LL in competition with residents.

LL has gone against it's word with regards to reselling abandoned land. After posting an open letter to Linen Lab, Andrew Linden responded:



Linden Land Sales have been selling land at 4/sq meter. This essentially cuts out the middleman and amounts to reduced profits to resellers. It's a sad to see this bad policy making in action, particularily when they put people out of work and promise to make abandoned land available to everyone equally. In this new system, land which LL aquired for nothing, is resold at a huge profit, which only benefits Linden Lab and not resident land sellers.

This is a perfect example of GOMing. What's worse, is they lied about doing it.

Just wondering, doesn't selling the land off for 1L benefit the residents with neighbouring lots to it, so they can absorb it? Or are you talking about the loss of a source of income for your business?

Reselling as in making it public, or starting the auctions at that price?

LL used to sell abandoned land to the public at 1/sq meter. It would often be bought and resold by 1-2 land resellers at a profit to each of them.

LL has been listing abandoned land on the "Find - Land Sales" list recently at 4/sqm.

They have totally gone back on their word about all aspects of this.

I bought at 512 lot today in Turnip 240, 249.......go and look for yourselves as proof.

They promised 512 lots would go to "First Land". Selling it at 4/sq to the public, is hardly that.

They also claimed that >512 would go to auction, which I wholly disagreed with because it amounts to competing with residents. Likewise, I have intentionally abandoned smaller plots and been monitoring their status. They are still sitting there (more than a month), in LL tier (which used to be held in paid resident tier). I notice that several residents have raised this issue in SLLM threads.

This new system sucks big time. They screwed residents out of their jobs, made empty promises and did themselves a great disservice by sitting on abandoned land within their own unpaid tier.

Erm, that sounds like what Andrew posted in the thread[1] so how do you figure that's "going back on his word"? And, well, nobody likes middlemen who just buy and sell land while boosting the price a little so it's not like anyone's going to be motivated to hate Linden Labs if their business is hutr.

[1] except it doesn't sound like he implemented the "offer to neighbors" option, from what you posted.

Apparently land can still go public on The Island of Misfit Toys.

***shrugs***

Some would say that this drains 4x more money from the economy, since money paid to LL is effectively thrown away. I guess you could still collect and resell freebies

All kidding aside, I know Schwan has first hand experience in this business. We competed under some "unwritten" rules and practices which proved to be worthy in the long haul, (ie) first come first serve, no checkerboarding, return errors and no price gouging.

In his response to me, Andrew claimed "a significant amount of time" was spent by LL staff when it came to errors. I dispute this claim, because it's accusatory. Everyone that I am aware of who were in the abandoned land business, would willingly return land to anyone who made an error in releasing land. A few patches ago, LL implimented the confirmation dialog boxes which were identical to those involving land sales.

If I was to make a mistake selling my land, the dialog boxes are sufficent in LL's opinion, that the land was sold and bought with adequate confirmation. Why should releasing land be any different....they have IDENTICAL confirmation requirements. LL has no sympathy for someone who bought or sold land at an incorrect price, Why all of a sudden is abandoning land any different? We all know that LL does "not intervene into dispute between residents" so this assertion that your land will be returned within a week is merely an platitude and not a fact.

Now LL is in a situation where they have to manage abandoned land. This used to be done by residents. Now LL staff has to mess around with this picky, time consuming task.

So far they get an "F" for this effort.

Draining the money from the economy is not a solution when profits are being cut from resident land sellers. Seems to me it does alot more harm than good.

Notice the slide in the $L since this implimentation?

I would be hard-pressed to believe it could have any relation to the demise of public land
But hey, I don't believe in god either. Or santa.

Of course Eggy, I agree it's not a major factor, but a factor is a factor, big or small. The biggest factor upon the SL economy is "confidence" in the marketplace. When LL co-opts a business and the fear of further GOMing is prevalent, then it's also a factor.

That's a good point... this makes reclaimed land a useful Linden sink.

Again, I disagree. Taking profits away from business is not an effective means of fixing the economy, in fact It probably does more harm than good by reducing confidence.

The one (huge/gaping) hole in this theory is the question as to how LL would benefit from the sale of the land themselves. It's my understanding that LL is the one entity that cannot in any way benefit from L$, as they are the issuer of the L$.

Besides, if there was a way to benefit from it (say, if one goes for the non-sequitor of 'they can trade it for US$ on the LindeX')...why would they do it via land sales, when they could just alter some account data and 'manufacture' L$?


- Newfie

Another area in which LL competes with residents is forums.

Resident operated forums at sldrama.com, sluniverse.com, and secondcitizen.com would likely have increased use without the competition from these forums here.

Opinion:

Not surprising.

coco

Never ascribe to avarice that which is better explained by mere forgetfulness combined with a desire to hide it behind "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia" type blustery rhetoric.

Returning land is a lot easier if you do not have to deal with a new owner.

Even if the new owner was willing to return the land it was still likely that Linden Labs would be contacted first and I very much doubt many customers were happy about being told to talk to the new owner. At best, they were often spending a decent amount of time with an unhappy customer and, at worst, two.

Linden Labs to Weedy: Get a New Business Model.

Perhaps, but whats changed?

Seems like a kneejerk reaction to a minimal situation. I mean, what part of "abandon land" did people not understand? If a rogue officer abandons the land, then LL says tough shit, because they don't intervene in land disputes.

Besides that, we are talking about different things here.

LL said - 512 lots would go to first land....they don't, they been selling on open market
LL said - >512 would go to auction.......None have been.
LL said - <512 would sell for 1/sq......The lots I abandoned months ago still sit in Linden tier. Others have sold at 4/sq

What LL says and what LL does, are very different things.

Yeah Weedy. Maybe find something creative to do for once. Doesn't need to be something very challenging either. Constantly harping on this is like trying to save Longabergers.

Are you suggesting that I'm neither creative nor have the right to speak out about issues that affected me?

I'm suggesting doing something creative. Not saying that you aren't creative, since I don't know what other skills you may have at your disposal. It's quite obvious that the situation won't change for a great deal of time more and SL seems to be heading in the direction of not rewarding people for earning money from doing repetitive menial tasks.