Is Xstreet out of control?

If its not a ripped-off item, neither you, me or LL has any right to tell ANYONE what price they can sell items for. If its a ripoff, LL needs to come out from hiding behind a 'file a DCMA notice' inaction and be proactive. If its just someone leaving deciding to give things away free or nearly free, nothing anyone can (or should) do. Hell, if LL pulls their sales, nothing prevents them from setting the items full-perm and dumping them at every freebie location in SL. What do you want? Anytime a merchant quits his/her/its inventory wiped to prevent them giving things away or having a firesale on the cheap? This is not a XSSL issue, its just how the permission and ownership of items work.

You talk a good game about the 'economy' but it sounds to me like you want government implemented (linden implemented) managed economy for the benefit of select merchants...perhaps its your competition doing this? Or was Its either a free market or it ain't....can't have it both ways.

That's the problem with so many "playing business"in SL....a few weeks ago it was "Lava Inside" giving away all their products for free, this week we have someone selling guitars at 10 L....next week it will be someone else.

Seen it time and time again whereby disillusioned content creators decide to leave SL...and on their way out dump all their products onto XSteet or inworld full perms for next to nothing thus flooding the market.

The Grid is awash with franchise resellers, freebies, business in box full perms & stolen content.

I look forward to when BlueMars VW finally launches.The Game Owners placed controls right from the start, whereby Content creators need to apply for a Creator's Licence in order to sell inworld. One can only sell products you actually made and all these products require being registered through a central item registration system with a encrypted file system minimizing unauthorized asset duplication and modification....thus reducing content theft and the selling of such items. For me personally that is a far better business model than the wild west of SL, where almost anything goes.

PS Please don't harp on about a unregulated "Free market"....just take a look at the state of the World economy when you don't put some form of regulations in place....greed takes over as well as unaccountability. Anyone that thinks Banks & Financial services don't need some form of (minimal at the very least) regulation needs a reality check.......go sell your doctrine to the millions that have lost their jobs and homes!

Please don't harp on about how great BlueMars is like you did in the other thread.

You are totally over simplifying what happened with banks and financial services and how they were actually being regulated by Barney Frank in the U.S., who was the reality check.

SL is fine. BlueMars will be a world for people who love to build uber environments for having sex, just like what renderosity if full of now, except until BlueMars comes out they get no sex partner, just themselves, their hand, and the fancy super 3D quality pixels they created recreating whatever scenes from their fantasies that they desire.

I buy content from Renderosity - it's loaded with sex. BlueMars won't be any different unless they lock down adult content, in which case, many of those uber 3D environment makers will just keep making their own 3d environs that stay on their computer or get sold at sites like renderosity, daz3d, turbosquid.

Last i checked....no one appointed you Forum moderator....so don't even think of acting like the Thought Police!

Hmmh-where did i mention Adult content here?...its not the Adult Content thread i do believe.....i'm not sure whether BlueMars will allow or won't allow Adult content.....and what has Renderosity have to do with anything i wrote?

Wait you said:


I was just parroting what you said but replacing "unregulate Free market" with "BlueMars". So you were trying to control the replies, aka moderate.

But whatever.

There were other things said in the post.

This.

Unregulated free market...i meant the RL Banks & Financial sector....not BlueMars.

The last G20 meeting in London, France and Germany wanted more regulations surrounding Banks, they also wanted more accountability from these tax free havens like Cayman islands, Swizerland, Leichtenstein etc.....whereas US and Britain wern't keen on that idea.

You're right. Business does need effective, consistent and minimal regulation. That isn't the problem. There are laws. But the problem comes when those that make and enforce those laws decide they are above them, and pick and choose how to enforce them.

Sounds like some want price fixing. So who gets to set the bare minimum price for a product in a certain category then? I thought it was illegal in RL for competitors of a certain type of product to conspire to keep price points at a certain level.

If I make and sell a prim cube for 10L even though my competitiors are selling a similar prim cube for 1000L, then that is my perogative and no one elses. There are many different types of consumers out there, some will stick their nose up at anything that costs less than a certain amount and only equate quality with price, and others who would never spend more than a certain amount.

To expect someone to price their creation based on your own product's price point is just plain criminal.

I think it's too late to do anything effective with SL economy.....it is what it is....and you just try and do the best you can.

The content economy is swamped and will continue along that path...stolen content has been rife for a several years now...unlikely to be ever taclked effectively by LL.

The land economy is manipulated by LL when it choses to intervene with either product tier hikes or dumping 1000's more Mainland sims

All in all....its real tough trying to be successful in this enviroment in either the Content or Land economies.

I'm not suggesting price fixing....just stating a fact that the Grid is awash with reseller franchises, freebies, business in box full perms and stolen content. Its not an economy that is in great shape....and neither is the Land economy.

You do realises it takes 100's of manhours to produce a decent set of skins in photoshop....why shouldn't that work be rewarded with a fair price tag? Would you work for free in RL? (unless it were community service, a samaritan or international aid worker)
When these skins get stolen and end up being on the Freebie heap like lots of the RAC, Celestrial, Naughty designs, and X2 skins....it does get a tad frustratiing.

.......but all well and good in this wild west of SL...correct?

Hence why i mentioned BlueMars VW...as they intend to place some sort of controls from the outset, which has to be good for any Content Creator. I guess other VW's do get the benefit from learning from Second Life's mistakes....that's a distinct advantage of not being the guinea pig!

I build a lot in SL including many hours in photoshop so I do understand how much goes into creations. I have one that is taking me months so far to complete. But as far as I know, the items brought to our attention in this thread are not stolen or business in a box items. In fact the only thing I can tell from the OP was that he had issues with the package of items being sold for so little. If I am mistaken about the item brought to our attention here being that of the person who created it then I am sorry and stand corrected. But if it is the original creator selling their stuff for really cheap then that is their right.

Otherwise I have no clue why this thread was started to begin with LOL

I look at this thread in a different manner.....the market as a whole. Like i said, this is just one instance of someone leaving the game and slashing their prices from a 1000 to 10 L or whatever....before it was "Lava Inside" flooding the market with all their products for free over a 3 week period before closing the SIM. You multiply this sort of scenario playing out several 100 times over......something has to give in the long term!
Hence my initial comment....too many people "playing business" in SL. For starters, the Guitar Owner could probably have sold the whole business incl. Brand name to a single person full perms and gone away with far more RL money.

I just am not buying the Doom & Gloom SL market economy scenario you are selling.

The real world is full of scammers/cheaters/HumanCopyBotters.

My husband's relative takes monthly orders for Louis Vuitton bags and other high end bags for women that run 5k-12k USD - she collects about 25+ orders a month. But she does not buy the real high end bags, she buys these HumanCopyBot knock offs and resells them for $250 bucks and she buys them for like $50 each from someone in New York and they are exact copies. She flies there every month and makes a small fortune doing it - go figure. And yes, the people know they are getting an illegal copy.

The world keeps spinning, Louis Vuitton keeps selling and the bags keep getting more expensive. What happens in SL with the influx of ultra low priced items and what not because people have near zero fee's for production and the exploitation of free permed or CopyBotted stuff will not be the demise of SL's economy, it is just a seedier aspect of it that right now can be regulated about as much as you can regulate a 60 year old woman from buying knock off purses from an immigrant selling them out of a basement in Brooklyn, NY.

The market will balance itself as people adjust to the constantly shifting dynamics which means people rushing to skin rippers temporary stores to buy the latest ripped skin for full perm @ $100L, and equally people operating on principle and not buying stolen gear or deleting it when they find out it is stolen. These people who buy the ultra low priced knock offs and other low quality items were never interested in spending any sort of real money in SL to get what they wanted anyways so these bottom feeders deal with each other while the rest of us actually never see this side of SL or care to engage in it and continue to buy from "name brand" places making the quality items we want in real prim stores located in SL not located on XSL only.

BlueMars sounds like it is going to have a rock solid market because of its "1000 points of Control" being placed on content creation and selling. What develops from the rest of that is pure speculation and wistful thinking for now. But i predict a 3D world geared for professional 3D content creators to bring to life their creations in a MMO environment with an extremely limited range of product available when compared to Second Life or maybe even some OpenSim based grid like OLG in a few years.

It really sounds like you are making a mountain out of a mole hill when it comes to your assessment of the current state and future of our SL economy and market.

You have valid points and the majority of your post with i'm in agreement with......yes even the BlueMars part.... it will never be as rich with content as SL. I accept that, that's the trade off of having greater Content control from the outset and not allowing just anybody into the marketplace. As a content creator, that would suit me fine....but at the same time you have to understand they are not making it terribily difficult to apply for the Content license...its just one extra hoop to climb through...as opposed to "right" click...and a prim appears!


The last part i don't agree with, being part of several Land & Content groups I get a feel of what my fellow designers are saying. I definitely know Land is suffering as more and more of the smaller estates are selling up. You have to wonder why LL no longer publish its land stats! Some say the grid has been shrinking month on month since last Oct.

Also selling content since the back end of 2006 i can also compare my own records....sales were better at the beginning of 2007 with 15-20k logins than they are now with 80k logins for my 2 original businesses that have been trading that long.

It seems to me you started out talking about creators releasing their content at bargain prices, but then switch to discussing pirated content. In my mind, the two issues are orthogonal.

I'm glad that in SL we don't have to jump through hoops to be creators. On the other hand, I see the advantages of registering products to avoid piracy. But I don't see how that would prevent anyone from releasing their content at bargain prices.

Frankly, we see product liquidation in RL all the time. Too bad for businesses that suffer, but that's life. Any attempt to prevent that would be a cure worse than the disease, either in RL or SL.

... Yeah, just like RL, unexpected stuff keeps happening! Meanwhile, lots of businesses thrive. In SL, as in RL, success takes a measure of good luck as well as good ideas and good execution. Either that or a good crystal ball.

I look at it the opposite way. I'm glad we can "play business" in SL. We get realistic lessons in a relatively safe sandbox.

For those whose only purpose in being in SL is profit, well, I wouldn't mind if the door bangs them in the ass on the way out. But it's not that way: there are plenty of thriving profit centers in SL.

It seems to me that SL supports both serious businesses and those like me who are just playing at it.

I have an RL job. I don't need one in SL! Thus my complete lack of marketing. Who's hurt if I don't maximize my profits? Since I don't cash out, it won't be me.

It's especially tough when LL keep moving the goal posts....they did it enough times with land, requiring Estates to repeatedly change their business model......now with Adult content, some will have to change and most likely to a lost in audience. (Non-verifieds not wanting to verify)

its one thing to compete with a growin number of designers and to hone your marketing skills.....its another matter if LL keeps changing the fundamentals and interferring with the market place.

Why because they are more creative and successful .....and you're not! So success should be punished?

Flooding the marketpalce with freebies, BIAB's and stolen content doesn't help the general well being...and many designers are of a similar view and having to lower their prices just to survive i.e generate enough sales to pay for their land Tiers or rent.
The sales generated no longer reflects the time spent developing such content in some cases.

In the same way many Land barons are moaning at those Estates setting their lands for sale at 1 Linden and dominating the Land search system and also driving prices down.

Hold on .............I like tihs stuff........Keep it up

I was only making a comment, for fun and that was all it was!!!

Maybee I hit a nerve,,,,or a perv .....as it's become .......LOL

Who said they were more creative or successful? Not me. I'm creative. I'm successful.

But if they're just here to milk a market, I wouldn't miss 'em for leaving for greener pastures. The bottom line, though, is that most won't. There is, and will continue to be, plenty of market opportunities in SL, and that's fine with me too.

myself i think the grid shrinking has a lot to do with the OS changes and the opening Buying of Xstreet..
a lot more are noticing you really don't have to have a sim to sell tons of products and cutting back on overhead..

Since the OS sim change and increases people have been handing in and walking away from sims..

We had a flood of sims when they came out for 1000 per sim and had a reduction when they had to make the change to homesteads..and then the change of 20 avatars per sim..

i don't think it is collapsing..i think there is more noticing the other avenues those not seen before or ones starting up a business having a few more options than getting on a traffic search in world..

LL has upped publicity for Xstreet..more noticed Xstreet..
The freebies have been there for a while now...even high quality freebies...those 10L full perm shops have been as well..also selling high quality things..

to me it is just the effect of the ones not being able to be seen before getting seen now..

look at microsoft when they had the hearings..they owned the market before those hearings..after there was a bigger selection to choose from and people did try those others not noticed before..

they may not have stayed with them..but they were getting noticed..and the strong ones survived

there is a change going on with the economy but i don't see it collapsing any time soon in SL..i see a rush and later a thinning and the strong will survive..