Openspace Announcement Discussion with Jack Linden

translated: now that we have strangled you, we will tell you how we will proceed in skinning you. Those that not already have left, that is.

WS.

I'm sorry, but as a messenger, you should at least consider how the message will be received.

Mark Kingdon has absolutely no excuse in my eyes at this point for calling Premium Accounts Immaterial to his business. Even his apology, that will not happen, would be immaterial to me at this point. I most certainly will consider his statement in any future transaction I conduct with LL. I hope he would consider the fact that I will now make it a point to never own any kind of land, or pay any type of subscription fees to LL immaterial as well. I will, however, continue to support the content creators of SL. Why? Because since I joined SL in 2005, not one content creator has told me that my business, no matter how small, is immaterial to them. I have to wonder whether he feels any amount of money would make a resident less immaterial?

Linden Labs, It is a shame you chose to call your customers, however small their money may be to you, immaterial. Every messenger that takes home a paycheck from Linden Labs, is funded by the SL residents. Something to consider in your next attempt to communicate with us.

I do agree with you Ryanna. But I quit that fight, It's just not enough reason for me to get their Idea, but ok anyway. But I do remember when openspace where created without no guidelines, just remember some posts or something like this. So at the end sound that we have to pay someone mistake or there is something more that we can't reach. But it's never too late to make something and let's wait till tomorrow and see what they have to propose in exchange of growing 66% (damn hurts just to remember).

\\I do believe that LL is concerned with residents, just remember that last "boom" on residents, should be a good politics to keep all this people here (and satisfied) or else they can't make the real business will the big ones.

I've read plenty of posts where people made the same mistake that you've made. In fact, everyone seems to have jumped to the same wrong idea. M did not say that premium customers are immaterial. He said something quite different. If you're going to judge the man, judge him on things he says, and not on things he didn't say.

No he said this take it as you will. As a long time premium customer it is not appreciated.

"That's one of the only figures that's going negative," he said. "You can't use that as an indicator of the overall health of the land market... Premium subscriptions are immaterial in our overall business."

I find it amusing someone makes the statement that people who create one Million dollars of gross revenue for the company each month are immaterial.

If you do not need it send it my way!

If you are going to judge the person, judge them by what they DO, not what they say. People will rip you off and smile and tell you to your face you are getting a great deal. LL would like for us to believe they were pushed to do this by some sort of 'use' situation.

People are liars. Business is third behind politics and religion in terms of career liars. Believe words and be a sucker. Watch what they do, not what they say.

Wow. We were not so immaterial a couple of years ago!

I see no benifit of paying 72 bucks a year to be insulted. Amazing.

LL is forgetting that a huge number of people read these forums and don't post anything.

Message Received LL------and here is one in return: What goes around comes around.

So, what happens if every openspace owner converts 4 OS sims to 1 full sim? Don't you still end up with the same number of servers used, same number of prims, same number of AVs spread on those servers, same load on the infrastructure, etc. etc. etc.? You just have a poorer user expierience because all of those prims with their textures are now closer together and the compounding poor texture load/handling performance gets even worse.

And, LL doesn't make any more money.

I realize that is over simplified and many OS sim residents aren't going to combine together on a full sim because they want more space then that provides.

I'm just still confused how raising the price will improve anything other than make LL richer. The only improvement would seem to be that people leave, thus reducing the number of total prims used (along with their textures), the total AVs handled on servers, reducing the total backend infrastructure load, etc. etc.

Thank you Coventina.

{"That's one of the only figures that's going negative," he said. "You can't use that as an indicator of the overall health of the land market... Premium subscriptions are immaterial in our overall business."}

Make no mistake Phil, my feelings about what was said are very real. I'm not about to spin M's sentence above so that it will look better or so I can digest it easier. We can all look up the definition of immaterial and see the obvious context in which it was used. This is my last post on the subject of these issues. Any further announcements about the state of the increase in price of Open Sims will not change how I feel at this point. I have been watching this thread and have read every post and I think it is time to focus on something else. Good luck my fellow residents.

If the prices for all users were being raised across the board to pay for infrastructure that benefits all users, I don't think you'd see this kind of outcry.

But that is not what LL has done. Instead, they've identified a particular category of customers, described all of them as abusers, and raised prices for just them, regardless of (in each individual case) actual abuse. This is collective punishment--it will cost every OS user more because some OS users have misbehaved.


The two are not mutually exclusive.

In my more cynical moments I see this as merely step one in their three part plan to squeeze out a bunch of private estate owners, drive people to mainland, and raise prices across the board.

Step one, raise the monthly fees for openspace regions. As the most popular land product in SL right now, it will affect a lot of people, while making the estate owners out to be the 'bad guys'. Souring some people on private estate land and driving them to mainland.

Step two, raise the monthly fees for fullprim private estates. Come up with another excuse that will further villify estate owners, drive still more people off estates and onto mainland, and force more estate owners out.

Step three, raise tier on the mainland. By now, there's fewer estates and those that remain already have higher prices, so there won't be anywhere for the customers to go. (Well, assuming that there aren't other virtual worlds, at least.)

Maybe this isn't in the cards - but when I'm feeling bitter, I can see this being the long term plan.

Of course, if they aren't really trying to get rid of private estate owners, then they'll just merge steps 2 and three and raise the rates on all fullperm regions / mainland tiers at the same time.

-Atashi

m·ma·te·ri·al (m-tîr-l)
adj.
1. Of no importance or relevance; inconsequential or irrelevant.

I guess LL does not consider my premium account, nor myself, as of any importance or relevance. That comment really strikes to the heart of the matter where OS sims are concerned. A lot has been said in this one word; immaterial. I will have to be making some difficult decisions soon where SL is concerned, in more ways than one.

Well as I am convinced LL wants to kill the private (mini)estates to force people onto the bad managed mainland, the next step will be: "Stopping the grandfather tier on private sims".

Oh and incase you still have hopes. The idiot tier of 125 US$ will go on as planned tommorrow. They will make a meaningless "free-convert 4 to 1" offer and maybe lower the buy price a bit. The monthly payments are the big deal. They will be implemented and more estates will die. But then again, that's exactly what they want.

Anyone wanna make a bet on this?

No, because I agree with you.

However, I do sincerely hope that the announcement is phrased in the best possible way and is sensitive to resident feelings.

Firelight

BWAH HAH HAH HAH.

Problem solved.

Hmm... He wants a 67% increase in executive bonus paid on top of the multi-million dollar income he got. How to raise the money to pay for this superb management skill in the company since he took office 6 months ago? Charge it to the Openspace.

Nobody lowers prices once they raise them. They have already paid the price for this decision in terms of customer reaction, pulling it back now will not change the perception that they are thoughtless greedy b*astards.

They may choose to throw us a slightly meatier bone by stair-stepping the increase by a month or 2, but dont discuont the income they receive from fees in this.

Fees would be a small part of the equation if they would leave the pricing in place for more then a couple months at a time, but when you change the pricing every few months and force new fees, to wither back out and convert, or buy a newly redesinged version of the product as they downgrade the previous one, or both, these fees are a huge part of the equation.

The fees they charge are only recovered by profits over many months if your income is from land rental. I used to calculate the time to recover these fees in years. Now I know that if I cant recover the fees in 2-3 months at most then there is no point in investing at all.

Not really. Yes, the outcry already is here, the people already got really upset. But the real reaction, the decision about how big they will have to pay, will depend on what they will announce today. 14 out of my 15 customers and friends living on OS regions are waiting and will make their final decision based on what will be said today.

A 6 month old CEO is not the problem here, not by a long shot.

As I see it the problem here is a company with such a low level of maturity that it participates in. and encourages by policy, the kinds of scams we have been complaining about in-world since its inception. Land scammers, ad-scammers, "banks", "casinos" etc ad nauseum.

LL seems to take its lead from these gamers and is playing a shell game with their fees and tiers.

as far as i am concerned it is too late. i already abandoned the oss and am committed to selling off the full island as well. holding property is no longer any kind of investment... rather it is a huge liability. land is a hot potato, and you hope not to be holding it when the next tier-jacking comes along.

can you really trust ll?
i feel a lot of hate for ll anymore.

Forum = "A medium for open discussion or voicing of ideas, such as a newspaper, a radio or television program, or a website."

Discussion = "an act or instance of discussing; consideration or examination by argument, comment, etc., esp. to explore solutions; informal debate."

Linden Lab Forum = "1. an act or instance of isolating.
2. the state of being isolated.
3. the complete separation from others of a person suffering from contagious or infectious disease; quarantine.
4. the separation of a nation from other nations by isolationism."

Why do I say the above? Because I have just waded through 250 pages of comments and views and noticed a complete and utter lack of LL engagement. Bearing in mind, they created this forum, that's appalling.

So their remedy? Offer a brand new forum today! Whoopee!

Well, for them, I stand on my first statement there, No company is going to be rolling back a price increase once its been announced. Not without some other increase to make up the difference. Of course, they have re-iterated and stood firm on their reasoning, that this is an openspace issue, so before they cold find another place to make up the difference they would have to admit that they "mispoke". By the way, thats the other thing a company will never do

BTW: these remarks were made on this account in error because both accounts share the computer. If you dont like Primby Blochs remarks, blame Joshe Darkstone, Primby has no opinion on "matters of state"

Just their way of making sure that those already not familiar with this thread, don't see the outcry and adverse comments !!!

Or for that matter the good suggestions that have been raised, and probably not been accepted by them. We will find out

I have a premium account and donate my tier allowance to the Luskwood estate. I also rent half an open space sim which I use for my store and to stage my live music shows. Well, it looks like the open space sim I rent will remain in place until the end of this year. After that? I really don't know. At this point I'm past caring and seriously considering porting all the content I have created out of SL (using Second Inventory or anything similar) and onto one of the competing grids. I can only take being jerked around so much. After which it's time to look elsewhere.

Furthermore I don't anticipate any form of discussion on the Open Sim issue from LL. There will be an announcement of some sort followed by a few fanboi posts and then I fully expect all threads relating to Open Sim discussion to be be closed. SL was great for a few years. It really opened my eyes to possibilities that I had ever even imagined. Sad to see that it's LL that's actively killing it off.