Drayke Newall

The fact that they haven't introduced these 'soon' things as part of the current announcement in all likelihood means they will never be added. Just the same as grid wise experiences were soon, additional EEP settings were soon, BoM materials were soon, etc. If Linden Lab's track record is anything to go by, once something is announced and released, that is where it stays for the foreseeable future or if ever.

The other thread hinted that a free name change might be included in the future. At $40 for a name change, maybe the extra $49 might be future proofing for this in an effort to claim it is free when it isn't.

I would assume he meant that premium + goes from one extra animesh attachment to two extra animesh attachments so in total 3 animesh attachments possible for P+, so he wasn't wrong just worded it without context. ___________________________ On a side note and not specifically addressed to Qie, was there any mention if premium plus offers still an either or option of Linden Home or Mainland parcel? If it is still either one or the other like regular premium, then this is a bad move. P+ would offer a far better package if you could have a Linden Home on 1024 as well as an additional 1024 mainland parcel (for say a shop) making up 2048m² of land allowance. This may be the case and someone may have answered it already.

Armchair experts always know better even if as per your occupation, privies you to being more knowledgeable in the subject than others. Whilst I am no accountant like yourself, I know that Australia has stated that it is taxable here if not cashed out and has been like that for over a decade. From what I have read as well, whilst it isn't considered real money (only because LL in their ToS state the user doesn't own their L$ amount), in the USA you are still supposed to declare the market value of L$ you have earned in SL and not cashed out in your tax return. There is no point in arguing with some people either as some just refuse to believe as such even if experts tell otherwise such as yourself, luna's tax agent and even expert investors/accountants from Investopedia.

If per that Investopedia statement saying that it must be shown as gross income even if not cashed out in the USA and per your tax agent then Yeah would be annoying. There seems to be a lot of IRS statements that conflict each other especially when L$ is concerned. As seen in this thread people have stated it is not needed to be declared unless cashed out, yet as you have mentioned your tax agent says otherwise as does the Investopedia article which is also written by experts. For me if I was over in the states I would go by experts advice rather than a few users in SL saying otherwise. It may not be considered a fiat currency as I mentioned but seems that it is supposed to be declared even if not cashed out.

I edited my post just as you posted to include a quoted from Investopedia which states that it is considered as property for tax purposes and that the user must declare any L$ amount not cashed out as part of their gross income.

Reading that it seems very similar to the Australian ATO statement that was made here in 2006, however there is in the USA a separation between what the IRS call 'convertible digital currency' and the L$. Convertible digital currency (virtual currency) is crypto like Bitcoin in that it is considered a fiat currency. In the USA at the moment the L$ is not considered a fiat currency. Due to Linden Lab specifically claiming in their ToS that users have no financial or legal claim to their L$ and can be revoked or deleted at any time without reason it allows it to not be treated as one as, no fiat currency would allow that and no investor would use it. Hence it is considered per LL's ToS a 'Token' and defined as such by the IRS as it is not 'owned' by the user and can be removed at any time from the user by LL. That said, it is only this specific one line in Second Life's ToS that is excluding it being counted as a fiat currency or a Convertible digital currency in the IRS documentation. In Australia it is a little different as mentioned due to the ATO declaring that the L$ is taxable even if not cashed out. The ATO in other words dont recognise it as a Token but as a Convertible digital currency. Whether this has changed with the introduction with crypto I am not sure, however last I checked a few years ago with the ATO it was still taxed. ETA: That said there are aspects of the IRS legislation that I am not familiar with due to not living there. This line from Investopedia though is interesting and claims that what others have stated to be wrong. If what Investopedia says is correct though (and cant see why it wouldn't be as it is used and written by experts) it means it is declarable even if not cashed out. Linden Dollar Definition (investopedia.com): "Virtual currency is not viewed as real money, but as property for tax purposes. Property tax laws, therefore, apply to Linden dollar transactions. A taxpayer is required to include the fair market value of any Linden money obtained when calculating his gross income. If the taxpayer used the virtual currency strictly for investment gains, any capital gains or losses from the investments made are taxed appropriately." Whether this means that it is taxed or simply declared I am not sure as I haven't even seen an IRS form.

It isn't open for interpretation at all. When it was announced I contacted them directly for clarification due to having a small shop in Second Life and they confirmed it to be the case. The 'may' there is for differing between a hobby and a business in that, depending on what you earn, how you earn it and how you run it, you may need to add it to your tax return. It kind of depends on the whole hobby and business thing. If you use Second Life with the intention to make a profit, run it like a business (i.e. keep accounting records etc) and is your majority income IRL then it is a business, otherwise it can be counted as a hobby and not subject to tax. So something like Catwa or Land Barons would be a business due to the scale etc, where as something where a person sells the random stuff they make with no intention of making a real profit and just to provide for some spending money in SL it would be a hobby. Most people selling stuff would be counted under the hobby category and therefore not subject to declaring L$ money on the tax return. Also, because you can declare L$ value on the tax return if you declare it as a business it also allows you to claim deductions like electricity, computer, etc.

That may be the case in the USA, however, in Australia if you earn over a certain amount of Linden Dollars (in real world value) that it isn't considered a hobby then you are liable to include your non cashed out linden dollar real world value amount on your tax return. To put it another way, if you earn L$ and DONT cash it out to a real world currency, you are still taxed on it to the RL value set by the linden exchange at tax time. This was stated and set by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) all the way back in 2006. Virtual world: tax man cometh (theage.com.au). From the article:

If it is GPD then that means it was the latter I was talking about, that they are lying to make themselves look good Tilia wise. That said, the CMO interviews recently stated that transactions of virtual goods totalled $650million. "...Second Life, which claims that transactions of virtual goods totalled $650 million in 2021, with content creators pocketing more than $80 million of that". Source: Second Life's New CMO The word transactions means something was sold and bought (revenue), not something was listed and not/possibly sold (GDP). This is why I said either it means that either people purchased Lindens to equal that amount or there are that many Lindens floating around that are never cashed out. Even if it is a combination, if you include $L purchase along with revenue from premium and land they are making a couple of 100 million dollars a year easy. In 2011 LL revenue was more than $75million and considering they are charging more in fees, have seen inflation on prices in SL on goods (more L$ purchase) and now have far higher mesh upload fees, they are clearly making a lot more than they were in 2011 especially if they can spend a couple of hundred million on Sansar flop and start Tilia in 2019. Also keep in mind this, LL stated in 2011: "... land revenues represent only a part of Linden's total revenues, so any change there represents an even smaller impact overall and can also be offset by positive changes in other revenue items". This statement means that as far back as 2011, LL have not been concerned about loosing revenue on land tier as any decline or changes has a small impact overall on their revenue due to other revenue off setting it. Like I said before and you also mentioned we dont know LL actual revenue but it has to be more than their 2011 revenue if they can spend money on start-ups and continue for another 11 years with RL cost increases. 2 years ago premium+ was also mentioned by LL as being a hope to lower land tier by offsetting costs. Something tells me however that tier will remain the same after they announce it and it shows uptake.

It is not as simple as that. Or, are you suggesting LL have ultra thin profit margins when earning $645million odd dollars? That the two investors that bought LL thought they would just buy an unprofitable business because they had extra cash to spare (keeping in mind Tilia only had ONE company signed up at the time . Now they have TWO)? That LL pulled money out of a hat that enabled them to create Sansar or Tilia or blocksworld etc? No company would fund other ventures without enough profit behind them to do so. Second Life is profitable enough to allow LL to freely fund other ventures without loosing money. Its their cash cow and everyone has known this for years. Even if we take LL staff, rental and a generous amount of money for other overheads, that still leaves a large net profit. They have around 200 staff, even if you give each staff member $100,000 and allow $400,000,000 for overheads that still leaves over $200,000,000 in profit every year. This not even taking into consideration the millions of dollars in deals they make with the like of Unity for using Tilia. Additionally, as I mentioned, Roblox also couldn't afford to get rid of experiences tied to premium, they were making a substantial loss every year yet, only saw a profit after they removed their similar 'regions' from premium and made them completely free. It's not a coincidence at all that in 2017 they earned $45million and then the following year over $300million when they removed land tied to premium. Nor a coincidence that they saw user uptake boom in 2018. The fact is, land cost is a substantial reason why Second Life hasn't grown. It is why businesses left years ago, the same companies LL's CMO wants to come back. It is why IBM and many others left for opensim. It is why Education companies left on mass after their discount was removed. Second Life is prohibitively expensive. Until LL lower land prices dramatically Second Life will never even become a casual virtual world that LL's CMO stated they want to grow into. Roblox learnt this, changed its methods and saw their product boom in both revenue and users and now make a larger profit than LL. Linden Lab on the other hand are doing what Roblox stopped by bringing out another premium package that gives people more mainland, that no one wants. That is to say, a tiered premium to access Land.

We are also not privy to the amount it costs Linden Lab to host Second Life on AWS. We will never know unless they go public. What we do know however is how many regions are private and mainland. Grid survey shows a near equal 50/50 split of full regions to homesteads (it's actually 55.5% for full and 43.9% for homestead but for ease 50/50). So 9214 full and 9214 homestead. This means that private regions alone net LL direct revenue of $37,371,984 every year. If we look at mainland and remove 6806 regions for Linden owned land per grid survey, that means LL earn, if mainland is fully rented, a total of $39,931,500 every year. If we account for 20% of mainland being abandoned, then that would mean $31,945,200 mainland revenue. That means they earn just in land revenue $69,317,184 every year even when not fully leased. I somewhat dont think it costs anywhere near that for hosting. Premium nets them about $2-5million/year. Additionally, and maybe I am reading this wrong but, LL claim to have had last year transactions of virtual goods totalling $650million USD of which $80million USD went to creators. That implies one of two things. Either LL pocketed $570million USD through linden purchases which are never cashed out (i.e. pure revenue to LL as it is never cashed out) or there is $570million USD worth of Lindens that just floats around every year that never gets cashed out to creators/users and they are using the figure to mask that LL actually dont make any money at all (i.e. they pay out more to creators per year than they make through premium and land tier combined as shown above). I doubt it is the latter, especially considering they are using this $650million as marketing for Tilia which is solely virtual currency to USD and is in their interest for potential clients to not lie about. So this means that LL, if all the above is correct and I am reading their transaction announcement correctly, earn about $645million every year give or take from all sources in SL. According to you though just because a Linden said so, they cant afford to lower land tier despite earning that amount of money every year? _________________________ Consider this. Roblox has only recently made a profit after years of losses and earn about $1.2billion total revenue before expenses now with a recent profit of about $400million. Despite making losses for years, they charge $0 for creating an environment. They built their userbase up because it is free to make environments therefore more people build, thus bringing in more people to play thus bringing in more money to improve the platform. Interestingly, prior to 2018 Roblox only allowed a free account to create 1 experience and had a tiered system of more experience creation limit based on tiered premium (paid) accounts. In 2017 Roblox's total revenue was $45million. In 2018 they made everyone able to create as many experiences as they wanted for free (with a high limit) and in 2018 the total revenue was $335million and climbed higher ever since. Is it a coincidence that their userbase and revenue (through premium and currency purchase) increased enormously when they removed 'land/experience' being tied to a premium account and made it free? Conversely, Linden Lab charge users to create an 'experience' (region) an obscene amount and yet conversely to Roblox, are loosing members, dont make as much, have no where near the amount of users or land/experiences and dont earn enough to invest back into Second Life.

That's the other more complicated earning method I mentioned in my post. Basically if a user who has premium visits your experience and you as the creator also have premium, then you get what is known as a premium payout. The user doesnt pay that it just comes as a perk for being premium. It happens whether you have a big experience or a small experience and is based on time spent. I suppose it is similar to camping chairs in SL's past but in reverse where the creator gets the cash instead of the user. Not really unless you're a creator that wants the top spot. As I said 99.7% of creators dont even create in roblox with the intention of cashing out, making money, etc. They just make a game for fun without even thinking of creating money. Under 13 year olds (largest demographic) are part of this as they cannot cash-out so there is no incentive for them to jostle for the top spot to earn Robux. The reason why there are more games on Roblox is because that is primarily what their users want to make i.e. kids like games and kids are the majority demographic. The same way that clubs out represent Second Life users to the point that there is probably enough clubs in SL for each club to have 20 users 😆. Sure there aren't as many things to do in Roblox as SL however keep in mind that the limited robux cash outs to RL money and limited customisability means less incentive and things to be part of the economy or to earn money, hence another reason SL can be advertised as better than competitors. The 150million user/day to 1milion developer ratio shows that people dont play or create experiences in Roblox with the intention to make money. Second Life on the other hand is driven by that. The majority of users start to play SL under the assumption that you play SL to make money selling stuff.

You mean Roblox paying those creators directly to influence traffic number or paying them that have good traffic numbers? I have never heard of that happening. Perhaps it was that those experiences that generate a lot of traffic are usually part of those 3-5000 creators that cash out robux to RL cash. That isn't a bad thing and would be no different to say, Catwa cashing out a lot of lindens due to that being popular.

No. Experiences can be whatever you want them to be. You can also create private or public experiences. Whilst some (the majority) make them games or have games in them as part of their world like MeepCity (which is a hangout/social place with games in it as well as other things), many are just places that people have built to hang out with people or build their own creations. The reason why games are more prevalent is due to them bringing in more people to earn creators more $$. You also dont pay for traffic at all unless you want to. In Roblox a creator can pay for advertisements or a sponsored experience to be displayed on the Roblox website in certain areas. This is no different to LL providing a similar advert option displayed in inworld search to a sim/region if a person pays Lindens for it. Creating an experience or place is free and usually is unless the access is made not so by the experience creator. A creator (of the experience) can then either charge Robux for entry to that place/game/hangout etc., or they can charge robux for buying certain things in their created experience like avatar clothing, Game Passes (roblox.com), extra content specific to their experience/place etc. They can also can make their own in game currency with robux as the buy in Earning Robux (roblox.com). Basically Roblox and creators earn money the same way Linden Lab earn money from people buying Lindens (or premium) and creators earn money from people spending Lindens. There are more complicated earning mechanics in Roblox but the aforementioned is the gist. What is different to Second Life is that in Roblox, for creators to cash out their robux earnt to RL money they need to meet a threshold and be approved prior to do so. Out of the 1million odd creators only 3-5000 of those are eligible to cash out their robux to real currencies. The others 99.7% earn under $1000 per year and are generally ineligible to cash out. This is also why if Linden Lab did their homework on their competitors they have ample ways of marketing why Second Life is better than the competitors. If they updated their systems slightly improving performance (getting more avies on the region with no lag) and providing more scripting options (LL haven't added new scripting features for creators for many years) LL could easily advertise not only better graphics, but also play on the whole everyone is eligible to cash out not just a select few who earn over a certain amount per year.

To answer your questions. Roblox does not have land to purchase or rent, you create a space (does not need to be a game) and that is free. That space can be land or void depending on what you want to do. You can charge people robux to play your game or enter the world that you create you can also charge people for other things. Yes you can build homes and things. You can build anything you like. Yes there are clubs, bars and lounges and yes you can play music/dj. Club DJ - Roblox You can sell things you make however need a membership to do that. You sell things through the roblox marketplace or charge people in your world you create for things. Yes there are groups in Roblox that you can join Groups - Roblox Yes you can do all the hobbies you describe in Roblox like building, interior design, machinima etc it is just different and not photorealistic like SL. For example here is a movie maker space someone has made Movie Maker 3 - Roblox Avatars are not tweakable to the extent in SL and are very basic select eye, hair colour etc. Avatars are also less customisable so no guyliner etc. Roblox has their own 'developer viewer' which you design your space in and then upload it to the Roblox servers. You can also create assets outside of the developer viewer in say blender and import those in. Roblox is compared to SL so much because it does a lot of what SL allows, you can build, create, sell, join groups, RP, play games, make money, create an avatar etc. The whole Roblox only has games is a myth, it has many more things to do. For example the top roblox world that is played is an RP experience Adopt me! which has you RPing a family with baby etc. It has a concurrency of 200,000 daily users and a total of over 28billion visits. Another world is called Brookhaven which in this world that someone made you can RP with others about living in that world, own a house, car etc (either free or not free with a gamepass and buy items individually I believe with robux) it has a total of over 17billion visits. There are also thousands of other zones that are not game focused including clubs and hangouts etc. For example someone created a showcase of Paris (the RL city) where all you do is walk around and see what Paris looks like from that part of Paris. Its not a game but simply similar to many regions in SL. • Paris {SHOWCASE} - Roblox it is as realistic as most builds in SL.

Yes the Blue Fairy ad is the one on the SL home page. A thread was made when it was released with the majority stating that LL should have used actual inworld images like those you posted. The ad that LL came up with didnt show any form of what SL was and looked more to advertise a lie than reality.

You missed the point entirely. Seeing as you own a game store and think earlier you said that game store is board games I will put it another way. I am playing a virtual table top RPG where I am the Game Master making the rules and goals for my avatars second life. As the Game Master I set a goal for my character and decided that my character will go to a club and dance to try and find a friend. That is a goal. Therefore by your definition that an RPG requires a goal, Second Life is now a game. 🙄 Additionally, a game by no means requires experience points or levelling up and likewise it doesn't need a goal. Just because you own a game store does not mean you set the definition of what a game or roleplay is.

It doesn't matter if Roblox is past that. They are very cartoony avatars still and dont compete with SL's more realistic ones. As to a layered clothing system it is something that would be easy for LL to implement as all those systems do is have an inner and outer layer which are collision layers. Basically, when the clothing is worn the inner collision layer is pushed out wrapping around the previously added outer collision clothing or body layer. The trouble with such a system is it is akin to Second Life's onion bodies where the mesh and textures still exist under the visible outer clothing layer. This means that the more you add the more complex your avatar gets and the more lag it creates. Roblox and the others you mentioned can get around this as their avatars are not realistic looking and have simple geometry. They also dont offer anywhere near the same customisation Second Life offers for its avatars. Roblox offers hardly any character customisation at all with only basic customisations like height, width, hair type, eyes colour, skin colour, etc. As to complexity, take Roblox or example, this pic below is Roblox's latest Rthro (akin to SL's Ruth) avatar still very blocky in nature: You cannot compare Second Life's avatars and customisation to such basic avatar systems. Nor can you compare a layered clothing system that we already know in SL creates lag eventually due to SL bodies being far more realistic and customisable. Linden Lab would be far better off creating a system where, yes it does wrap around collision layers but also hides (doesn't render - occludes) anything that is hidden. For example the collision layer is also an occlusion plane that simply de-renders anything behind it on the avatar. With such a system you wouldn't need alpha cut bodies anymore as, the clothing with the occlusion plane in it would make the layer under it not render at all by the viewer until the clothing item is removed or you look at it from a certain angle. Materials for BoM and expanded BoM segments would be good as well. Those 3 things; wrapping and occlusion mesh clothing as well as Materials for BoM and more BoM segments would allow avatars to render at minimal render cost and remove the need for alpha cuts entirely whilst lowering the render cost of an avatar. Of course such an occlusion system would be very complex. As far as optimisation for the region goes, add actual occlusion culling to the environment i.e. everything behind your avatar/camera is culled entirely and only what you see in front of your camera is rendered. This would solve the lag when to many people are on the region as the viewer is only ever rendering the avatars you can actually see.

It may have won them industry awards but the ad itself failed to do what it was supposed to do. That is for new users to come and stick around. Effective marketing can slowly (or brutally) take away customers from competitors. The new CMO in his interviews as highlighted Roblox and Fortnite as a competitor. This is easy with comparative advertising. LL could easily create an ad that plays on Roblox's blocky cartoony nature and lack of user created content vs SL's realistic world, avatars and extensive customisation. To show Roblox users SL is better (after LL fix performance and streamlines changing appearance) and non roblox players interested in the metaverse that there is already a RL looking metaverse out there. For example: The ad starts with a person playing Roblox (or a non descriptive look alike) where his avatar and scene is cartoony, blocky and not having many options to select for their avatar customisation. Then from there either have it so that the avatar and environment slowly changes to a realistic looking SL scene and avatar (like the old B&W to Colour TV change) with the roblox avatar trying to run away from it or embrace it or, have it so that he starts to see glitches in the game of a 'grass is greener on the other side' aspect. Even could have it where the avatar in Roblox starts breaking down a wall trying to get through to see the better (Second Life) world. Though this breaking down a wall would work better as a Fortnite ad as pickaxing the world for things is part of the Frotnite game. There are lots of ways effective marketing like the above that can draw in users. LL however are focused on the wrong type of advertising. That said, they need to focus on improving performance so that people dont lag with 50 avatars in close proximity on the region and also improve the viewer to being more user friendly and make new user experience retention systems that are not just a tutorial.

Agree 100%. As I have said already many times, he comes across as never even stepping foot in SL or not knowing the player base (doing his homework). I meant it in the way that it would have more of success in getting those kind of companies in than Sony etc like Fortnite has. Sony has been in SL and knows of Sl. A small art gallery that can create a virtual replica of their RL gallery for those house bound would be easier to convince than Sony. I always took it as 'hey look, we just bought SL and are actively promoting it" as a distraction from why they really bought it. I understood that Tillia has a CEO but Linden Lab itself doesn't and hasn't since Ebbe. His entire portfolio is based on Business to Business marketing with none and bad rep in consumer marketing (cough K-Mart cough). He has been clearly hired to promote Tilia to companies for the token (virtual currency) to RL cash side of things than Second Life.

A CMO is in charge of building relationships with the target audience of a product (in this case the CMO thinks this is developers) as well as things like creating a marketing plan to increase the products revenue and give the company an advantage over competitors (Meta, Roblox and Fortnite). They are also in charge of promotional things like sponsored events, advertising etc. Basically what the CMO said in his interview whereby he is phoning companies trying to get them to sell sneakers or have large scale events in SL, getting his three advertisement companies to advertise SL etc, and trying to communicate with developers why they should use SL. All things I might add are the wrong thing to do. Should focus on getting users not developers, focus on small scale events like museums, art gallery events or unknown artist/band events etc., and look at breaking the wall in getting influencers (hate that word and what they stand for) and bigwigs on youtube and twitch (yes including working with twitch to unban SL) to stream SL and make content. In other words, the CMO is there to ensure a company does not make a marketing blunder like the blue fairy advert that saw no increase in user uptake.

Hence why in my post I said I thought I better not compare the two. I was simply pointing out that some, including the sims fandom wiki says that it is more like a toy which I thought was ironic considering Rowan compared SL to toy as well.

Is it because it tastes like skittles?

What @Adeon Writer wrote. You create an avatar (sim) and then control the sims life. You buy land, build a house, get a job to earn money to pay for rent, go shopping etc. Other sims are ai controlled and your sim also has a built in ai that it uses when you are not controlling it (like eating food so it doesn't get hungry etc). In essence there is no objective in the sims either just like SL.