchants when I said there doesn't need to be a dialog past just letting your concerns be known. I meant that for all residents. I think it's necessary that residents voice their concerns and that Linden Lab listens to those concerns. My point is that there doesn't need to be a conversation about it. That it's not a debate as to who is right or wrong between the Lab and the residents. And I never meant to imply that creators feel as though they are entitled to more communication with the Lab than non creator types. In fact, I don't think a merchant is necessarily a creator. They certainly can be but it's not necessary anymore than being a creator means you must be a merchant.  

So, I mistakenly used merchants when I should have said residents and I apologize for the misuse.

[Clara Hollyberry]

I am a content creator and I reject this op and its message.  

Moreover, "content creator" is not to be necessarily equated with profiteering or commercialism. People create content all the time without needing to sell it.  

Let Lindens be Lindens and do the job they know how to do and govern the platform they want to exist. 

[Coffee Pancake]

We don't all have to like everything LL decide to do, but it really impacts our credibility when something more serious comes up,  especially when we collectively cry foul over something so trivial.

8 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Adding $10 to a price can price some customers out of business.

Only people who refuse to buy L$ and insist on grinding every fraction of a penny out of some ludicrous mini game.

L$10 is 4 american pennies.