Why do they want 9.600.000 USD per year more from us?

Can some IT guy explain me the additional cost LL is claiming to have with the so called “abused” OS? The way I see it is, they have one server for 4 full sims and one server for 16 OS sims. Both servers have 4 CPUs on them.

So when we “abuse” the OS the server with the OS on, it has to work harder and slows down, which leads to lag in SL. But the ones who are suffering are the users. There might a bigger load on the network, but bandwidth cannot be the problem as it is so cheap that it cannot be the cost factor they are raising to have.

I made a rough calculation and they will get approx. 800.000 USD more from us per month with the price increase, or 9.600.000 USD per year (yes it is not a typo it is 9.6 Mio USD).

So can someone explain me what the additional cost of 9.600.000 USD are per year, that these so called “abused” OS cause?

As a corporate finance person I know that every company is working in finalizing its budget for 2009 and I fear LL is just using us to fill the gap. We also have discussions in our rl company to increase prices for 2009, but we do not just think, lets increase the price on our best selling product, how many millions do we need? Ok , we will increase the prices by 70% for 2009.

So I would really love to understand these additional cost they are talking about.

I'm in banking so it was natural for me to do the math, and I came up with appoximately the same numbers you did. If we all fall in and blindly pay this increase, SL will make at least 9-10 million per year, WITHOUT really giving us anything more to show for it. Someone in another thread mentioned that there as currently 20,000 OS sims, which puts that number closer to 12 million per year. Without a real plan about what our increased tier will do to improve anything, it looks like the 9-12 million will be pretty much mostly PROFIT for Linden Labs. I understand a company wanting to make a profit, but they might want to look at other business models. Many companies sell a popular item at a lesser profit just to get people in the door.

I'll use DAZ3D (a computer graphic program and content seller) as an example. They give out the base figures of their popular models for free, the program they make to use those models is free and they have sales all the time. They make their profits off of the accessories and upgrades for those models, the programs and sale items. I'm not saying the OS sims should be free, but people being able to buy more of everything in SL means the money will eventually go to LL as the successful entreprenaurs will want to start buying full sims and SL will continue to be attractive to new players. I could possibly pay the increase, but I'd have to stop buying anything and just use what I already have.

In SL itself, Bare Rose is one of the most popular clothing outlets there is, the store is always packed. But the clothes are at an extrememly reasonable price. Yes, June Dion could charge more for her highly original outfits, but I'm guessing she makes more in selling one outfit in bulk, then in selling the same outfit for thousands of Lindens. Charging a much lesser increase for the tier of the OS sims would be an easier pill to swallow and continue to keep people interested in buying them. For most marketers, selling many of the same thing at a lesser profit for each individual item, makes more sense then selling one of that item at a much higher price.

Both of the models I give are similar to the SL world, most or all of the products are virtual, just like the sims in SL. The items I buy at DAZ aren't necessary to RL, neither are the clothes that are sold at Bare Rose. Neither is the OS sim I currently live on. But, the raise in the tier for that sim is the only place I feel myslef an others are getting ripped off.

The basic product is free - no one has to pay to be in SL. Land is one of the accessories and upgrades to the basic product.

Fact is they lied to us and made people feel guilty for using them as home or a shop!!
And so many people discuss how to solve the problem, which is not a problem and not the reason for that price increase.

The indended use of the openspaces are irrelavant, in all reference to openspace sims it it merely advised that they arent used for other purposes other than waterways and forests, "Advise" is just a advisory, and nothing more, its not a rule, condition nor restriction. and no one is wrong for using them for anything more, LL is wrong for not properly QA these things before they released the souped up version of the classic 1875prim openspace.

LL, I worked for Microsoft for 7 years, with my name in thousands of lines of coding for business solutions, You have no excuse for trying to make the very people that gave you the capital to be what you are now, to pay for your failures in development testing and QA. You dropped the ball on this and its time to own up and take responsibility

I'm not necessarily defending this but Jack was very clear that the price increase is because of extra costs AND extra value. i.e. OS sims are worth a hell of a lot more than $75 a month.

Regardless there's plenty of extra cost for over used servers in the way of electricity and cooling and increased failure rates. Also support costs for OS sims must be very high since they can sometimes suck. Lastly there's obviously some flex in how many sims they have running per core and maybe their finding that 4 per core is not working well and they need to reduce it to 3 per core or have a greater number of spare servers to handle "abused" sims.

Sure lower the the amount of opnespaces to 3 per core and increase the prices 25% but yet still that doesnt explain LL nonwillingness to increase mainland tier fee's to match estate tier fee's... Im sure Elanthius wouldnt like it that much but hey, we need to be equal here before we start charging estate owners even more for product

They started to sell OS with 3.750 prims and 75 USD tier, so now they are saying there are worth more so we have to pay more. Who is making that valuation? They have the same prim count as a 1/4 full sim and run slower.

I talked with the IT people in our company, there is no extra cost to more used servers besides use of the network and slower response time, the servers are hosted in a server room and if they have to "work" more there is no or marginal more cost related to it.

If you host a server at a hosting company you pay for a server approx 70 USD per month and the hosting company is also making profit on it. LL is hosting their server on their own, so I guess their direct cost are approx 50 USD per month.

There is no reason for them to ask us for approx 10 Mio USD more a year!

And they just said, we will increase the tier for OS, not that they would put only 3 on one CPU in future.

I would really prefer they would be honest with us instead of telling us that crap of abused OS and 800 USD more cost per server per MONTH because of it!

The 1000s of estate owners who are buying dozens of openspace sims each or swapping full sims for openspaces in a desperate attempt to keep up with the huge demand from end users. That's who made the valuation.

It should be pretty obvious that an openspace is worth more than a quarter sim.

And Jackson, if they raised mainland prices I'd celebrate by buying more estate sims. Mainland sims are already (I'd guess) bringing in more money than estate sims anyway. Remember you have to assume the average mainland owner has a quarter sim or more. If it's less than 16ksm on average then mainlanders are paying more per sqm than estate owners.

This one is fairly easy. The initial cost to acquire a FULL mainland sim is roughly the same as buying a private island and often much more difficult. If you compare to a transfer of an existing island, the mainland is actually more expensive. Private islands have landscaping control and other features that mainland sims don't have. Now if you raise the tier on mainland to match, which one would you choose?

Then you have the fact there are a lot of potential island buyers who don't go for a private island because $295 every month is just too much. $195 is ok but more just doesn't work out. If $295 is the tier option in both places, you'll get a good number abandoning their land altogether just as with the Open Spaces.

I think you got something wrong here….

They are selling us a mass product and providing us a service after that, to host our data on a server. If you buy a mainland parcel which is seaside and have protected linden water in front of it has for sure more value than a mainland parcel in the middle of nowhere with a club besides and ugly buildings around it. But do you pay more tier for the seaside one? No, you don’t.

And if you say the OS have more value as you get 65.536sm instead of 16.384sm on a full sim, you also get much lower performance on them compared to a full sim.

Fact is they sold us a product 6 month ago with 75 USD monthly cost and are now saying they have more cost with it (50 USD per OS or 800 USD per server!) because we use it more.

That is simply a lie!!

It is misleading a customer!

For whatever reason they want 10 Mio USD per year more from us, but the reason is not because the OS are more used and cause more cost and that’s what upsets me.