ExoticBanker

If you are running games and contest and trivia with L$ przies that is fine and does not come into play with this TOS as long as you are not charging players to enter these activities .. If you are then yes you fall under the new TOS .. If its a non profit sim then you wouldn't be charging to enter .

a few questions I can not find in the FAQ anywhere 1. it says a operator can not spend L$ other than to pay for the winnings recieve L from any where other than the person paying to play the game How is the operator suppose to use the money earned to pay for overhead to run the sim ( ex. tier, landscaping, staff , etc) ok so maybe they can send money to one of their 6 alias attached to their operator avy.. that covers the above issues but it does not solve ths one .. how is a operator suppose to buy games from game creators.. another avy cant buy most games and transfer them to the operator .. and the games have to be in the operators name in order for the money to come to and from them during game play. 2. you have a list of states that cant come on a gaming region.. I have checked all of those states online gaming laws and they all allow gaming but with a higher age Residents of the following states and countries may not participate in Skill Gaming in Second Life: Arizona Arkansas Delaware Florida Kentucky Louisiana Maryland South Carolina South Dakota TennesseeArizona age 21 Arkansas age 21 Delaware age 21 Florida age 21 Kentucky age 21 Louisiana age 21 Maryland age 21 South Carolina age 21 South Dakota age 21 Tennessee age 21 why not allow those over that age to access the gaming region or better yet.. raise your required age up from 19 to 21 to cover all the states? Doesnt that make sense? 3. it is my understanding that as long as you have your application in by Aug 1st 2014 .. you can continue running your gaming site and business until your application is approved or if not approved at that time you must stop operations.. is this correct? if so .. does thatt mean we can continue to run the same games we have been running as long as those games have not be disapproved? and do we have to be on a gaming region by aug 1st 2014 even if we are waiting on approval ? these questions really need to be answered for any of us to more forward

Wow! So much to take in & so short a period of time to get all this done for those of us that want to continue trying to run gaming in SL. So in order to break it all down I will comment on each phase of the new proposed TOS changes. First point ... OK for one reason or the other LL has decided they need to step in and change the TOS on skilled gaming. Fine, its clear they plan to do so to some degree. But from the proposed TOS documents that I have read over the past 12 hours or so it seems whomever came up with these changes took ideas for changes to different areas of gaming ( creator, operator, players) and just combined all the changes without looking at how they interact with each other. Making this particular TOS change not only unfair to everyone involved but redundant as well. In no other place RL or Internet have I seen where a TOS doubles requirements in order to make sure a product or service applies with the governing law of that industry. Lets hope this is a ROUGH draft of a real TOS change and not the final say. If its the final version, I hate to say not only are we most likely looking at the end of gaming but as likely the end of SL. Why? Well lets break it all down.. Second point... The first part, change of region listing .. I can understand there needs to be a designated listing for gaming. i can even see a slight fee to have the listing added to a region. But to make the region's tier more just doesn't make sense. It doesn't take any more space on the LL servers to maintain than any other listing. They say there are extra cost to having a gaming listing? Maybe upfront cost creating the new listing ,which the fee to add a region to the gaming listing should well cover what little cost there will be. If the land settings are going to block residents not allowed on gaming region, then there is no added cost for LL to oversee. This is no different than the settings for adult lands. Summary .. I don't think any land owner would be apposed to having a small fee in order to allow their region or regions added to the gaming listing ( I assume this listing can be changed by the owner to fit their present type of activity on that region). So with a small one time fee this part of the change in the TOS is solved. Allowing land owners to continue to make their present income and still have the outcome of a restricted region for gaming. Third point.. LL wants creators to be approved. That is fine, a lot of us in the gaming industry believe this should be done in order to reduce those creators that hack their way through a game and produce games that are not only unfair to either the player or the owner of the game but are a security risk to hacking from dishonest people. If also is a way to remove those creators that make games to produce outcomes that only benefit themselves. So you have them pay a one time fee to put in a application, lets say the 100 usd that is in place now. Once approved as a creator, they shouldn't have to pay a 1/4 fee and pay for future games they create. One or the other would be plentiful to cover the time it takes to approve the game and add it to the approved list . For example ... as a creator you pay a 1/4 fee of say 50usd and when it comes time to have a new game approved, they send in the letter from their attorney ( which will be a cost in its own) and the game is approved or not .. giving the creator a change to correct and reply for approval. The 50usd every quarter from every creator will cover the approval process as most of the work falls on the creators in the first place . There will be some creators that don't even create a game every quarter so their fee will help cover the time for those that do. OR .. as a creator you pay an approval fee for each game they submit for approval. ( say a 20usd fee). Giving them a open approval case for the game so they can make changes in order to make the game "approved". Keeping in mind that LL is a beneficiary or all transactions in SL to some extent, since the L$ used to purchase the products have to come from uploading them at some point of the life of those L$ as well as when those L$ get changed over to currency. Fourth point... I can understand the need to make sure the operators of gaming regions are operating within a state that allows such practice. Fine, have the 100USD application fee in order to prove they don't live and operate from within on of the banned states . It is a given that the TOS states that only approved games from approved creators will be allowed on gaming regions, so there is no need to require a operator to give proof of their ALREADY approved games by ALREADY approved creators. THIS MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL and is basically double charging for the same approval process of a game. As far as a 1/4 fee, I see no extra cost on LL part, other than the random inspection of regions( which they state is done on all regions) By having their business on a gaming region ( which will cost slightly more due to the listing fee to the owner of the region) and by only having approved games on their region ( which will cost slightly more due to the added expense of creating a game for the creators) the operators of game regions should be free from future fees. As for the (one operator holding the L from the games) and no other transactions .. this has to be a mistake. there is an extreme amount of cost to running a successful gaming business. ( tier, advertising , promotions, give aways, staff) to mention a few. The L$ generated covers these cost and even comes up short frequently, causing the operator to upload more funds to continue to operate their business. LL can already and already does track when L$ are transferred into currency and therefore they are documenting the profits from that business. I would venture to say there are more gaming operators that never end up transferring L$ over to currency and make just enough profit to maintain their business. ( and a large number of operators have to purchase L$ to maintain the business) Fifth point... As far as I can tell the proposed TOS in regards to players is fine as long as the new "gaming" listing will automatically check for players that are approved to be on a gaming region and not require the operator themselves to police this requirement. Final thought... I have given my option on the new purposed TOS and some suggestions on how to adjust it to better fit all that are involved. Its not the fact that my suggestions should be all added but that the problems in the current proposed TOS be addressed before requiring creators and operators to be within these new proposed TOS. Given the sustainable amount of requirements of a new TOS, i believe a further deadline should be set. Three weeks is a lot to ask for the amount of requirements and documentations asked for . I also believe that creators and operators should be allowed to start their applications now and as the other requirements requested are available, they can add to their application request. Its hard for anyone, creator or operator to start and finish an application when some of the requirements asked for aren't even present at this time. If LL would take a look at all these problems and answer them all in one replay then maybe we won't have so may repeat questions and concerns . We all should work together to better SL and not do the them against us battle, . If LL runs off all the creators and operators .. the regions become empty and returned and the players will follow where ever the creators and operators land ( and they will land some where that they feel their voices are at least heard and have a part in the building process of a Internet world) without operators creators would have nobody to sell to . without creators operators would have no games for their players .. without players well .. there is no gaming industry. BASIC ECONOMICS 101... WITHOUT THE PARTS THERE IS NO WHOLE!