The stipend is becoming worth less and less

Those who were screaming for the defense of the stipend take note: the devaluation of the Linden has accelerated to the point where you basically get back less than the cost of your annual membership in Lindens. Previously you actually made a profit while the currency was stable of about 25% by just stipend-hoarding and then selling it on.

If the devaluation continues then we will be in a real "pay to play" situation. The stipend is fast vanishing in a puff of economic logic.

Even though they claim to not want to make SL pay-to-play, they do. Basing their revenues on land leases (tier fees) has obviously not yielded the expected results. For a small firm that claims to have half a million customers, failing to show a profit in 3+ years is probably a tad embarrassing.

The larger problem is that they don't understand the economy of SL which makes many of their policy decisions look as if they've been invented by martians.

1) 300000 resident ISN'T an half-million (and you can remove 100000 alts too).
2) The L$ is raising since they removed the basic stipend
3) This false and useless thread worth nothing.

https://secondlife.com/currency/market.php

bit of bad timing here, since value of L$ has --if anything-- been steadily growing little by little rather than dropping for the past month. Wait for it to fall below 500:1 like Jamie predicts <g>

Is it just me, or has that certain freebie reseller been noticably absent from this forum lately?

She'll be back. If the "dead cat" bounced to 150 she'd be here screamin about the falling linden the moment it hit 151.

Preach on my brother.. Preach on..... These fools can't grasp the concept of Money Supply Inflation and how that translates to currency devaluation.

Thats Linden Labs for you... They know how to spend money, but they sure don't know how to make it... I wonder how much of that $11/million dollar infusion is already burned up?


Linden Labs gets $11 million to turn Second Life into Walmart World
http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/28/second-life-creators-score-11-mill-more-vc-bucks-to-extend-audi/
Posted Mar 28th 2006 4:35PM by Marshall Kirkpatrick
Filed under: VCs

Linden Labs, creators of the virtual reality game/experience Second Life, just got another $11million in venture funding. Investors included Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos. In Silicon Beat's coverage of the funding it's said that the money is going to be spent making Second Life more "mainstream." By that they mean commercial, which is a real shame. The CEO compares the commerce there in terms of number of equivalent Walmart stores. Gross.



Too bad LL isn't a Public Company, I'd love to see their Cash Flow Report...

What the hell is LL spending money on? They need a bunch of computers, an office, and staff. How could they possibly be losing money?

They arnt losing money they are talking about the inworld currency losing value. LL isnt currenlty profitable because most of the residents are actually just basic accounts. And while supply may devalue the L the residents can slow it make the value go higher or halt the devaluization if they wanted to. Its up to them. I wont be punished because some person chose to open a business in a virtual world which is a big gamble and it didnt pay off. There is no reason at all for them to get rid of the stipends other then a few people that dont need them which are actually a small minority in SL.

What people like reserve here fail to realize is that while there is a supply coming into SL at a steady rate when its not really controlled as to what the value is it is highly unstable regardless of the amount of L out there. There could be any number of L in SL and I'll again turn to the fact that there was more L coming into SL over a year ago then there is now and the value of L was higher. Reserve you fail to take in that at minimum about 75% of SL are casual gamers that dont give two heaps of beans about making someone money. They are here to spend some L have a good time and People like YOU want to see this ruined.

I for one hope the linden's can see past the facad of people just trying to make money in SL because the folks calling for the stipends dont really care about the rest of us. If you wanna help the economy stop whining that its falling because all that does is cause panic or is that your plan? Frankly there isnt one good call for the majority of SL to have to suffer because some minority of the group wants things to be their way. Wether folks here realize it or not EVERYONE in SL that has ever bought, sold, or made something (using upload fee's (sounds, anims, clothing, textures) has relied on the stipend either directly or indirectly wether they realize it or not.

These same folks running around screaming are hypocrits just by stating to get rid of it. THIS will NOT fix the economy. Nothing will fix the economy unless the folks selling the L want it to be fixed and actually work for it to be fixed instead of coming here and whining to LL to fix all their little problems.

I just hope LL remembers that Us little people make up the majority of their player base and that Alot of us just wont idly sit by if they do this.

If LL hope to make SL more mainstream they are going to have to realize that they are going to have to loosen up the business end of things and stop giving into futile attempts to completely screw up the social and community aspects of SL.

I've been saying that all along - promote all the other aspects of SL and what makes it such a great game to play, and leave the fact that you might possibly have a chance of making a little money on the side as a bonus, not the sole reason to come here.

As noted, the weekly stipend is indeed losing value. Therefore the sensible solution is to increase it to L$750 a week immediately.

Lewis

In-game prices are being cheaper everyday(at least stable) because of the hard competition.
Noone is caring how much L$ worths. So, increasing stipends is a bad idea. It only makes stipends to worth less.

L$500 is now buying more things than before .

Then time to lower stipends.

MAKE STIPENDS L$250/week. And you will see, noone will leave their premium accounts. Now it is time to lower stipends.
In my opinnion they will do it in 1 month or 2 months at most.

In summary:
LOWER STIPENDS.

...and that will do what for the economy now?

By flooding more free money into the system, it forces the L$ down, causing the next demand to be "Hey, stipend's worth less now...I demand L$1000 a week stipend immediately."

Raise... no...Lower...no...

Silly Rabbits.

LL should neither raise nor lower stipends for premium players.

I fail to see how people can see the benefits in this.

Players having more money to spend means they spend more money on your products, which means you have more money to cash out, which means you get richer. Everybody wins.

What you fail to recognise is that the L$ value CAN FALL as well as rise - it's all well and good for the free market capitalists to want the free market, but they have to accept that it doesn't always go the way they want to and make them richer.

Don't forget that first and foremost this is a computer game. The ability to make money out of it is - or at least should be - a secondary reason for being here. Entertainment and playability is what makes or breaks computer games, and when people concentrate more on making money than having fun, that's when you see posts whining about "falling value" of what is, and will only ever be, play money.

Lewis

Wrong.

People may not go down from premium to basic - but with less money to spend, people will simply do without rather than buying money on Lindex.

Is a stagnant economy *really* what you want? If nobody's spending, you can't cash out your L$.

Lewis

"Players having more money to spend means they spend more money on your products, which means you have more money to cash out, which means you get richer. Everybody wins."

No. Nobody wins. Having twice as many lindens may be good, but it's not if they're now worth half as much because of it. You're still only cashing out the same amount of money.

Musuko.

The only flaw in your argument is based on the assumption that everyone is here to cash out.

Many players never touch Lindex at all, and a good number that do only buy, not sell.

More L$ for the US$ is good for the buyer. Remember that people need to buy money, but they don't need to sell.

Lewis

I was talking about losing money. When your firm gets start-up capital and continually spends it and doesn't have revenues equal to their spending, they are losing money. Although their books are not public, Philip Rosedale has been quoted numerous times saying that he expects LL to be profitable soon.

After looking at how Entropia works, it really seems as if LL has missed the economic boat. Entropia items degrade, they require maintenence. The rough impression I got was that Entropia was structured like casino slot machines where the house pays back somewhere about 90% of all cash put in. This works for Vegas and Entropia - LL doesn't have anywhere near that rate of return on revenue.

They hired an economist who now seems to be MIA. I see nothing in their current plans that will cause them to suddenly become viable and there are only so many times one can go to the venture capital well before the investors want to see something back, or at least the prospect thereof.

(.) <- the joke

0
-|- <- you
/ \

lol!

Nice OP Lewis! (I assume you were joking!)

So what?

This is the economy at work, righting itself..

The stipend is not "worth" anything.

The currency is devaluing.

This will lead to inflation

At some point, content in SL will start to take on a more stable value (I think it could be overvalued at the moment... once (if?) stipends become valueless, we will see how much hard earned cash people are really keen to spend on that nice skin etc.).

I believe "contract not renewed" was the official line on Vasudha Linden.

The reality of living in SL, and the problems caused by trying to make an economy work, are something that many residents are all too aware of.

Something that no university graduate, real life economist, or even Philip Linden himself, really have any clue about, frankly.

It's all very well and good to say that "X Y and Z will fix it all" - if you haven't actually experienced it for yourself.

Lewis

Where can I buy this AV?