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1 hour ago, Reed Linden said:

For me personally, I'm super excited to be working on Two Factor Authentication this year, and some updates to our web account management to give you all more options to interact with your in-world avatar/region/etc from the web. 

Finally! Any ideas on how that will integrate into the web services / viewer logins?

Edited by Jenna Huntsman
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50 minutes ago, Dancien Graves said:

I spend about $100 to $200USD a paycheck because I have a hopeless shopping problem. Jacking up my fees by almost 100%....that will stop that dead in it's tracks. 

That might be looked at as a good thing.  Depending on how often you buy lindens NOW and how often you will in the future there may be no change. But let's say you buy all 200 US at the first of the month and now it costs you 1.49US.  The MOST it can cost for any one purchase is $9.99 so 8.50US more.  Give up a fancy sandwich or a fancy coffee and you are even again -- even in the worst case scenario. 

 

I didn't recheck this against the official numbers from page one, but I think I am close. 

 

Here is the info again from the post. 

image.thumb.png.faf24a4823ff4ed91b2cc7559396ef28.png

 

This fee seems to be much like the current US President's idea of who should pay for things (read that as the wealthy folks).  It seems to me from my VERY low income perspective that anyone that can afford to spend 200 US a month on pixel products, should be able to spend "up to" 8.50 more for that pleasure. 

Thank you though for supporting the creators of SL. (honestly)

 

Edited by Chic Aeon
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Is this why third-party L$ exchanges were banned all those years ago? So LL can now - already for the third time - keep on raising the cost of buying L$? 🙁

The premium price increase doubled what I pay for premium (LL price increase + decision to start charging VAT on it which LL didn't before) and now the cost of buying L$ has gone up 10x from 40 cents to $4.20 (I tend to buy around L$15k/$60 at a time for a month's worth of shopping).

"Whales will pay no matter what" works in games, but the (over)paying minority tends to at least get the "pay to win" brag rights but you're missing that piece of the puzzle in SL.

The model where you (over)charge for basic platform services seems better than to just tax L$ spending residents with increasing amounts of RL money. For instance you have the "in-app purchase of $40 for a name change". Make extra options to wear 1 additional animesh attachments (basic has 1 currently, premium gets 2). Pay-to-win purchase for extra groups, or more picks, or an online status indicator,  or one time $40 to have 2FA, etc etc... .

Anything that doesn't repeatedly make me feel punished for being part of the minorty that's already giving LL $US...

Edited by Kitty Barnett
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1 hour ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

Will the 2FA be an option for residents or a mandatory thing? Not everyone has a smart phone or deal with Google.

2FA is fine for me with Google.  Any kind of cell phone text confirmation only option is an absolute NO.  I am extremely far-sighted with far vision like that of a hawk and therefore have difficulty seeing things near me, thus I do not text nor use text on a small cell phone ever as I cannot see it even with my six time plus magnification eyeglasses.  I have gone through this problem twice now with Paypal and they worked a way around for me.  I told the last person I spoke too on the phone whom I told I am visually handicapped to not discriminate against the visually handicapped by needing some kind of cell phone code to be put in there as I absolutely cannot do it.  The person working for Paypal laughed but it's entirely not funny.  There are visually handicapped people in this world.  I contact and message my family and friends entirely through Facebook.  My cell phone is for 911 emergencies mostly but I never text and never will be able to see such a small object to do that.  Email code options need for 2fa need to be considered.  It's a dumb idea and it's discriminatory in it's nature to have 2fa be cell phone only for any company.  

Edited by FairreLilette
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1 hour ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

Will the 2FA be an option for residents or a mandatory thing? Not everyone has a smart phone or deal with Google.

Hi, Kimmi!

 

This is slightly off topic, but I opened this can of worms, so I'll own it. :D I am still scoping out how I expect this to work so there's nothing set in stone, but my intention is to keep it as non-intrusive as possible. I envision it being opt-in.

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34 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Maybe LL could consider taking the extra money it will make from these fee increases and hire someone who can schedule dates for when features or bugs will be implemented rather than leaving it to the inscrutable future. I'd wager a lot more would be accomplished then putting the word Soon to every ETA.

You might be onto something there! 

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4 minutes ago, Reed Linden said:

Hi, Kimmi!

 

This is slightly off topic, but I opened this can of worms, so I'll own it. :D I am still scoping out how I expect this to work so there's nothing set in stone, but my intention is to keep it as non-intrusive as possible. I envision it being opt-in.

Thanks! Maybe a separate thread can be opened for the 2FA stuff for those who have questions about --- so this thread can remain on the rails.

Meanwhile I think the fee could be dropped a tad or 2.....

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24 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

Finally! Any ideas on how that will integrate into the web services / viewer logins?

I have a lot of ideas, but nothing is set in stone yet. With a product like ours (more accurately, many separate but intricately related products), much care needs to be taken to ensure that moving a widget in one place doesn't completely bork something in another service entirely, so our scope will (initially) be limited, I suspect. My (admittedly biased) focus will be on protecting payment methods and account security (passwords, email addresses, RL info) first and foremost, so that would be mostly web-based.

 

I want this thread to stay on track, so that's probably the last question I should answer about my personal wish list for 2FA. :) Thank you all for your interest! I'm excited about the possibilities for it, and I'm glad to see y'all are interested, too.  

Back to buy fees!

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10 minutes ago, Reed Linden said:

Hi, Kimmi!

 

This is slightly off topic, but I opened this can of worms, so I'll own it. :D I am still scoping out how I expect this to work so there's nothing set in stone, but my intention is to keep it as non-intrusive as possible. I envision it being opt-in.

I'm one of "those people" that do not own a cell phone. I can't afford one. Just so you know we do exist.

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25 minutes ago, Kitty Barnett said:

what I pay for premium (LL price increase + decision to start charging VAT on it which LL didn't before)

 

Off topic for the thread, but side note on the above comment about VAT:   VAT is not charged for Premium when it is paid yearly, but is charged for monthly & quarterly options.  It was the same before the price of Premium increased.  I don't remember how long ago LL started charging VAT on Premium memberships.

 

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4 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

 

Off topic for the thread, but side note on the above comment about VAT:   VAT is not charged for Premium when it is paid yearly, but is charged for monthly & quarterly options.  It was the same before the price of Premium increased.  I don't remember how long ago LL started charging VAT on Premium memberships.

 

The VAT thing is more likely a regulatory compliance issue rather than one actively made by the Lab. All European countries have laws about what and how VAT is applied, and specifically what types of items are exempt (of which I'm certain SL isn't).

(I'll note here that even in the most favourable light, looking at the Lindex as a bureau de change it still isn't exempted from VAT. Looks like there was a lot of fuss about this in 2019, but not much happened).

Edited by Jenna Huntsman
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So here are some questions.

1. Moving to the cloud was supposed to lower the costs associated with hosting the regions and increase the level of hardware available for each sim. Sims were supposed to shut down and spin up and allocate resources depending on how many people were in the sim or whether the sim was empty, thus making them more cost effective. So, what is it that specifically requires a hike in the charges for buying linden dollars. Is this really a case of increased costs or is this the new investment group looking for ways to make extra money?.

2. In terms of premium plus, will there be a reduced transaction charge for those who purchase premium plus?. I really feel that there should be benefits to premium plus involving fees and land ownership.

3. I think a lot of us were hoping that a move to the cloud would eventually lower the cost of owning a region. Guessing this is a no go now?.

4. As much as this might annoy some people. Have you considered other avenues such as increasing the upload fee to 15 lindens to help offset some of the cost instead?.

Edited by ItHadToComeToThis
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1 minute ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

4. As much as this might annoy some people. Have you considered other avenues such as increasing the upload fee to 15 lindens to help offset some of the cost instead?.

LL don't deal in L$ for anything that matters.

The upload fee existing at all is to act as a brake and stop people dumping their entire image collection into SL.

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3 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

 

Off topic for the thread, but side note on the above comment about VAT:   VAT is not charged for Premium when it is paid yearly, but is charged for monthly & quarterly options.  It was the same before the price of Premium increased.  I don't remember how long ago LL started charging VAT on Premium memberships.

 

No, it really wasn't. Quarterly wasn't subject to VAT until the price increase. (And support can't agree on what happens to my stipend if I change from quaterly to yearly with some saying I loose it, and the others saying it'll stay L$500)

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3 minutes ago, Kitty Barnett said:

No, it really wasn't. Quarterly wasn't subject to VAT until the price increase. (And support can't agree on what happens to my stipend if I change from quaterly to yearly with some saying I loose it, and the others saying it'll stay L$500)

I switched to yearly with no problem or loss of my $500 stipend.  The support agent I asked said that they would restore if if I did lose it, though.

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8 minutes ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

1. Moving to the cloud was supposed to lower the costs associated with hosting the regions and increase the level of hardware available for each sim. Sims were supposed to shut down and spin up and allocate resources depending on how many people were in the sim or whether the sim was empty, thus making them more cost effective. So, what is it that specifically requires a hike in the charges for buying linden dollars. Is this really a case of increased costs or is this the new investment group looking for ways to make extra money?.

Supposed to lower the costs...who said that or was it a rumor?

I'm wondering if, without their own servers and being able to write off depreciation for those servers on their yearly income taxes to the IRS, has caused the cloud servers to be more expensive; i.e. Amazon gets depreciation write offs now.  Depreciation used to give businesses a rather good tax write off.  

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11 minutes ago, Kitty Barnett said:

No, it really wasn't. Quarterly wasn't subject to VAT until the price increase. 

 

I must have messed up when recording that info back when the Premium fee increased.  Will correct my old notes.

 

 

11 minutes ago, Kitty Barnett said:

(And support can't agree on what happens to my stipend if I change from quaterly to yearly with some saying I loose it, and the others saying it'll stay L$500)

 

Various forum conversations have only talked about some people losing the higher stipend when the quit Premium and then restarted it.  Nothing about the stipend amount changing when you simply change the renewal timeframe -- though I can understand being concerned about that.

 

I have always found it so amazing (not in a good way) when LL Support gives multiple different answers to the same question.

 

Edited by LittleMe Jewell
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2 hours ago, Reed Linden said:

This is a very valid question, and one we struggled with, too. The most transparent way to say it is that we didn't feel like we had a choice. The revenue associated with this fee increase is tied directly to all of our plans for the future, and our ability to keep Second Life vibrant and engaging, including right now. If we had had the ability to hold off on this increase any longer, we would have. We appreciate how important Second Life is to our residents, especially now, and we feel the critical need to reinvest in that experience and bring in NEW residents as soon as possible.

I totally understand.  I know this would be a long shot, but 7.5 increase is a big amount to go.  Would it be possible to slowly increase it overtime instead of leaping to a big amount? Not long ago the fee for premium jumped to 99 dollars a year.  At the time it was reasonable because we weren't in this pandemic and there wasn't anything to worry about us losing jobs.  Now we are in a struggle on getting jobs back and bringing back the economy the way it was pre-pandemic.  I think maybe, offer some initiatives for members.  Like maybe increase it to 3.5, then next year 5.5 then the following year to 7.5?   Also, what about giving a fee break to those who are premium members or keep it at a flat rate that it is now?

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10 minutes ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

So here are some questions.

1. Moving to the cloud was supposed to lower the costs associated with hosting the regions and increase the level of hardware available for each sim. Sims were supposed to shut down and spin up and allocate resources depending on how many people were in the sim or whether the sim was empty, thus making them more cost effective. So, what is it that specifically requires a hike in the charges for buying linden dollars. Is this really a case of increased costs or is this the new investment group looking for ways to make extra money?.

2. In terms of premium plus, will there be a reduced transaction charge for those who purchase premium plus?. I really feel that there should be benefits to premium plus involving fees and land ownership.

3. I think a lot of us were hoping that a move to the cloud would eventually lower the cost of owning a region. Guessing this is a no go now?.

4. As much as this might annoy some people. Have you considered other avenues such as increasing the upload fee to 15 lindens to help offset some of the cost instead?.

1. It's not a 1 to 1. The updated transaction fee will help offset some costs associated with the move to AWS. To your point, one of the ways we will be reinvesting this revenue is in leveraging the new options the move to AWS gives us to provide exactly the types of benefits you're talking about.
2. I can't comment about the potential benefits associated with Premium Plus - those will be announced when they're finalized and we're able to commit to a release. It's possible!
3. It still might! We remain committed to lowering the barrier to entry for region ownership as much as we're able. Changes to our revenue model (such as increased transaction fees) are part of that process.
4. We have considered many potential avenues of revenue increase, and we're working hard to balance the impact to our residents vs. our own operational costs and needs. It's a very narrow tightrope! 

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