Did LL Just Remove the Basic Stipend?

So.. You would spend US$10 per basic account after the first just to get about US$1 each back per month of stipend? Try looking at your math, again. I /can't/ afford a premium account, and yet I run a shop. I use my money for uploads for new products, or tests of possible products. I don't sell a lot, and I sell VERY cheaply. I charge more, I sell less. I don't try to introduce new product, I sell less. I don't sell anything, I don't BUY anything. Simple as that.

Luci

I guess the attitude "I just can't afford a premium account" is more or less a psychological thing Karsten. Looking at it from a rational point of view it is kind of implausible for someone who has a PC and internet connection that is able to run SL to say "I can't afford" 33 cents per day (monthly payment) or 20 cents a day (yearly payment) for SL. But as long as you are unsure about your decision "to go with it" at all, the sum of 9.95 $ or 72.00 $ might seem like a massive investment if you are no so well to do.

On the other hand it is hard for me to imagine how a weekly stipend of 50 L$ can be a huge incentive for staying in SL. For 50 L$ you can't buy much, you can't upload a lot, when you want to do some designs of your own. You can't even rate others. Of course, there are freebies that can take you a long way (especially as a guy ). But I don't need money to "buy" freebies at all!

For those who still not know enough of SL, prices, sources of freebies etc. it might be a better idea to give them some more starter money. 200 L$, 400 L$. Honestly, I don't know. What I am sure of is, that for every basic account holder leaving SL now "because they cut my stipends" there will 2 new ones in the next months. It won't affect the SL economy - and LLs bottom line neither.

But it is obvious that free basic accounts have been a huge source of fresh money. (My estimate is that they are the source of between 35% - 40% of all fresh money.) Closing that flood may be not a bad idea at all.

Fewer ways to make stuff, even. Uploads cost money. Back before my things started selling, I had to sit on camping chairs to make enough money to upload things -- or even use the preview function. And before you say that L$50 buys five uploads so I shouldn't be complaining, I'll note that the preview function is better than nothing but not great, and it misses some problems. Furthermore, the people most likely to make mistakes and need to upload things repeatedly are newbies, since they haven't yet gotten the hang of how textures translate from a graphics program to SL.

Without money, the game (yes, game) isn't necessarily going to be a lot of fun. You can't buy things. You can't upload. You can't go to events that charge entrance fees -- and there's been speculation that we'll get more of those with the elimination of DI. The economy and the content creation capabilities of SL are much touted, but it's hard to do things in those areas without money.

And even if you don't agree that it's a game, LL still needs customers. It can be very, very difficult for newbies to make money as it is. Giving newbies L$250 (which, being thoroughly new, they may not even really know the value of) and nothing more has the real potential of turning people off the game -- which is, I might add, already not enormously newbie friendly, despite recent efforts to make it more so. Sure, some people would jump in with a premium account anyway, and others would never buy a premium account, but it's the fence-sitters that could be pushed away by this.

I'll say now what I suggested in another thread a while ago: if people are bent on removing the stipend, give it to newbies for the first six or so weeks they're here. That gives them enough time to get a taste of things, and buy some things and upload some textures and all that, while not providing an endless trickle of L$ for those who will never upgrade to premium. (And it is a trickle. I haven't seen any statistics on how many premium versus free accounts there are, and how many alts there are running around. I haven't seen any indication that we the players know how much money is being minted for each group, and how much money is being minted for how many players. The premium stipend could be as much a "problem" as the basic stipend. After all, premium members get ten times as much money as basic members, and they get it whether they log in or not.)

As long as there is a developers incentive program it is easy to make at least a rough estimate on the number of premium accounts. It is in the region of 10%. Premium accounts get ten times the stipend of basic accounts. So - roughly - as a whole they get the same sum of money each week.

As - contrary to Basic Account holder - they pay for this stipend and some other privileges this is still somewhat different for the company which developed Second Life to make a profit. Basic accounts are interesting for Linden Lab only in so far as a) they get converted to premium accounts or b) buy L$ somewhere else to rent land or pay other residents, which are premium accounts.

These are some of the fundamentals of Linden Labs business model. It may sound harsh, but LL does not "offer Free Accounts to Second Life" as an altruistic service to humankind.

I didn't say they did, and I would thank you not to assume I believe that. Sure, the L$50 I get a week is nice, but I don't have much of a leg to stand on to ask that it be maintained for everyone, what with my account being free and all. My concerns are about broke newbies -- notice that my post was nearly all about newbies.

However, a number of the complaints I'm seeing about the stipend focus exclusively on the devaluation of the $L, and exclusively on the players' perspectives. I'm not seeing a vast amount of concern about LL's bottom line. Given that, I'd expect to see more comments about the premium stipend than I do. That I don't, I think, is telling.

Sorry, I did not intend to imply that you were making that assumption. Even though my post started with quoting you, not all of the following text was meant as a reply to your last post. The finish was referring to a misconception that sometimes appears on the forums and not to you post. Please excuse me, for not making that clear enough.
Yes, players tend to see things from the players perspective. It is interesting, though, to step back from time to time and try to see it from LLs perspective. LL is less likely to implement a suggestion - if it listens to residents at all - that angers paying customers.
I am sorry, but I (honestly, not rethorically) don't get what are your meaning here. What kind of comments on the premium accounts would you expect? And what does it tell you, that you don't see the expected comments here?

I predict that if this has happened then the economy will react with something that sucks even worse than a declining Linden. Just like happened the last time the Basic stipend was cut.

Okay, then, No worries.


If one is concerned with only the value of the $L -- and a number of posters here seem to be just that -- it makes sense to bring up the premium stipend. Certainly, there are reasons to not eliminate it or lessen it, but most of them have to do with things beyond the $L value. So I'd expect to hear more talk about it, even if the idea tended to get shot down quickly. The lack of this (along with some of the attitudes I've seen on this forum) gives me the impression that a number of the people calling for the elimination of the basic stipends on the basis of inflation are premium account holders (specifically, premium account holders who make RL money at this) who want policies changed just so that they can have more money. I could, of course, be wrong; perhaps everyone here realizes that LL needs some sort of benefit to give to paying customers. From my perspective, though, it looks like there's a fair amount of... well, I'm not sure if it could truly be called rent seeking, but it certainly seems to have that air about it.

(For the record, I don't have a problem with the premium stipend, or with it being so much more than the basic stipend. Actually, I think that premium accounts could probably use more advantages over basic ones -- L$500 can be bought easily enough for most people, and owning land isn't something everyone's interested in. And yes, I've got a basic account.)

Not really.

Thank you for this clarification, Miriel. (I hope,) I understand your line or reasoning much better, now. But there have been residents who brought up this topic. Some have suggested either lowering premium stipends or raising the price of premium accounts to have the cost of the account match the value of the corresponding stipends at an exchange rate of 250L$/US$Just use the Search button in the top menu bar. If you want, I'll gladly send you a number of links, too.

If you are suggesting that residents don't dare to voice such an opionion ... hmmmm ... It is hard to find any opionion that is not voiced (vehemently!) here on the forums, IMHO. As someone who is very inexperienced in forum "culture" I am astonished every day anew about the amount of mistrust and hate expressed against nearly any person or (perceived) other group of residents - and the Lindens, too, of course.

Of course this could be the case, Miriel. It is a very common trait in us humans to argue for our own - financial or other - interest. In my experience most people are not even aware of it. It is usually their honest opinion that changing something in the world, which is beneficial to them, will be for "the greater good", too. That is how the human brain works.

Noted! I do read this forum, but not thoroughly. I was going by what I'd seen, but clearly I'd been missing things.


Nah, I wasn't saying that. (And I agree about the character of the forums. It was pretty jarring at first.)