Not Illegal - Stoopid

FWIW, I think the price increase isn't illegal. Whether it's well advised or not is another matter.

Taking LL at their word, let's suppose they are actually doing this because the load on servers hosting OS regions was unacceptable. How might this have happened? Well, let's see. Simple arithmetic, right? 1/4 the prims, 1/4 the load, so 1/4 the price. The offering hit a nerve. I know I jumped when I heard about it. I was going to buy an OS region soon. The demand is obviously huge for lower cost access to simulator space. So there's the problem. Why wouldn't people build commercial operations on OS regions and try to load them up with avatars? Alternatively, why wouldn't they run scripts in their home or playground? How had the basic demand changed so that offering the service on the basis that nobody would do those sorts of things made sense?

So I have to assume that the support burden of OS owners calling about performance, plus the extra systems design and admin to try and cope with the load made the OS offering uneconomical. Now we get to watch LL take back their goodies, and shoot down a ton of goodwill that the price cut generated. A lot of the criticism I've read here is over the top, but LL deserves every bit of the heat for the idiocy of not understanding their customers and blowing the demand prediction. This was inept business.

I agree. LL introduced a premium product, full sim space, privacy, usable prim load, at a very good price. They completely misjudged the market that was available for this type of product.

Why did the increase prim happen on the previous OS allotment? I doubt someone at LL woke up one morning and just thought it was a good idea. The estate owners most likely asked for it. Did they see the market, negotiated an improved product from LL and tapped into it?

Absolute balderdash. I haven't seen one post from an estate owner asking for an increase ever. Linden Lab saw a revenue stream and exploited it and then blamed their customers. Linden Lab are totally, utterly and compltely at fault and should take responsibility. That they won't speaks volumes.

lol, estate owners have also exploited the opportunity that LL gave them with the OS. Business is business, I don't see any estate owners offering to refund the money they've made either.

Perhaps not illegal, but really stupid on there part. Not to mention that they announce giving away $10,000 in L$ which granted cost them nothing to make, and that the last quarter they did rather well. This is SO not something to boost consumer confidence in LLs pricing scheme.

my sim is closing, they are refunding rents on 13sims......some people are honest

I will be paying the full $20 price increase in January. Despite already paying $110 a month, everything will be passed on. I have a very helpful and responsive estate owner, but this is business to him.

The way I *imagine* it happened is this:-

With better and faster servers these days, LL thought that they could lower the price and up the prims of OS sims, and sell more, assuming that the newer equipment would handle the higher prims ok. And they do. After a while, the number of OS sims outstripped private islands by a long way (that's true), which in turn outstrip the number of mainland sims by a very long way(also true), and because the number of OS sims outstripped the other types, they probably did put an unanticipated burden on the system servers, and that burden continued to increase. Four sims of mostly homes, plus quite a lot of small businesses, no doubt do produce a much higher system burden than the equivalent single normal sim, bearing in mind that more could be done with a home on a sim-size parcel. So LL decided they needed to do something about it.

That's what I imagine happened. It was LL's fault throughout, and no doubt they needed to correct it, but they were even at fault with the correction. Zee (one of the decision makers) admitted that it was their fault throughout, and even admitted they got it wrong with the correction because they were still selling the product, that they knew would be devalued, right up to the last minute. Jack and M blame the users, and they are totally wrong. But I do accept that they could well have needed to do something.

And to some of us, it isn't business; it's entertainment.

I keep reading about the use of OS sims for business: clubs, stores, residential rentals. Those users, if they're having any success with their businesses, should be covering some or all of their tier payments with sales, rents, or tips.

What I'm not hearing much about is the OS sim used for a single residence by folks who just want the privacy and control they can't find on the mainland and were willing to pay $75/month for the privilege. There's no revenue there to offset the tier payment; there's no passing on the increased cost to another renter.

There was really no contract per se, so this fiasco isn't illegal; but it's one of the most boneheaded moves I've ever seen a company make.

The OS I have is purely for personal use, entertainment, my and my gf have one each, so the extra space of ocean to sail and play in. Neither of us own a business here, we pay directly, no subsidising from in game income. But, the person I pay tier to, he is here for business and making money, LL is here for business and making money.

To try and reason with a business on my happiness will be unsuccessful, unless my unhappiness results in their income level changing.

funny how many uf you get foold so easy there are no technical reasons to dot this its or why would the homestad work?

Josselin, lots of folks are skeptical that this decision is purely based on the technical problem, and many are actively questioning LL regarding how *exactly* they plan to resolve the technical issues they *claim* are the problem. All LL has given so far is some vague plan to limit scripts and avatars on Homestead sims, but no particulars.

We're not fooled, and I don't think the rationale given for the price increase holds water without some sort of explanation as to how the additional money will be used to resolve the problem.

well to me it seems LL is unwilling to awnser the questions ar they werey unwilling to listen you our feedback or join the discussion at all

Yes, we've noticed. Doesn't mean we'll stop pressing for answers, though. Zee Linden, for one, was actually fairly responsive in the thread about the Q3 statistics. He's one of the few.

I think that Zee is the only one who stood up and answered questions - and who came clean about whose fault the whole thing was. If I'm not mistaken, it was Zee who stated that the extra money would improve the system so that it can handle the load that OS sims place on it. Somebody said that, and I think it was Zee. No specifics were given.

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I'm not suggesting that the whole thing is not just a money-grab, but I am prepared to accept that it's not, and that the load that the OS sims placed on the system really wasn't anticipated; i.e. the huge popularity of OS sims wasn't anticipated. It surprised me that there are now a hell of a lot more OS sims than normal private sims - something in the order of the same number of OS sims as there are normal private sims and mainland put together. Or there was when the announcement was made.

I can accept that the huge popularity of OS sims turned up a shortage in the system's ability to run everything smoothly. What was very wrong, imo, was Jack's and M's announcements that OS sims were not being used as they were intended to be used, and that it's the users' fault. They both lied, imo, and they don't have a leg to stand on on that score. What they should have said is that they didn't anticipate the huge popularity of the new OS sim deal, and that it's going wrong as far as the system's capabilities are concerned, so they need to do something about it. They should also have suspended sales of them when they realised that the system was looking like buckling.

Exactly, Phil. That's where "stoopid" comes in to the picture, along with their failure to seek and evaluate alternative solutions *before* deciding to offer a lesser product for significantly more money: Rolling back prim limits on OS sims to the previously offered 1875? Setting up some sort of enforceable script, texture, and avatar limits for OS Sims in keeping with the low intensity use for which OS sims were intended? Investigating and fixing the coding problems that are causing heavy loads on the asset servers--like the texture loading issues described in http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8503?

Lots of technologically savvy SL residents have made reasonable suggestions that don't involve a 66% increase in tier; some have run tests and identified apparent coding bottlenecks that contribute to the load on the asset servers. While some increase in tier might be necessary and justified--I could live with $95/month, for example--it wouldn't have to be so extreme as to drive so many people away and alienate so many customers.

Roisin, I am one of those. I don't think it's a question of how much you have paid, though. I think it is a question of, is Linden Lab a regular business or a casino? Weren't they just attacking casinos? Now, they are saying they can act like one if they want to. It's not ethical, and I am willing to bet some money it is not legal, either.

It seems as though some people have read my posts and thought, "It's another big land owner trying to save herself." Well, I totally agree with people who invested in the islands expecting real service. Personally, I am upset that I just managed to build something of a home I like, and suddenly Linden is taking it all back. I was stretching the budget anyway, but this is too much.

I imagine that some renters do not feel especially attached to their spaces. Some do not want to make a fuss or risk anything by complaining. Some have not paid for the setup costs (as I have) and/or have not been on the island so long. Those people may feel it's better to quietly move on. Even so, some of them should suspect now that SL does not always give value for money.

Linden has written that it would provide an "allowance" of 3750 prims and it has taken a lot of money in return. I will bet that a court will see changing the service as denial of fair use. If there is a good discussion of the technical side, it may or may not turn out to be intentional fraud.

Either way, Linden is a business. It is presenting itself as a provider of network service and host for online content, NOT a casino. I wonder whether what Linden has done is even allowable under the rules by which Linden has gone after the online casinos? Linden is also not our parents, who can change the size of your "allowance" whenever they please. They lose that right when they promise something in return for money.

My partner and I also paid for the setup costs, and although we've only had our sim since August, we worked hard on it and we're very attached to it (even though we don't own a full sim and are thus not the Payor for our sim). Of course, LL counts on that.

Truly, though, LL is a business; businesses raise their prices all the time in order to cover their costs and make a profit. As consumers, we usually have choices (with the exception of utilities and the like, which are often regulated by some sort of corporation commission) if we don't like a price hike: stop using the product; buy it from a competitor; cut back on something else so we can continue to afford the product at the higher price. Problem is, SL is pretty much a monopoly, so there isn't a comparable product put out by the competition (not to mention the inability so far to move our inventory to another platform).

It may be possible that a court would consider that there was an implicit promise inherent in the terms of OS sim purchase. But all LL has to do is cite this from their Terms of Service:

(Emphasis mine) Further down there are a whole bunch of liability waivers. By logging in, we've agreed to that.

I'm not an attorney, but maybe there's a case to be made based on LL's continued sale of OS sims right up to the day before they dropped the price increase announcement on us. That certainly smacks of malfeasance. At the very least, I do think LL should give anyone who has purchased an OS sim under the current terms, and who is selling or abandoning it, some sort of prorated refund or rebate to compensate them for the setup costs.

As I understand it, a court might declare the TOS illegal. There are some conditions that you cannot be held to in a business transaction, period.

Linden has openly admitted that we never agreed to limits on the openspaces other than the resources they advertised. We took them at their word that there are 3,750 prims, etc. We proceeded in good faith.

Yes, they can change their prices within reason. Notice how Linden has tried to make this sound reasonable: they explain it as a miscalculation and miscommunication. The problem is, it is so obviously unreasonable. Linden cannot justly explain why they doubled the prims, sold them that way, and now they completely rewrite their package after so much content has been built. A court may decide that this is not good faith, but something punishable.

A company can make bad calculations and try to adjust a little bit. But it is not our responsibility to save them from the market. We are their market! If they sold us something that cannot provide fair value, then they have to pay back and make it right.

I do not think a court will believe that $250+tier for just month or few is a reasonable expectation of use, or in good faith.

My friend has just lost his island because the estate owner is abandoning the sims, this seems wrong to me as my friend has paided in advance direct to the estate owner, not through a rent box