Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

feel your pain and my heart goes out for Sensual, i`ll most likely stay with her if i get my RL contract to afford this increase for just a home and soon a lil shop corner

hey Jack, come see how i abuse "my" void, less fracking lag then on LL`s private grid, show me and Sensual Casanova exactly why we both need to pay more, VOID sim name is "Sensual Estate"

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add here your 1000 most heard curse words Jack, won`t say them as i don`t want a perma ban...

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Snowflake, this increase is not justified nor fair. There is also such a thing called antitrust behavior... read about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act

If challenged, it’s quite possible that a court would deem the prices to be in violation of the antitrust law.

Often we agree to a ToS or contract not knowing fully what our rights are. That is why we have lawyers, judges and something called due process. Please don’t harp to us about what we may or may not have agreed to. We also agree to contracts in good faith that contracts will not be abused.

Oh this is really great. We buy or rent one of these sims and stay within your guidelines while some others don't. So instead of doing something about those that abuse the useage of these sims you turn around and screw everyone of us by raising the tier fee for the sims so those that over use them can keep on over using them.
How about going after THOSE that abuse their sims and leave those of us that don't alone? Or is that too hard to understand? Yeah let's just screw all the people and make some extra money doing it while not fixing the problem by taking awa the sims from those that abuse the guidlines for their useage.
Wake up LL before we leave disgusted by what you have done. The economy sucks right now and you're demanding that we pay an additional $50.00 a month so some people can abuse the priveledge of owning or living on an openspace sim. Are you that stupid that you think people are going to accept this and just fork over the additional money when times are hard? Hello! This is a game, a form of entertainment that you Jack are now telling us, your customers that you no longer want us here.
You need to take a step back and rethink this because you're making a huge mistake. If people are abusing the right then take away their sims but don't screw those of us that are using it in the way they were setup. That's wrong as is the raising of the monthly price for it. If we'd have known you were going to screw us in the raising of the tier fees we wouldn't have bought them in the first place.

Not only this... go back on the blog to read the posts about Mono, where they told us that switching to Mono would have greately (positive) impacted on OpenSpaces, making em running better, another push to: "go to buy em, they are cheap and good".
That's the point, they were "too" good... and they obscured the (more lucrative) rest: regular sims and mainland. So the only way to take an advantage from this is to squize the money from em (from their owners).

The mistake with Open Spaces was made by LL when they introduced them. It was always going to kill the land market. I had 5 sims at the time and suddenly I couldn't cover tiers, so I was forced to convert 3 of them to Open spaces to pay the bills. The bottom line is my renters wanted Open Spaces, not full prim sims, so I did what the market told me to do.

An Open Space should have cost $375 with $125 in monthly tier from the start, but it is too late to ask people to pay $125 a month in tier now, the market wont allow it and people wont be able to cover their tiers so they'll leave. There is going to be mass abandonments commencing now, and this is going to hit Linden Labs very hard. I've done my dough, but, what can one do.

Well done Jack Linden, you've just put yourself and the all the staff at Linden Labs out of a job. Good luck finding another one in the middle of a recession.

This fee increase of Open Space Sims form US$75 to US$125 just is not going to pan out.

Not sure if the LL decision makers (does M know about this. If he does, would be nice to hear some words from him.....and if he doesn't, maybe he should.) have thought this through.

This price rise is - supposedly - due to higher-than-expected use of band width.

But - if anyone at LL looks outside your window - you may notice that the rest of the world is in a financial meltdown. The very *last* thing anyone is looking for is a price increase.

SL may have its own economy, but it is still not an ESSENTIAL need.....jumping your prices for Open Space Sims by 66% (125 - 75 / 75 = 66.67%) is way over the top and will most likely cause an enourmous bailout.

A recent example of this (Hello UK....need to read a little bit more of US news I think) is in the U.S. the price of gasoline fuel went from under $3.00 a year ago to over $4.00 (I know, I knwo, EU eat your heart out at such prices....lol...sorry, we are just way behind in this factor, but that's a discussion for a different forum) the USAGE (miles driven) went way way down.....

I personally believe that SL still has its best years ahead of itself...IF it does things right...this is not right.

At this point in time...SL is not an essential part of society, or most users life. This dramatic price increase will cause a tsunami of land sales - and abandonment - across SL.

i concur. here i was planning a large winter display (low prim and low scripts thanks)....instead i am thinking now how for christmas I am getting my dream taken away.

and that is what you are doing LL...removing the ability for many of us to continue our dreams.

AD

I think you've over stepped the mark this time with these cost hikes.

I for one, had no idea what type of land I was renting. I found a good deal that I could afford and I took it. Now, you admit your mistake by saying your going to change the browser so people know what type of land they are on, oh, and by the way, because we screwed up, were going to charge YOU more for it.

I've already seen my costs increase because of the RL financial situation and the big changes in the USD exchange rate, and I don't see why I should pay you more, for no improvement in service, and for YOUR admitted mistake.

70K people on-line is 70K people. Its the same load in your asset servers no matter where they rez, and if a SIM is slow, people will move to someplace that's faster - it's the law of SL; If your open space servers are slow, people will move.

You would have done better just saying "look... if it's slow... don't blame us... this land wasnt designed for this".. and then all eyes would have turned to the people that sold / rented the land and the situation would have been self correcting. But no... you've grabbed at an opertunity to try and strengthen your balance sheet in difficult financial times - we see though your stupid scheme.

Whilst we come here to have fun, we have to pay with REAL money, and like it or not, things are a little tight in the real world right now and this may be the last straw for some people.

If you really need to raise cash, you would do better scrapping the free accounts and charging a small nominal fee. People shouldn't expect somthing for nothing, yet I can create an account, camp out 24x7, make money, not spend a penny with SL, and expect fee paying residents to support my account. It's crazy... YOUR CRAZY !!! And what's more, were crazy for standing for it. Why, can some people get somthing for nothing, and some get hammered in fees for not much more. Tell me where the sense is in that.

The ONLY reason you can get away with stunts like this, is because today, you have a monopoly... tomorrow is another day !!!
Don't expect loyality from the residents when an alternative SL comes along, if you can't have the decency to admit your mistake, and stop treating us like idiots.

Vyrl, it's quite clear that your opinion differs from mine.

Feel free to hire attorneys if you feel like it.

Businesses raise their prices.

LL has done this kind of stuff in the past with no legal ramifications.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Y peor que se va a poner...

THIS IS MADNESS!

with these changes it will KILL sl! The Econmney is bad enough! you think things get cheaper not DOUBLE IN PRICE.

really now! we are jsut going to have to pay DOUBLE for the same laggy crud that we now? I could understand if we got more prims or bigger sims, or if sim where open for anyone to buy now. BUT THIS IS JUST CRAZY.


Hoenstly it will kill sl. i'm gessing about 75% of all opens sims will close...

and my dream of ever getting a open sim is GONE...


My suggestion for you stupid people:

If you need more god damn money make another type of sim Like a open sim only with more prims or something THEN charge a crapload for it! dont hurt the people that are (bearly) keeping sl afloat during these hard times.

I'm fairly sure NO ONE in sl likes these changes...

OS sim owners can't possiby overuse their sim. We get 1/4 of the usual prim count. You can easily limit the traffic to 1/4 of the concurrent users a regular sim allows, and you're all set. This is just an excuse for a price increase in order to make mainland sims and regular sims more attractive.

If you go through with this, please think at least about increasing the prim count accordingly (15,000 prims / $295 * $125 = 6355 prims). Or offer the option of keeping the current price and going back to the original prim limit of 1875, perhaps with a limit of 10-15 concurrent users.

In case I'm wrong and this is indeed a try to make land owners pay for the "additional strain on your network and database infrastructure", i.e. for the millions of unverified users that YOU chose to let in, it won't take long before the tier for mainland sims is being raised to $330 and private sim tier to $500.

I don't currently see any openspaces being offered as full transfer for <$250 on the "land for sale" forum.

This seems like an incredibly stupid decision that will cut LL from a growing number of new tier-payers, and will open LL to a world of pain.

i am seriously thinkin about quitting second life cuz every time i try to achieve something there is some bug or change that sets me back and makes all the money i spent here so far a waste. i wont go into detail on that but this really is the last straw. i just lost my shop land that took me a month to build cuz the landlord decided to sell ot without notice. so i was lookin for affordabl;e land for my shop and was about to buy an open sim tonight till i saw this. i am utterly sick of the bs on here. sl is suppose to be where we can make an imaginary virtual world of our dreams buit most of us cant even afford to do that. it is commercialized beyond repair. the cost to buy land is above my cost of rent per month in rl. if i had 375 dollars i would be able to afford mortgage payments on a cheap house. in todays ecopnmy it is ridiculous and scandalous to hike the prices like this. are they even improving the performance or giving more prims with this?

I like the changes.

And they have sims like what you suggest. They can support 15,000 prims and cost $195/mo in tier. They are more commonly known as "mainland".

Linden Lab is currently THEMSELVES filling open space sims with content. If they do not expect the people buying the sims to do this, then there should be clear guidelines to tell their residents what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable use... they should not simply up the monthly rate without warning or consultation.

This is such a stupid and negative way of dealing with the problems, that I am completely astonished. It you had wanted to find a way to offend and alarm a huge number of people and turn them from supporters to enemies, you couldn't have done better.

This hike in monthly charges from $75 tp $125 may well be jusified by the damage that overloaded openspace sims is doing, but it would be far better to offer people guidance about what constitutes fair and appropriate use of these sims, and the chance to conform with the policy, or the option to go onto the higher tier and continue to overload the sims. As it is, you have simply walloped everyone with the same changes, without consultation.

And you should, at the very least, be offering people leadership by using the sims appropriately yourself.
Caliandris

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2627

They will not let my comment onto the blog, so I will post it here:

OMG - I am crying... tears streaming down my face. I bought my open space sim this afternoon for $250 -- I was so excited. Two hours later they made this announcement.

It might be a good idea to have some way for people to use open space sims for their original stated purpose at a price that is reasonable for that use.

Early in 2006 I approached LL with a simple request. I wanted to buy some sims to create open areas for sailing but who could afford four full sims of water for that?

So I suggested that they should consider selling void sims (Governor Linden water sims with reduced prims and often with scripts turned off) to customers. It took several discussions between myself and LL to figure it out, but on March 20, 2006 Nber Medici and I bought the first of what would later be marketed to the general public as Open Spaces sims. Those first sims were the Channel Islands around Hollywood sim (Santa Barbara, Santa Catalina, Santa Rosa, and Santa Cruz sims). Over time and with the involvement of 7 other sim owners who bought into these Open Spaces sims with gusto, we had the United Sailing Sims (now 130 sims strong). The great majority of those sims were OS sims.

Now the reality is that none of the 8 owners of the United Sailing Sims do SL for a living. We all have day jobs. We cannot afford $75 tier times all those sims out of our own pockets. We HAD to have some thing to offset those costs. So we did REASONABLE renting of islands keeping prims well below max levels quoted, and providing about 60% water in each sim. Some sims were even 100% water.

It is so very sad that this great project may now be coming to an end. There is no way that any government could get away with a 66% tax hike on it's people. But that is what LL's actions amount to. We have struggled mightily to provide a wonderful environment for SL users. Not one of us is being paid a dime for our labor. Nearly every penny we earned in rentals and donations went to pay that tier. Now LL wants 66% more. Sorry, LL, we can't afford that.

So is this the proverbial "there once was a place called Camelot"? I feel it might well be. Whether is is the United Sailing Sims or any of a number of other multi-simed communities, many of us feel we have to turn over our hard work and hardware. We cannot sell them now, they have been made worthless overnight. So we will abandon them to get away from the oppresive tier tax. So LL will recycle them into their own vision of communties in places like Bay City and Nautilus.

I am heart sick, as are many of my fellow community builders throughout a place that I now view as a dream gone bad.

I think that Linden Labs has finally figured out a way to survive the Credit issues in this country today.

Instead of having to go out and borrow money to purchase hardware for mainland projects they suckered everyone into purchasing OpenSpace sims.

Now that the tier is increasing there will be abandoned OpenSpace sims everywhere. Since we all paid the "startup" costs on these sims, what is it costing Linden Labs to use them for mainland projects?

This is abuse, plain and simple.

If anyone doesn't see this as fraud you need new glasses.

This is so wrong in so many ways and screws so many, can't you just limit traffic them on a sim OR charge by the traffic the sim gets? I bet SL will lose close to 75% of all those sims because of this change. Thanks for forcing me too live on sombodys tiny plot on a full sim.

Extremely mad, Cinder Silverspar

This REALLY wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that your crappy, laggy, and incredibly unregulated mainland (NAUTILUS) parcels are not selling,would it? It's very odd that this decision comes on the heels of LL opening the new mainland...

Might as well as just grab our ankles here and bend over until our noses are even deeper into it. Thank you very much Linden Lab. Odds are too that the company will find a way to justify increasing a full capacity sim's maintenance fee sometime during the first two quarters of 2009 in order to bring them inline with a quadrupling of the then current open space monthly fees. Just a perfect way to enhance an already thriving in-world economy people. Brilliant.