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We’re excited to announce an important update to our policy regarding the use of gachas and similar mechanisms in Second Life. Effective October 7, 2024, our community will once again be able to create and enjoy gacha-style purchases inworld, with some important new restrictions to ensure compliance with the evolving legal landscape around chance-based content transactions.
What’s Changing?
In 2021, we implemented a general prohibition on gachas to align with global regulatory concerns. Starting October 7, 2024, we are lifting this prohibition. Residents can once again engage in gacha-based sales, but with a key new rule: gacha items, including the boxes or containers they come in, must not be transferable. This means that once you purchase a gacha item, it is yours and cannot be passed on to other users.
Key Highlights:
- No Transferability: Gacha items and their containers must be set as “No Transfer” to ensure that they can only be used by the buyer. This applies to both the object inside and any packaging used for delivery.
- Breedables: Breedable pets and other life simulation content are exempt from this policy and can continue to operate as they have before.
- Games of Skill: If a game of skill (like throwing darts or spinning a wheel) is used to win a prize, it is still permitted as long as the prize and its container are marked as "No Transfer."
- Subscription Boxes: Subscription boxes are unaffected, as long as all participants receive the same content. Different items distributed to different subscribers based on chance are now allowed but must also follow the “No Transfer” rule.
- Warnings and Enforcement: Violations of this new policy will result in warnings or removal of items and vendor systems. Repeated violations can lead to account suspension, termination, or loss of land.
Why the Change?
At Linden Lab, we believe in giving our Residents the freedom to engage in a wide range of activities in Second Life. The changes in the legal climate surrounding gachas and loot boxes have allowed us to relax our restrictions while still maintaining protections for our community.
For more detailed information on the specific rules and exceptions, please refer to our Updated Gacha Policy FAQ.
With the holiday shopping season approaching, we’re excited to see how creators and Residents will engage with these new opportunities in Second Life while adhering to these updated guidelines!
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To all our Residents impacted by the bumpy grid roll Tuesday, we’re sorry - and we want you to know what happened.
Timeline:
It started out as a normal roll to Second Life Server (SLS) when, around 7am SLT, the team noticed some regions were not coming back as swiftly as they should. Alarms were raised and we got a team together to tackle the issue immediately. It was quickly determined that we could not continue with the roll without causing more extensive pain to Residents, and the decision was made before 9:00 AM SLT to halt the in-progress grid roll. That left approximately 3800 regions in an offline state, while we continued the investigation.The team continued to bring the regions back manually, while simultaneously working to identify the cause of the problems. By noon there were still approximately 350 regions stuck offline.
Cause:
We’ve identified the root cause of the trouble. The server code itself is not the issue, but infrastructure communications between various AWS services broke down and prevented the normally smooth weekly grid roll.Next steps:
We’ve canceled the RC Roll on Wednesday while we ensure this problem doesn't happen again. Next week will be a quiet week with no SLS roll. Things should return back to normal with the following week’s server updates.Thank you for your patience while we banged on things yesterday.
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Happy Wednesday!
We’re writing to remind everyone that we’ll be holding our monthly Web User Group meeting today at 14:00 SLT in our usual meeting place, where we’ll be discussing our status with ongoing projects and our near future plans for our web properties. As always, we’ll leave plenty of time for Q&A from the community. This meeting is conducted using voice. We're happy for you to contribute in voice or in text, but you'll need to have your voice settings activated. We look forward to seeing you there.
This week's meeting with be live streamed to the Second Life YouTube channel.
Stay updated with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.
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The Concierge and Land User Group meeting is a monthly, public meeting for discussion and education on Second Life, useful to both Mainland Residents and Estate owners.
Topics include any issues relating to Customer Relations/Support or concerning Land in general (mainland, islands, Linden Homes, estates, auctions, etc.).
Join Wendi, Vix, and members of the Land team, on Wednesday at 12pm PT at Linden Estate Services. All are welcome.
Keep up to date with all of our user group meetings on our wiki and public calendar.
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🍂🌰🍁
Residents featured in this image:
Top Row (from left to right):
Middle Row (from left to right):
Bottom Row (from left to right):
Thank you for sharing your beautiful images with us! 💖
For a chance to have your image featured in our social campaigns, submit your work to the Official Second Life Flickr Group.
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As we continue to evolve and improve our various community initiatives, we have decided to put the Second Life Blogger Network (SLBN) on a temporary hiatus. This pause will allow us to dedicate resources to upcoming changes and enhancements designed to enrich our community's experience even further.
We sincerely appreciate the incredible contributions that each of you, our esteemed bloggers, have made to enrich the Second Life community. Please know that this decision was made with careful consideration and is not a reflection of the value we place on your work.
During this hiatus, we're excited to expand our Second Life Weekly Email Newsletter. This will be one of the main venues for us to highlight community features, showcase events, and share important news directly. We encourage all of you to subscribe to stay updated with the latest and greatest from around Second Life. It's a fantastic way to ensure you don't miss out on any of the action!
Moreover, we invite you to visit our Community Resources Portal, where you can connect with user groups and discover numerous other ways to engage and contribute. Whether you're looking to network with other Residents or find support and inspiration, these resources are there to enhance your Second Life journey.
We extend our heartfelt thanks for your understanding and continued support. The creativity and dedication of bloggers like you are what makes Second Life such an incredible place. We look forward to bringing you along on this next phase of our journey and seeing all the new ways we can continue to grow together.
Stay tuned, stay connected, and, most importantly, keep creating!
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Hi Everybody!
I would like to introduce a new member of the Linden Support team, Boxy 5000.
Boxy 5000 is a virtual assistant/support bot trainee.
But wait, wasn’t there already a chatbot who answered questions for premium users? Indeed there was! Boxy 3000 was the earlier model of the trainee chatbot.
We are learning from some design flaws and moving forward with a more advanced bot. Boxy 3000 has been re-invented and given an extra 2000!
But wait a second time! Won’t this bring about the machine apocalypse? Not just yet–Boxy 5000 is more advanced and learns as they go but Skynet is still a few upgrades away.
The upgraded bot will be a 24/7 support option for both premium and non-premium residents! (Previously only available for premium customers.)
Boxy will have the ability to answer commonly asked questions, keep you up to date on current issues, help with ticket submission and in some cases handle a support request.
Boxy has uses for all residents, from early adopters to fresh new faces.
For new and more casual residents Boxy is available to help them find the support they need.
For our seasoned veterans Boxy can offer support options for some specific requests. Specifically, Boxy will be able to submit an abuse report on your behalf and in some cases help with the restart of a region!
Boxy will continue to learn as we go. Boxy might not have all the answers currently, but we will continue to review questions posed and help the bot to better answer your support queries.
We realize that a chat bot is not a substitute for a customer support representative, and this bot is not meant to be. It is however meant to help when we are unavailable or may be experiencing higher call volumes.For premium residents Boxy will only be the first point of contact before being passed to a support representative during office hours. Utilize Boxy to help better explain your issue once you are transferred to a support representative. Outside of office hours Boxy can help or create a ticket for when we are back in the office.
The ability to get an answer to your question or to get your issue resolved without having to wait until our Support Lindens are available is Boxy’s primary directive.
Anyone interested in saying hello to Boxy can access it by logging into our support portal. The Boxy 5000 chat widget should appear in the bottom right hand corner of your screen.
Boxy 5000, it’s advanced…
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