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Improving SL Economy By Killing It?


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2 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

So you are suggesting every player should only play the game once in their lifetime?  It takes about 30 mins max to solve all 4 quests.  With practice, 15 mins, and no cheating. Why even have a game if the purpose was for a newbie to play it once, and move on, with their pixel bear and shield.   The success and popularity of the Linden Realms and Paleoquest was entirely because you could earn a few lindens every time you played.  That was once a bragging point for LL.  They were also surprised that residents would be interested in getting lindens this way.  Classic case of not knowing their entire audience.

I've been in SL almost 12 years and I can say I have never met anyone who played it.  

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14 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I've been in SL almost 12 years and I can say I have never met anyone who played it.  

Not surprising - I don't know of anyone who admits they play either.  But I do know that some players come to my clubs, tip the venue and the DJ's 10 or 20 L, all they can afford, and spend the rest on land fees for their 50L/week skybox.  I know of some that buy my products also, the lost cost ones, under 100L.  Most of their Lindens get recycled in SL.   None have converted lindens to their RL currency.  Their may be a few supporting their RL expenses this way, but they would need to live in a very poor country with a highly devalued currency against the dollar.  There are former British, Portuguese, and Spanish colonies where the wages for unskilled workers are still slave wages.  I find they are more likely to play these games than "wealthy" Americans or Europeans.

IF you are not part of a specialized cult, they can be invisible to you, in RL or SL.

 

 

 

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40 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

NotThere are former British, Portuguese, and Spanish colonies where the wages for unskilled workers are still slave wages.  I find they are more likely to play these games than "wealthy" Americans or Europeans.

IF you are not part of a specialized cult, they can be invisible to you, in RL or SL.

 

 

 

Well, they're doing alright if they own a computer good enough to run SL and can afford internet service.  That's more than I can say for some folks I know in America.

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SL isn't really designed around that game. It is only a small fraction of what SL is.
That some people seem to use it as 'SL work' like camping once was, is only a small fraction of SL as well.

I don't care or mind that LL pays people to play, but so far LL hasn't interested me at all to play it.  A virtual reward might do so, a dime worth of L$ doesn't.

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15 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

SL isn't really designed around that game. It is only a small fraction of what SL is.

Most activities in SL are a small fraction of what SL is.  Nobody is asking you to play the Realms or Paleoquest.  The OP was making the point that LL is changing their historical model to maximize profits at the expense of the average and newer player, which may backfire.  If a company makes a move that just pisses you off, even if it is not essential to you, it is just one more reason to leave SL for friendlier worlds.  Please read the original post again, and the Title of this thread.

 

Edited by Jaylinbridges
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Maybe my reaction was not towards the OP?
People tend to react on the post straight above their post, or they quote the post were they are reacting to.

So I really don't see why I should read the OP again.

The OP starts a thread and that is exactly what it is, a starting point.  Threads tend to evolve.
 

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16 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Threads tend to evolve.
 

At least we don't have any cat animations yet.

So let's evolve and ask why the Hall of the Realms still has their 2020 Christmas decorations up?  

47e3a9f7731f0dd343256d3bd9fd318f.jpg

Edited by Jaylinbridges
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2 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

maximize profits at the expense of the average and newer player

20 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I estimate they saved about $500 USD/week

Well which is it.  If they're only saving $500/wk, I can't imagine anyone thinking that was a viable option to "maximize profits".  The financial department would have laughed.  They probably spend that much of in office coffee, too.

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2 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

At least we don't have any cat animations yet.

So let's evolve and ask why the Hall of the Realms still has their 2020 Christmas decorations up?  

47e3a9f7731f0dd343256d3bd9fd318f.jpg

Because only a very small group of people would even notice.  As @Coffee Pancakesaid, all Linden properties become abandoned over time.  They move on to other projects.

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5 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Well which is it.  If they're only saving $500/wk, I can't imagine anyone thinking that was a viable option to "maximize profits".  The financial department would have laughed.  They probably spend that much of in office coffee, too.

So it's not financial to devalue their games to abandonment. That was really my point - there was no really valid business reason.  Right now there are 8 players in one of the Linden Realms spread over 12 regions, and in the 2nd LR Estate there are 7 players spread over 12 regions.   Before they decided to devalue the game, there would be 40 players in each of the 6 LR Estates at this time of day.  So from 240 concurrent players to 15 players - because of the changes the OP detailed in this thread. And the moles don't have time to change out the Christmas decorations, 3 months later, because nobody cares anymore.

Meanwhile in the land of Housing Associations and Covenant Rules up the wazoo - Bellisseria, the same SL management enforces the last day you can have a Holiday decoration on your parcel, that you pay Premium dollars for.  I think it was like a week after New Years for snow and Christmas.

The new game is GOH, where you pay LL $1000 USD to get 10 alts with Premium accounts, and then try to capture the most impressive Belli view playing GOH on the web.   Then you can play dollhouse decorating until the next round of Linden Homes is released.  This is encouraged by LL of course, because $$$.

 

 

 

 

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If I get you right, everyone who doesn't come to SL to milk the the Linden Realms has it all wrong?
One of the things that kept me 14 years in SL so far, is that I don't have to play games in there. No shooting, no harvesting, no mining, no quests.

L$ are no game points.
It's in world money. Ask the people at Tilia.

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24 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

If I get you right, everyone who doesn't come to SL to milk the the Linden Realms has it all wrong?
One of the things that kept me 14 years in SL so far, is that I don't have to play games in there. No shooting, no harvesting, no mining, no quests.

L$ are no game points.

No, but you have it mostly wrong.  LL created the games with low payouts for a reason, and promoted them to new users.  If you have a problem with that take it up with the Lindens that created the games.

I have no interest in your own SL history.  I joined SL to work, and found a job my first week here, 10 years ago.  But I also had some talents that not everyone in the world does, it was why I was asked to join SL.  I now have two small businesses, that net me about $50K L/month, small potatoes, but I have not had to buy Lindens in 9 years.  Some of those new and poor residents do add to the SL economy and my businesses, by their "milking" of the Linden Realms.  This thread was about SL business, and why is SL trying to kill it, just as another reminder.

 

Edited by Jaylinbridges
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Every change in SL can kill businesses.

I had a door store in SL in the prim only period. It catered the new comers who started building with the toddler cubes, spheres and prisms. They're first effort to build an own house in SL.
Doors and windows were needed and I provided them. Made tier for a 4096 and had a surplus of thousands of L$ every week.
Then sculpts came (and later mesh)  and most people stopped building their own houses because the professional build (or ripped) ones looked way to good.
The need for doors vanished almost completely. People who still build their own houses with Blender or whatever are very capable to handle the door and window part as well.
Hence end of my business.

Similar stories can be told about the rental business "killed" by Linden homes, sculpts "killed" the system clothing industry etc. etc.

SL is not there to guaranty business success.
And no, I had never the feeling that LL was trying to kill my business. Things change. That's life.

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On 3/22/2021 at 11:35 PM, Jaylinbridges said:

How much do you think LL saved by cutting the Linden Realms quest payout in half?  I estimate they saved about $500 USD/week.  Minimum wage on the US west coast is around $600/week, for 40 hours.  LL is a 1/2 a billion dollar company, and they are worried about saving $500/week?  Of course thousands of players have quit the game now, and some were newbies, some were people just unable to put their dollars into LL.

I asked Patch Linden if he was planning on ending the Realms and Paleoquest last week.  He said of course not.  But that still seems to be the plan.

The Realms has been around for 10 years, and every change has made the games less desirable to play.  And NO ONE would play such a repetitive game that takes up your time, for no reward.  So they hand out a teddy bear?  Once.  Can you resell them?  That's no reward, and 25L once a week is not either.

You can still collect crystals all week.  It takes about one  hour of frantic running all over to collect 25L worth of crystals.  Fewer crystals if you are new to the game.  And the other changes they have made, by cutting the number of Linden Realms down to two, from the prior six  estates of last year, has also reduced the collection rate.  Clearly their plan of killing the games is working - fewer players need fewer regions.  Regions cost them real dollars, as AWS does not accept Lindens for server fees.

The official reason for devaluing the games was too many cheaters.  What per cent of players were cheating?  I think about 20% at most.  So lets devalue the games for everyone, based on a small minority of cheaters.  Perhaps all the highways should be changed to horse trails, to reduce the auto accident rate ...

 

 

 

 

 

Given that the concurrent long-ons are about 30,000 people, I can't believe there is any high number playing Linden Realms (I've never played it and there are better ways to make money, even without skills). So let's say a few thousand people play it? Let's say 2000 a week play, and earned $50/wk. That's only 2000 x 50L = US $400 per month. They spend more than that in staff time monitoring a game like that then they earn from it. A figure like $400/mo for a multi-million dollar company is not a reason for anything nor a cost savings.

LL can't possibly be making any serious amount of money from it. Linden-denominated sales are a sink, we are told, which means it is money that is not converted to dollars but removed from the economy. But even if they converted their "savings" from cutting the payout in half, it's peanuts compared to what they earn from the sale of their main products, which is $229/month for islands etc.

Patch said the payout was cut in half not to "save money for LL," which makes no sense, but to remove the incentive for cheating. Cheating and flooding the economy with ill-gotten dollars creates inflation and devalues the currency and forces LL to constantly try to address the imbalance. So they get nothing out of this; they can't, the amounts are too low. They cut people off because they exploited the system.

Even if you live in a third-world country, buying 1000 Lindens for US $4.00 a month is not going to deprive you of bread and better. To be sure, some countries make it hard to pay online and use PayPal and credit cards. But that's ultimately not LL's problem.

 

Edited by Prokofy Neva
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5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Given that the concurrent long-ons are about 30,000 people,

 

30,000 - 50,000 depending on time of day (https://agni.softhyena.com/stats)

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I can't believe there is any high number playing Linden Realms

Cite one plausible tangentially related number, speculate on the key point that's being discussed, add a few hundred more words .. for reasons.

Portal Park 1 & 2 - 9 (https://i.imgur.com/OkkaTdA.png)

Paleoquest A & B - 40 (https://i.imgur.com/wkTIWwQ.png)

Linden Realms This & That - 26 (https://i.imgur.com/beFSExR.png)

Horizons - 4 (https://i.imgur.com/j7RqKlN.png)

Paleoquest & Linden Realms are both fairly active at time of posting (7:05am PDT), avatars are mostly engaged in the game, moving about, only a couple of lurkers. 

The churn is probably about the same as a single region shopping event, the big difference ii it's spread out over many regions often with doubles.

The real take away has to be there is no way anyone other than LL can fund content on this scale, and that's really bad.

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7 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

30,000 - 50,000 depending on time of day (https://agni.softhyena.com/stats)

Cite one plausible tangentially related number, speculate on the key point that's being discussed, add a few hundred more words .. for reasons.

Portal Park 1 & 2 - 9 (https://i.imgur.com/OkkaTdA.png)

Paleoquest A & B - 40 (https://i.imgur.com/wkTIWwQ.png)

Linden Realms This & That - 26 (https://i.imgur.com/beFSExR.png)

Horizons - 4 (https://i.imgur.com/j7RqKlN.png)

Paleoquest & Linden Realms are both fairly active at time of posting (7:05am PDT), avatars are mostly engaged in the game, moving about, only a couple of lurkers. 

The churn is probably about the same as a single region shopping event, the big difference ii it's spread out over many regions often with doubles.

The real take away has to be there is no way anyone other than LL can fund content on this scale, and that's really bad.

That isn't showing unique avatars.

It also doesn't distinguish if one real person has multiple alt accounts to game the system.

And to determine that from the user perspective inworld, you'd have to violate the TOS as I understand it, and track people's IP addresses and such.

It's awfully hard to believe that if there are even as many as 50,000 logging on every day that are unique, that most of them play the Linden Realms games. That percentage is obviously going to be a subset.

So even if you had 10%, which you likely don't, that's 5000, that's still only 5000 x  50 and still only US $1000 a month previously, and the Lab then only 'saves" US $500 a month, which at their scale makes no sense -- and PS sinks are not revenue.

If the Lindens moved to the more female-friendly hunt and gather type of quests, rather than war quests where you are constantly killed and thwarted by rocks or monsters or whatever, and you had to use skill in interpreting written clues, they'd have more uptake. Tens of thousands of people, mainly women, play all the merchant-related hunts and quests every day. At my little level with a few quests I've made, I get a few visitors a day, mainly not tenants, which is a lot for me which is why I bother to make more of them.

Those with really organized and professional quests like MadPea must make at least enough revenue to stay in business all these years. 

So while the Lindens are stretched thin, if they change their theory of games and stop appealing to people who are on the wrong platform anyway (war gamers and racers), they might do better.

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13 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

So let's say a few thousand people play it? Let's say 2000 a week play, and earned $50/wk. That's only 2000 x 50L = US $400 per month.

You can play and collect a quest once a week.  So your monthly number needs to be 4.33 times your $400= $1732/mo USD.

But I think your estimates are too low, way too low compared to the payout/mo before all the devalued changes Patch made.

I am not an armchair quarterback like most here, but have actually played the game for years.  Some of that time is observation, which doesn't need much effort.

Before the recent changes, the number of payouts in LR averaged around 30/ hour.  That is from sitting in the village and clicking a counter every time the quest payout machine paid out lindens.  That is a 24 hr average.  During busy times the payouts could run 120/ hr, with players lined up waiting. During the slowest hours (midnight to 3am SLT) payouts could drop to 15/hr.  And at that time there were six LR estates, with 12 payout machines total.  My estimates are more recent, with only 2 LR estate regions left.  SL has reduced the number of players drastically in the last year, with their obsession on enforcing the arbitrary rules.  Ghost town is an apt description of the Realms today, thanks to the added PIOF requirements, and now the halving of quest payouts.  

30 payouts/hr as an average for one full day, is 252,000 L/week, or about $1000 USD/week, assuming the OLD 50L/week payout.  Monthly that is $4,365 USD/mo still a minor hit for a multi-million dollar company. When there were 6 regions and 10 times more players, of course it was more, but they fixed that.

13 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Cheating and flooding the economy with ill-gotten dollars creates inflation and devalues the currency

Claiming cheating in the Realms quest payout is devaluing the currency is quite the exaggeration.  Let's say 20% of the players were somehow cheating,  20% of $4365/mo is $873 USD per month.  After the payout cut, it is $436/mo.  Do you seriously think LL paying out an additional $400/mo, money that remains in the SL economy, is affecting anything, much less the Linden to dollar ratio?  Of course it does affect the thousands of players who earned a few extra Lindens to spend in SL.

BTW, to buy 1000 $L for $4 USD has a $1.49 service fee attached.  A 38% service fee to pay SL for tokens is worse than the Mafia. But that is required now to simply play any of the lindens games.  As one player told me the other day (who had not heard about the PIOF requirement) "if I could afford to buy lindens with PIOF, I wouldn't be here running the quest."   I could have suggested she could be a stripper in an adult club to earn those lindens, but she did not seem to be the prostitute type.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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13 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

You can play and collect a quest once a week.  So your monthly number needs to be 4.33 times your $400= $1732/mo USD.

But I think your estimates are too low, way too low compared to the payout/mo before all the devalued changes Patch made.

I am not an armchair quarterback like most here, but have actually played the game for years.  Some of that time is observation, which doesn't need much effort.

Before the recent changes, the number of payouts in LR averaged around 30/ hour.  That is from sitting in the village and clicking a counter every time the quest payout machine paid out lindens.  That is a 24 hr average.  During busy times the payouts could run 120/ hr, with players lined up waiting. During the slowest hours (midnight to 3am SLT) payouts could drop to 15/hr.  And at that time there were six LR estates, with 12 payout machines total.  My estimates are more recent, with only 2 LR estate regions left.  SL has reduced the number of players drastically in the last year, with their obsession on enforcing the arbitrary rules.  Ghost town is an apt description of the Realms today, thanks to the added PIOF requirements, and now the halving of quest payouts.  

30 payouts/hr as an average for one full day, is 252,000 L/week, or about $1000 USD/week, assuming the OLD 50L/week payout.  Monthly that is $4,365 USD/mo still a minor hit for a multi-million dollar company. When there were 6 regions and 10 times more players, of course it was more, but they fixed that.

Claiming cheating in the Realms quest payout is devaluing the currency is quite the exaggeration.  Let's say 20% of the players were somehow cheating,  20% of $4365/mo is $873 USD per month.  After the payout cut, it is $436/mo.  Do you seriously think LL paying out an additional $400/mo, money that remains in the SL economy, is affecting anything, much less the Linden to dollar ratio?  Of course it does affect the thousands of players who earned a few extra Lindens to spend in SL.

BTW, to buy 1000 $L for $4 USD has a $1.49 service fee attached.  A 38% service fee to pay SL for tokens is worse than the Mafia. But that is required now to simply play any of the lindens games.  As one player told me the other day (who had not heard about the PIOF requirement) "if I could afford to pay for lindens with PIOF, I wouldn't be here running the quest."   I could have suggested she could be a stripper in an adult club to earn those lindens, but she did not seem to be the prostitute type.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LL's reasons and thought process behind what they do is irrelevant in the end.

Just like in RL where there are things I love to do but can't afford to do them, so It is in second life.  No where does it say they will give you anything aside from the opportunity to do things to make Ls.  if they actually thought giving away Lindens would help user retention, they'd have implemented that years ago.  

SL is here for THEM to make money, not anyone else.  That is just a side benefit if you so choose.  I've been lucky to never have to work in SL and CHOOSE to buy my Lindens when I need or want them.  There have also been periods of time, like now, where I gave up renting on a private estate because I couldn't afford it.  That the first time in all my years.  Do I feel entitled to anything?  Of course not.  Why would I?

Again, I feel people's frustration but neither they nor I, are entitled to anything in SL aside from the right to log in.

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1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

WhAt ?

As if there wasn't a sexism problem in gaming already.

It's the opposite of sexism when you accommodate more styles of game play and worlds than just the alpha male-dominated ones. Some males prefer hunter/gatherer to war as well. 

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3 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

You can play and collect a quest once a week.  So your monthly number needs to be 4.33 times your $400= $1732/mo USD.

But I think your estimates are too low, way too low compared to the payout/mo before all the devalued changes Patch made.

I am not an armchair quarterback like most here, but have actually played the game for years.  Some of that time is observation, which doesn't need much effort.

Before the recent changes, the number of payouts in LR averaged around 30/ hour.  That is from sitting in the village and clicking a counter every time the quest payout machine paid out lindens.  That is a 24 hr average.  During busy times the payouts could run 120/ hr, with players lined up waiting. During the slowest hours (midnight to 3am SLT) payouts could drop to 15/hr.  And at that time there were six LR estates, with 12 payout machines total.  My estimates are more recent, with only 2 LR estate regions left.  SL has reduced the number of players drastically in the last year, with their obsession on enforcing the arbitrary rules.  Ghost town is an apt description of the Realms today, thanks to the added PIOF requirements, and now the halving of quest payouts.  

30 payouts/hr as an average for one full day, is 252,000 L/week, or about $1000 USD/week, assuming the OLD 50L/week payout.  Monthly that is $4,365 USD/mo still a minor hit for a multi-million dollar company. When there were 6 regions and 10 times more players, of course it was more, but they fixed that.

Claiming cheating in the Realms quest payout is devaluing the currency is quite the exaggeration.  Let's say 20% of the players were somehow cheating,  20% of $4365/mo is $873 USD per month.  After the payout cut, it is $436/mo.  Do you seriously think LL paying out an additional $400/mo, money that remains in the SL economy, is affecting anything, much less the Linden to dollar ratio?  Of course it does affect the thousands of players who earned a few extra Lindens to spend in SL.

BTW, to buy 1000 $L for $4 USD has a $1.49 service fee attached.  A 38% service fee to pay SL for tokens is worse than the Mafia. But that is required now to simply play any of the lindens games.  As one player told me the other day (who had not heard about the PIOF requirement) "if I could afford to buy lindens with PIOF, I wouldn't be here running the quest."   I could have suggested she could be a stripper in an adult club to earn those lindens, but she did not seem to be the prostitute type.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't need to play the game to look at possible estimates and make a judgement -- which has not changed even with your more "field informed" data -- and you concede my point that it's a "minor hit" and therefore the idea that the Lindens "save money" isn't valid.

At the end of the day I think the sole reason the Lindens cut this in half is not a financial one, but a moral/legal one -- if they tolerate exploitation and cheats in one area, it spreads, as the people doing this then realize they can look for an exploit other features of the world. This is called the "broken windows theory of policing". Valid or not, it's the theory they operate with and it has some validity in their context. They also have to be mindful, as the pressure of the world caves in on them for subsidies, as it is caving in on every other business, whether a restaurant or an apartment building, that they can only help so much before they can't be viable themselves. So they have to start saying "no" somewhere, and this is a good place to start as it is a small population playing these games.

If they took another corner of their world and said, "Let's double the tax on Marketplace purchases" so that merchants get less out of a price, the howling would be significant and would lead to some people simply quitting, thereby undermining their revenue generation -- the ability of creative people not to pay themselves fully as they might have to in real life for their labour, but put up things on the MP to be at least partly compensated.

I'm also not sure if you understand how this virtual economy actually is constructed. There's also the issue of sinks and sources as we have said time again. Linden dollars are sinks, they are removed from the economy. As far as we know, they are not converted by Linden Lab to dollars at any rate, fixed or sliding. But then...maybe they are, since they also deliberately keep an artificial balance to the Linden dollar and sell Linden dollars on the Lindex, either created or perhaps released at a rate from the "sinks". People have deeply held opinions on this but the fact is, we don't know as the Lindens have not given out any information on how their economy/the economy works for about 12 years now.

I'm not the one claiming there is cheating -- the Lindens are explaining the facts of the cheating which of course they can see server-side. And indeed it does upset the balance of their rigged economy -- however they rig it -- if multiple accounts play it or use bots to game it out and win and thus drain their coffers. You seem to think they should just keep printing more rubles like Yeltsin and it won't have any effect on the real world, in this case, the Linden economy. But of course printing money causes inflation, these are facts of life.

They don't "save" money by halving payouts, but you can't then argue that they "shouldn't" cut them because "injecting" X amount into the economy is "nothing to them". That's because that's not how the economy works. The economy works by selling Linden dollars at an artificially-maintained rate, with a fee and enabling their cashout at an artificially-maintained rate, with a fee. So when you have artificial currency, then you have to artificially control how many units pour into the economy as purchased bundles, and how many exit as sinks -- which are texture uploads, group fees, land auctions, etc. And so that's why when that balance is disturbed even in a way that does not seem significant to people, they act. They have to. Imbalances only worsen. Even if that money doesn't even disturb their rigged economy by much, they can't run a railroad by allowing cheating, because it begins to undermine the rule of law everywhere else and upset their rigged economy.

So the Lindens have now forced the understanding that could have come without this forced march that it is not viable to play this game to earn any money in any kind of beneficial way to those looking for handouts. Because all told, it is not viable to be in this world on welfare, especially generous welfare, with large stimulus checks regularly. This world -- which is already free to enter -- only works to make money if you follow their state-dictated paths of creation and service. Otherwise, pay, and pay a lot, the more you desire quality and privacy.

In order for them to make this artificial economy serve them as well as the world -- to pay for the staff that actually costs more than the fees that they generate from this system -- the fees have increased for buying Lindens -- and be grateful the rate is still US $4.00 but it has been $US $3.70 in the past. What they have now is a figure that is robust enough to justify people creating and selling and cashing out to pay real bills, but not so expensive no one will buy the currency to then buy creations. Again, this is a rigged, toy economy, or a closed economy like that of Russia or even more authoritarian states.

Now, one approach to take is to say, why are you looking for handouts? Buy the damned 1000 Lindens for US $4.00 and stop whining, some would say. My God, that's not very much, four dollars! (You can't buy less at one time). Here, it's worth polling the Linden Realms players to see if we are actually dealing with real poor people, or programmers who make six figures who just like to grief systems and push them beyond their limit, or people who aren't rich, but could certainly do with one less latte a week and pay for their virtual life.

But I know from my customers that there are all sorts of reasons they cannot buy that even if they wish to spend that real money, and these are valid reasons, regardless of anyone's contempt:

o they are wives in a marriage where the husband controls the wallet  (or sometimes visa versa)- and if you think this situation belongs to the past, then you have not looked at real places in the real world especially outside of the United States, but also inside the US, between the coasts.

o they are citizens of a country that has a state-controlled economy which doesn't enable PayPal or credit cards easily

o they are citizens of a poor country where the world's banking system, which is controlled by the rich countries, do not recognize their credit or debit cards internationally.

o they don't wish to put a form of payment on file because they fear hacking or fear identity theft or some other misfortune.

So the Lindens can accommodate this to a certain extent, and they do, if you watch their recent efforts, for example, to try to fix the problem of payments for people in Turkey. Probably they cannot justify the expense or the management headaches of lowering their threshold to 500 Lindens for US $2.00 because the fees they themselves have to pay to credit card companies or PayPal as a business.

So, if we leave aside the scorn and forced purchase approach -- I totally agree that the world needs jobs, like real life, and it needs meaningful and not demeaning jobs like prostitution, or frankly playing a Linden Realms game, which is also demeaning. But what can those jobs be? There isn't an objective need for people to pick up garbage in a world of autoreturn or to plant trees in a world where you can automatically plant them and where the land owner, not non-land owners, decides and controls this. So the jobs that appear like "gatcha re-seller" or "club bouncer" or "real estate agent" pay poorly and require a certain capital and social investment. 

I think likely, the only solution is for some large land-owners or businesses to create games like Linden Realms that pay out. You already have lotteries like Apple Fall who will give you a chance to win $2500 just for showing up at his store, which he does weekly. That's a hugely generous amount but given the hordes who pass through, you might never win it. When the Lindens cut their payout or raise their rates of purchasing dollars, I instantly get tenants and others who say, give us more quests with cash payouts or gives us cheaper rentals. And I can't response to any major extent because I'm affected by the very same higher rates myself.

The Lindens put a stipend into the premium so that people have the illusion of "free money" every week, but then that's $11.99 a month real money unless annualized and for a country like Poland or Russia or Spain or Brazil, that adds up too fast and begins to take away grocery money in RL.

 

Edited by Prokofy Neva
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4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Now, one approach to take is to say, why are you looking for handouts? Buy the damned 1000 Lindens for US $4.00 and stop whining, some would say. My God, that's not very much, four dollars! (You can't buy less at one time).

You can buy 241 lindens, the minimum amount for US $2.50.  That includes the $1.49 transaction fee.  $2.50 is the minimum  dollar amount for a $L purchase.

The linden is at a historic highs against the dollar now, with $1 USD buying only 239 lindens (not counting the transaction fee added.)  

4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

At the end of the day I think the sole reason the Lindens cut this in half is not a financial one, but a moral/legal one -- if they tolerate exploitation and cheats in one area, it spreads, as the people doing this then realize they can look for an exploit other features of the world.

This is SL, not RL. Your "exploitation extension theory" may apply to Russia, or Florida, but I would need examples of how this works in SL.  Landlords collecting tier and then evicting the tenants and keeping their lindens?  Not a successful business model. I don't know of any land company owners who play in LR, and would extend their evil ways to their land business, because they "cheated" LL out of an extra 25L/week.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Jaylinbridges
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2 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

You can buy 241 lindens, the minimum amount for US $2.50.  That includes the $1.49 transaction fee.  $2.50 is the minimum  dollar amount for a $L purchase.

The linden is at a historic highs against the dollar now, with $1 USD buying only 239 lindens (not counting the transaction fee added.)  

This is SL, not RL. Your "exploitation extension theory" may apply to Russia, or Florida, but I would need examples of how this works in SL.  Landlords collecting tier and then evicting the tenants and keeping their lindens?  Not a successful business model. I don't know of any land company owners who play in LR, and would extend their evil ways to their land business, because they "cheated" LL out of an extra 25L/week.

 

 

 

 

You're right it's not RL.  SL is a luxury.  You can log in and enjoy the majority of it without spending a dime.  Stop whining.

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