Letter to Jack Linden

Jack,

My other comments have likely been lost in the uprising of SL residents and considering the Concierge will not give out your email address I'm assuming this is the only method I potentially have of getting some notice.

I run Rockcliffe University Consortium in SL. Back a year ago I purchased 4 OS sims when the requirement was that you had to purchase in blocks of 4 so that it fully utilized a single server. Since then I have recently just purchased one additional OS sim which I understand to sit on a 2nd server co-shared with other OS sim properties.

Yesterday I found out about the price increase on OS spaces and the fact that you are denying the Education Discount to Educators and non-profits. The impact of this is that my costs are not going to go up 167% like most other people but it is going to rise by 333%.

In addition, the original 4 OS sims, which sit on a single server not being shared with anyone else, are now going to cost me $500/mth when a single class 5 server, even without the educational discount, would normally be $295/mth.

As the purchaser of leasing services from Linden Labs I am, in general, leasing the SERVER not the SIM and whether that server is broken into 1 sim or 4 sims is irrelevant. Beyond being asked to pay an unfair share of the associated increase in costs to Linden Labs I am also being asked as part of this policy to pay almost double what a Class 5 Server is advertized to cost and over 3 times as much if the Educational Discount is taken into account.

This is well beyond unfair. It is price gouging, it predatory, and to some extent I would suggest that it is borderline illegal.

My full-time career I work as a Management Consultant to companies such as Xerox, IBM, EDS, Bell, and the Federal Government. Specifically I have a long history of working with costing models and the ramifications of what a poor cost model has on performance and bottom line.

There is no other company or industry that I know of where a company unilaterally increases their pricing by 333% after having signed a contract with their customers. It just simply isn't done.

I appreciate the fact that some marketing genius likely jumped the gun in setting price points for OS Sims without fully understanding the utilization and cost implications but in all honesty that is not the customer's fault. We as your customer-base purchased in good faith on the belief that Linden Labs had done its research prior to offering these prices and services.

If you offer 3750 prims and a 70 avatar limt on an open space sim without any other restrictions other than a general policy statement then you have to expect that people will take maximum advantage of the service being offer. It is that mentality of creativity and innovation and pushing things to the max by the user community - without undue rules - that has developed Second Life into the MUVE powerhouse that it is currently. (Aside: This is a very distrubing trend in Linden Lab policy independent of this price issue and I really hope is not an indicator of things to come).

I understand the IT market, the nature of networks and networking, and the costs associated with IM/IT infrastructures, business models, and strategy. If I didn't then IBM wouldn't be fawning all over themselves to keep me as a Contractor to some of their most valuable clients in this field. I can sympathize with your costing situation. However the approach you have taken in dealing with this issue is absolutely and totally the wrong way to have dealt with this problem.

The short-sightedness of simply jacking the pricing of sims up without regards for the various physical configurations of the infrastructure behind it, nor the pricing arrangements PER SERVER with your Government, Education, and Non-Profit customer-base is to me one that shows a lack of regard for those relationships which Linden Labs needs to persevere in an environment where Second Life is being pressured on multiple sides by competing products. It doesn't solve the server performance issues for those customers which are over-utilizing the existing servers beyond their capacity. It also doesn't solve Linden Lab's need to offer new and competitive services to maintain its market leadership postion in MUVEs.

This is a complex problem on multiple levels and is not going to be solved equitably for both Linden Labs and your customer base though a "one size fits only LL's bottom line" approach. As you have seen there is a clear back-lash against this policy and the published comments I have seen to date from Linden Labs "encouraging discussion" but with no clear indication that Linden Labs is willing to negotiate on their position is not helping matters.

IF linden labs is willing to negotiate to settle this matter for all SL residents in a fair and equitable manner then I would gladly offer my expertise in these matters to help you find some common ground as I think this situation can be salvaged. I have multiple concrete recommendations that I think would benefit both the user community and Linden Lab's bottom line without resorting to clubbing everyone over the head with a massively unfair price increase.

If on the other hand Linden Lab's policy on this is firm and you are just simply trying to effect damage control through public relations then a) its not working, and b) at least be honest enough to be up front about it.

The type of trust and brand loyalty relationships that Linden Labs has endangered with this move is something that you are not going to easily win back after this poorly conceived move. Yes memories are short in the consumer world but in the virtual world - word of mouth is still king - and within the last 24 hours the words I've been hearing associated with this policy directive are not exactly fit for the printed page.

Kevin Feenan, PMP, MBA
Ph: 613 276 1911

Bravo -- very well stated!!! We could only hope that LL takes you up on your offer -- looks like they will be needing it from the thousands of angry posts on this forum.

Agreed, well said and logical. I hope LL not only reads this post, but LISTENS to it. I for one, will be giving up my open space sim on Dec 31, if nothing changes and I won't be buying mainland in it's place.

Good points and very well made. Do you do customer service training too? Linden Lab desperately need some.

Bumping this one back up its excellent and should not be lost in the shuffle. I especially liked the part about the fact that you are basically leasing the server and whether it is divided into 1 sim or 4 is irrelevant.

Very well said, though a minor technical correction:



No matter how many OS sims you own, they are not, and have never been, "grouped" by owner on the same server hardware. IE, your original 4 OS sims have never been guaranteed (or even attempted) to share the same hardware together. ALL OS sims are allocated more or less "randomly" across all available hardware specifically flagged to host OS sims only. Thus, it has never been the case that you weren't "sharing" the server with someone else since OS sims were originally released over two years ago.

I believe that is the case currently when they changed the policy such that you could buy sims in any combination or amount however when I purchased my original 4 I was told by the Linden I was speaking to at the time it was because the original OS sims were being grouped together on the same server. Hence the reason you could only buy 4 at a time.

Once that restriction came off (so for example for the 5th OS sim we just purchased in August) it became a game of dice as to which server your sims ended up on even if you purchased more than 4.

This is actually one of my initial recommendations is to recluster people who own more than 4 OS sims such that they share the same server wherever possible. That way if there is a performance issue due to the use of the sims then it is restricted to a single owner such as was the case when these things were initially offered.

A bump and a nudge

I asked about this very issue at an office hour. I don't know if what you say is true but I asked if someone could buy 4 and have them all grouped so the owner could control what was happening on their sims and act accordingly. I was told it wasn't technically possible at the moment.

From the blog announcement, "For the small number of Educators that already have Openspaces, we will be contacting you directly to discuss this change." So given a "small number", I imagine Linden won't feel compelled to honor their agreement and the budget educators will be given the boot or have to pony up full sim money.

Your post is excellent by the way and most of it applies to us poor consumers as well as educators and charities.

Yeah, they told people a lot of different things, but the gridmonkey Lindens always confirmed to us when we asked them that, indeed, they could not group same-owned OS sims on a single server, because the way the back-end scheduling sim->server works. We've had OS sims since late 2006 when they first came out, as well, and have always wanted that capability ourselves. :-/

/me nudges this back to the top of the list
...someone should make it sticky.

and a nudge

i do hope openlife grid becomes a challenger to sl.....i only found it today and whilst i type i am downloading the software.

I never thought i see the day i leave sl but if this OPENLIFE GRID is any good and shows promise to be bigger and fairer than sl then i will leave sl.

I hate hearing all this about people being burnt by LL....i too will be burnt....i am willing to move on from sl....more people need to tell LL that...get on the wagon and tell LL we are moving if you move the price up!

Changing the fee structure to education is the wrong tack. Ask Adobe how important student discounts are?

The masses in the client base in SL are in Turmoil.

The Lindens indeed have no clue.

And they have no idea how to back out of this corner.

Their technical excuses are constantly changing.

I learned a long time in business............ If I make an error. My customer is the first to know it.

What a mess at a bad time in the world.

Well to be fair to Linden Lab they have a similar philosophy, however it seems to be

"If we make an error, our customers pay for it".

Excellent letter !!!!

sounds like the way you tittle your self you make plenty of money. Why not let LL make a little. As they say if you don't like it . Leave.

Bump

I cant be more pleased that I no longer own land in Second Life. This is the worst form of bait and switch.

Jack's comment in the most recent blog post:

"Thirdly, I wanted to clarify one issue. As mentioned in the post, Openspaces were intended for space, empty areas of ocean or forest. Take a look at the Knowledgebase article description here. By that criteria, the large majority of Openspaces have more going on than was the original intent. We are not suggesting this is a bad thing, and of course we’re delighted that people have found them to be so useful. And we’re not saying that everyone is abusing resources. We are saying that the use has changed, and continues to do so as people find more creative ways to use them. So the revised pricing is about recognising that change of use and the additional costs and value associated with it."

This cant possibly be true. If the spaces were ONLY intended for open water and forests the Lindens would not have felt the need to increase the resource limits on the product.

I see two forces at work here. Both seem to be the American Way recently, though neither are inherently evil. I see 'Maximizing revenue streams' and 'Market will bear' mentalities. Gone are the days when the customers mattered. As long as their are customers are spending, these mentalities will continue.

What it seems like to me, by the way the Lindens continue with the same mantra, they have already made the decision on how to solve this problem they created. This community feedback thing just seems a bit of an act. I say that because there seems to be other solutions available that the Lindens seem not to acknowledged. How about returning the resource limits to their previous values? How about creating newer products, ones that fill the Lindens needs and their customers? How about the Lindens eating the cost of their own mistake, chalk it up to learning instead of passing it on? By eating the costs I mean allow grandfathering and the spreading of resources a bit to ease the problems that they caused, not their customers.

Oh well, my two cents. I do so wish their was competition for the Lindens. Things would be quite different. Sorry if this has all been said before, I could never possibly read all the anger people have expressed in the past two days.

Kinki

I agree with everything you say here in this post.

The decision was obviously based on financial instead of customer service decisions. It seems to me that first there was a meeting in which someone gave a forecast of how much money the open sims would make. Then there was another meeting in which they found out how much money they were costing. Then some noodnik made a decision like this:

First cost analysis didn't work out so we need the money so = raise the prices!

Instead of:

First cost analysis didn't work out so we need to rethink what our goal is here and then redo things so that what is being used actually balances with our cost model.

In other words: Linden Labs needs to make what it is are offering balance against what is being paid for it, and they aren't. It's not MY fault they let everyone over use OPEN SIMS, why should I have to pay for their poor business judgment. I won't! Believe that!

bump

Just before I take my self off to bed, here's a bump for a very well written letter. It wasn't addressed to me, but I read it all the same. I hope does too and I hope he replies. Second Life at the moment is fantastic because on the surface it looks as though it's players shape it, with moves such as this, word is quickly spreading Linden Labs has become another money grabbing corporation, interested only in profit margins.

A public apology, grand fathering, new products, fair prices and some honesty would go a long way to helping solve the issue and restore some faith. The ability to run your own server connecting to the Second Life grid would also be nice, but I'm near asleep so probably dreaming already.

Once again, great letter.

It takes a Canadian to see thru the LInden Lab price gouging..and u are correct about originally haveing to buy open sims in 4 blocks to accomodate a single server CPU.
And here most people think we only live in Igloos in the snow..LOL

This is an excellent letter. Also, I'm not sure but you might get Jack's email address off the wiki. Otherwise why not print this letter and send a copy to some of the Executive Management and Board of Directors: http://lindenlab.com/about/management

Address is just: WHOEVER, c/o Linden Labs, 945 Battery Street, San Francisco CA 94111-1305

bump
exellent