Sansar- Wookey now apparently gets 60% - can this be true?

[Chic Aeon]

No Sansar forum here any longer but I am guessing there are a few folks "here" that were "there" -- for a time anyway.  When I was over at Discord asking computer questions last October there were still plenty of "old-timers" (older than me and some from the very beginning) there. I did hear some months ago that there was a deadline to sign up as a "legacy" creator to keep a good Sandollars to USD exchange ratio, but since I never planned to turn in any money (and likely never log in again) I didn't care.

 

Then I noted some returnees at the beginning of the year, and then when I went over to Discord again last weekend there was only one person that I recognized from  pre- Wookey days.   Now I just heard that 60% startling fact. Oh my!   So I am glad I was there WHEN I was there and glad too that I left. It was obvious that it wasn't going to be the same platform after the sale.   

 

I have no reason to doubt this info but if someone knows differently, please correct my statement.  No way I am logging in to do research :D.  I am guessing this figure includes the exchange rate maybe as well as fees.  I cashed out to Paypal for the last time  right before things changed.  

 

[Lucia Nightfire]

@Medhue Simoni or @Silas Merlin might know, heh.

[animats]

All 16 users must be very upset.

[Coffee Pancake]

Sending some firefighters to help with that burn.

Incidentally, there are 18 of them in this picture.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

5 hours ago, animats said:

All 16 users must be very upset.

Maybe they enjoy the peace and quiet?

I'm doing well if I see  a quarter of that amount of people when I wander round the OSGrid, but that doesn't spoil my enjoyment of it, nor does it seem to be causing a dramatic decline in the OSGrid land area.

[ChinRey]

4 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I'm doing well if I see  a quarter of that amount of people when I wander round the OSGrid,

Right now as I write this, the most populated OSGrid region has 17 people logged on. So that's region alone beats Sansar. (And of course, the most popular nude beach in SL probably beats them both with ease.)

[Chic Aeon]

Well happily I still get checks from Kitely deposited automatically to Paypal (that really is NICE) so "something" is still happening over at Opensim. 

I guess since no one had input about the "fees" part of the equation we can assume that the fees have increased and that is why some folks have left -- Sansar that is which was the topic of this post :D.   

[ChinRey]

20 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

No Sansar forum here any longer but I am guessing there are a few folks "here" that were "there" -- for a time anyway.  When I was over at Discord asking computer questions last October there were still plenty of "old-timers" (older than me and some from the very beginning) there. I did hear some months ago that there was a deadline to sign up as a "legacy" creator to keep a good Sandollars to USD exchange ratio, but since I never planned to turn in any money (and likely never log in again) I didn't care.

 

Then I noted some returnees at the beginning of the year, and then when I went over to Discord again last weekend there was only one person that I recognized from  pre- Wookey days.   Now I just heard that 60% startling fact. Oh my!   So I am glad I was there WHEN I was there and glad too that I left. It was obvious that it wasn't going to be the same platform after the sale.

Oh, one of those schemes to discriminate new contributers and discourage them from joining.

[Chic Aeon]

OK. I got another message from the person that told me it was 60 percent "now" AND they were counting the 30 percent STEAM thing which happened a very long time ago as well as Wookey taking 30 percent.  So I am not sure if that is different from when I was there (as long as you have the grandfathered exchange rate still) or different. I did see a few familiar names when I just dropped by Discord but most of those folks didn't actually SELL a lot of stuff anyway.  From conversations on Discord I gathered that I was one of the higher earners (certainly not the highest) and I didn't make that much there. 

 

So it appears that it isn't really a new story, just a slightly different interpretation.   I never looked at it that way.   Too late to change my post title :D.   

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Hi. I'm just curious in all my ignorance, but Sansar is getting 60% of what, compared to what and/or when?

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Hi. I'm just curious in all my ignorance, but Sansar is getting 60% of what, compared to what and/or when?

60% of the sales income from teh Sansar store except it turns out they have to split it evenly with Steam. We may well be talking about hundreds of dollars a year here.

[Chic Aeon]

6 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Hi. I'm just curious in all my ignorance, but Sansar is getting 60% of what, compared to what and/or when?

Sorry  -- of MONEY earned by creators.   But unless things have changed a lot  most folks in Sansar did (do?) not come in via STEAM and so there is no reason Wookey would need to pay that fee to STEAM. They weren't when I left.  

It WAS 100 sandollars to one USD if you BOUGHT logging directly into Sansar and 250 to one if you bought through STEAM so there was an advantage for folks to use via steam if they were buying currency.   There was (WAS) also a difference in exchange rate for selling currency and those of us that were there three years ago or so (I forgot exactly when that started) were grandfathered in at a better rate.   That is gone for many people now (not all as I understand it).  

 

It doesn't really matter if you weren't trying to make money. 

Between the new Tilia rules (August 2019?) and the increase of fees on the Marketplace a fair amount of old-time creators have stopped creating -- including some that I used to blog for :D.   Fees and rules may not be the only reason of course -- AND there are plenty of new folks to take their places.  I just thought that 60 percent figure that was mentioned was pretty hefty.  

 

Kitely takes 20 percent from each sale but there are no other fees.  

Edited April 5, 2021 by Chic Aeon
adding info

[Sid Nagy]

There is no thing as a free lunch.
Even if it only exist of a single bite in a plain cracker.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Sid Nagy
Culinaire adjustments.

[Medhue Simoni]

@Chic Aeon

The rate is actually around 62%, and in the PDF handed out to their big clients, it says 70%, plus likely cash out fees. 

Yes, they give the excuse that Steam costs them 30%, but that is kind of a load of BS too. The deal with Steam is that Steam makes 30% on the sale of Sansar dollars on Steam. That does not mean that Steam get 30% of all Sansar dollars sold. That would be completely ridiculous. So, if half the users buy their Sansar dollars on Steam, and half on the Sansar website, that effectively means Sansar is really paying Steam 15%. Ebbe confirmed this at the meeting where they announced the Steam deal, as I brought it up immediately, as I've dealt with Steam and these deals before. Ebbe said that Sansar would need time to see what the effective rate will actually be and likely change the rate we pay depending on that. Of course, no evaluation of this was ever made, and Sansar still used that Steam deal today as the reason for high rates. 

In reality, It's not Steam keeping the rate high, and them blaming Steam shows their own ignorance about it all, or incompetence, or lack of morality. Even if they were to get Sansar on the Oculus store, with that same 30% rate. Effectively, it would not really cost Sansar even a dime more money, outside of the development to get it on Oculus. Again, because Oculus would be taking 30% of the Sansar dollars sold on Oculus, not 30% of all Sansar dollars sold.

It's been exclusively me, that has gotten Sansar to grandfather the creators to a more reasonable 32% rate that we pay Sansar. Every year, that grandfathered rate ends in December. And every year, I have made a huge stink about it and gotten them to extent the grandfathering. I just assumed that at some point, that they would stop pushing for this 62% rate, and keep the 32% rate, but that has not happened yet. For the past year, I have effectively stopped all development in Sansar. I just go in to say hi every now and then, and I keep up in their Discord. Right now I'm making my final push to get them to see how their plans and business models are irrational, and doomed to fail. It should be obvious. Instead of listening tho, they are doubling down and being increasingly hostile to me. Heck, they have always been, but now their newest community manager is on a power trip. It all just makes me laugh. Yeah, harrass and abuse me openly in your own discord, and then wonder why you only have 5 people online that day, rofl. 

I had made a ton of tutorials on how to create in Sansar, but I have unlisted all of them now. They do not appreciate all I've done, so why would I continue to help them. Right now, there is another music event going on, hosted by The Glastonbury festival people, and Lost Horizon. Some decent DJs, but despite that, there were 35 at the event, an hour into it. For whatever reason, the Sansar people don't see the patterm that has happened for every big client they sign. Usually the first event is huge, with thousands of people running around. The very next event, there will be less than 100. The next event, they can barely fill 1 instance, which has a limit of 50. Every single big client has seen this exact same pattern. 

Now is my last little push to get them to understand that users and creators are the people they should be catering too. Not huge corporations that will ALL eventually drop them when they don't see any value in it all. If Sansar continues down this road, then they will go bye bye for sure.

 

Edited April 17, 2021 by Medhue Simoni

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Medhue Simoni said:

@Chic Aeon

The rate is actually around 62%, and in the PDF handed out to their big clients, it says 70%, plus likely cash out fees. 

Yes, they give the excuse that Steam costs them 30%, but that is kind of a load of BS too. The deal with Steam is that Steam makes 30% on the sale of Sansar dollars on Steam. That does not mean that Steam get 30% of all Sansar dollars sold. That would be completely ridiculous. So, if half the users buy their Sansar dollars on Steam, and half on the Sansar website, that effectively means Sansar is really paying Steam 15%. Ebbe confirmed this at the meeting where they announced the Steam deal, as I brought it up immediately, as I've dealt with Steam and these deals before. Ebbe said that Sansar would need time to see what the effective rate will actually be and likely change the rate we pay depending on that. Of course, no evaluation of this was ever made, and Sansar still used that Steam deal today as the reason for high rates. 

In reality, It's not Steam keeping the rate high, and them blaming Steam shows their own ignorance about it all, or incompetence, or lack of morality. Even if they were to get Sansar on the Oculus store, with that same 30% rate. Effectively, it would not really cost Sansar even a dime more money, outside of the development to get it on Oculus. Again, because Oculus would be taking 30% of the Sansar dollars sold on Oculus, not 30% of all Sansar dollars sold.

It's been exclusively me, that has gotten Sansar to grandfather the creators to a more reasonable 32% rate that we pay Sansar. Every year, that grandfathered rate ends in December. And every year, I have made a huge stink about it and gotten them to extent the grandfathering. I just assumed that at some point, that they would stop pushing for this 62% rate, and keep the 32% rate, but that has not happened yet. For the past year, I have effectively stopped all development in Sansar. I just go in to say hi every now and then, and I keep up in their Discord. Right now I'm making my final push to get them to see how their plans and business models are irrational, and doomed to fail. It should be obvious. Instead of listening tho, they are doubling down and being increasingly hostile to me. Heck, they have always been, but now their newest community manager is on a power trip. It all just makes me laugh. Yeah, harrass and abuse me openly in your own discord, and then wonder why you only have 5 people online that day, rofl. 

I had made a ton of tutorials on how to create in Sansar, but I have unlisted all of them now. They do not appreciate all I've done, so why would I continue to help them. Right now, there is another music event going on, hosted by The Glastonbury festival people, and Lost Horizon. Some decent DJs, but despite that, there were 35 at the event, an hour into it. For whatever reason, the Sansar people don't see the patterm that has happened for every big client they sign. Usually the first event is huge, with thousands of people running around. The very next event, there will be less than 100. The next event, they can barely fill 1 instance, which has a limit of 50. Every single big client has seen this exact same pattern. 

Now is my last little push to get them to understand that users and creators are the people they should be catering too. Not huge corporations that will ALL eventually drop them when they don't see any value in it all. If Sansar continues down this road, then they will go bye bye for sure.

 

Thanks. That was pretty much how I remembered things :D.  I probably have a fairly hefty Sandollar balance there.  Too bad I didn't realize what was going to happen and I would have taken my things down off the store.  But we don't always know what the future will bring.   I only saw a few names that I knew when I was over there a few weeks ago saying "thanks for the input on the new computer". I am still glad I was there. Definitely an adventure.  And there is some great tech there. Too bad is isn't really getting used as it could be.  

 

Take care. 

[Gabriele Graves]

I am curious, why would they stay on Steam, paying them 15% when it hasn't really helped their participant numbers at all?

[Medhue Simoni]

@Chic Aeon I don't regret being there either. Met a ton of good people and great artists. Meeting them and getting to know them will likely lead to something, and has with my creative partner Bagnaria. 

I definitely wasted too much time there though. Mostly because Bagnaria was into it all. Plus, still not many good VR worlds. That is the part we loved, the VR part. She kind of forced me into VR, sending me her DK2 headset.

 

[Medhue Simoni]

16 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I am curious, why would they stay on Steam, paying them 15% when it hasn't really helped their participant numbers at all?

IDK really. Many of us have asked. Almost nobody that has ever been a regular found Sansar through Steam. Really, I have zero confidence that anyone over there thinks about anything outside their little box they put themselves in. Since Wookey bought Sansar, we've heard nothing at all from anyone in management. Sheri,  the president came to 1 product meeting, and said not much more than a sentence. Been almost 2 years. I don't think anyone over there in management has any virtual world experience, outside of Aleks, Ebbe's son, who's experience was when he was on the teen grid.