Removal Of Xploders

Way to ruin the SL economy. These things are used to generate funds for the running of many of SL's Clubs and attractions. I dare say this single act alone will see MANY clubs and the like shut their doors.

There was not ONE mention of sploder removal at all in the wagering post, only casino gaming equipment.

So... will the following also be instituted in Secondlife... because of laws in the USA:

1) Age verification to restrict those under 21 in Bars and CLubs online
2) Banning of Same Sex marriages
3) Banning of all escorts and prostitutes in SL
4) Banning of furries ability to have sex (Bestiality is illegal world over)

etc etc... the list goes on and on.

Why werent the Lindens upfront about Sploders?

Its real nice that the Lindens did this instead of implementing their age verification process in "mid-May" as was announced in the blog.

Right now, I just feel like cashing out all my assets from the game, and sitting back watching the game fall into a big cloud.

I find this whole thing disturbing. My first reaction is to be pissed off at the Lindens...but I realize they are only trying to protect themselves...its the US government (MY OWN GOVERNMENT) that pisses me off.

That said, the Lindens should be ashamed of themselves for announcing this immediatley before the ban went effective. Thats horrible and they should be held accountable for all the lost money casino owners will now lose for the month they just payed tier.

Also, I am upset at the seemingly bland definitions in the blog posting. Too much is left up to interpretation. If they want to do this, they need to be specific and consistant, not show up and peoples clubs and start deleting sploders. Its just wrong.

I play alot of games with friends for money, and latley it has become one of the main attractions of SL for me.I am upset I will not have that oppurtunity any longer.

I hope they realize what this will bring.....

If online gambling is illegal then gambling in SL is illegal because it exists online. It's specifically targetted at the internet, which is the big difference between the other things you mention below.

You're not actually in a bar, you're in an online virtual representation of one, which isn't illegal, nor subject to age restrictions.

Exposure to pornographic material (online or otherwise) is subject to age restrictions though.
Strictly speaking you can't even get married in SL, you partner with someone. Either way, it has no legal standing in real life.
Noone is actually having physical sex.
The depiction of a human having sex with an animal isn't illegal as far as I know.

Well... It was fun.. Better sell my land quick!!!

I must say.. it breaks my heart to hear my freinds, who have built there career and put so much hard work in.. to b kicked to the curb without warning... surely there must b away round this..

Why not move the servers to Europe, were our Civil Libertys are not Breached..

@pepi: not yet...

WTG Linden Labs u just commited suicide.........

I see people leaving in droves now.


If i wanted to treated like a child I would have Joined the Teen Grid.

Why dont u regulate the casinos here, max bets fair payouts etc.......

a small proportion of the people in sl are purely here to gamble.

to be honest, if they leave, i can't see the main grid being that much worse off

Does a Sploder use a random number to hand out a "winner's" payments?

Yes.

In the list posted on the blog and in the following comments LL didn't mention Sploders, even though people have asked for clarification on that subject. They do list a whole lot of other games (most of which I don't even know, I only play - or rather played - the occasional sploder).

Has LL been unclear? Absolutely, since sploders are widely used (in fact, I don't know a single club without one) and I haven't heard a single club owner even mention that the ban on casino advertisement might mean that sploders in their clubs would be removed. In fact, I wouldn't have believed them anyway even if they mentioned it, because a club is no casino.

The point goes further though, because LL states that they don't only try to comply to US law (although - when reading the other topics about this subject - it is unclear if there is even a US federal law regarding online gambling) but expect us to comply whichever law is applicable. I cite the blogpost on this:

"As you review this new policy, please remember that Resident compliance with real world laws has always been an integral part of our Terms of Service. "

I wish LL good luck with enforcing every single law of every single country that might be applicable to SL.

This ofcourse leads to the question why exactly casinos and sploders and such are being targeted. I am sure there is a whole lot more forbidden in some obscure country that still happens in SL.

Does this mean the end for clubs in SL? No, not directly. But I do see that clubs were filled when there were nicely filled sploders, and well... no more sploders, one way less to get people to your club.

I know people around here always want "clear, exact definitions" (which I find kinda annoying) but I think sploders aren't very clear on where they sit between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law.

If I had a sploder, I wouldn't remove it until LL sent me a warning.

The removal of Sploders, for instance, removes one of the few "clean" opportunities to earn in-game, while at the same time enjoying the company of friends and community. OK, gambling is banned. And what will we lose tomorrow? What will YOU lose?

Building a house and furnishing it is fun, chatting with people is fun, listening to someone play a guitar is fun, but if that is as far as the aspirations of the Lindens go, it's not enough.

Unless the Lindens can repel the intrusion of USA legislation, copycat versions of Second Life will emerge in other countries, outside the reach of US law. And it would make sense for the serious player to relocate to those versions, rather than make long-term investment or commercial plans in SL - where anything can be REMOVED / BANNED / CENSORED overnight, and WITHOUT warning, due to the influence of US politics.

Definately, the more unpleasant aspects of Real Life should be excluded from Second Life. But players from around the world want the FREEDOM to express their imaginations, build their dreams, and reflect their lifestyles - without worrying what a handful of American politicians are going to ban next (shouldn't they be sorting out Iraq, or something?).

A Sploder does not rely on chance to determine a winner as it pays out to everybody who joins.

It does rely on chance to determine how much a particular person wins.

So technically a Sploder does not meet the precise wording of what LL has announced is banned by the policy.

Unfortunately, LL is not known for being particularly precise in their execution of a stated policy.

Matthew

It isn't just the intrusion of US politics it is LL whole attitude of support towards its customers typified by the "WITHOUT warning" nature of this latest policy change. Most TOS of other service providers indicate that any change in the contract requires a minimum notice period - indeed in the UK I think that is a legal requirement.

The major competitive advantage that SL has is the ability to add your own content - on all other aspects (graphics, performance, reliability) the competition is on a par with or better than SL. The open sourciing of the viewer (and work in the OpenSIM) project may mean that a copycat SL may even use the same protocols or code as SL.

If LL think they can fend off such a competitor by out innovating them, then they are in for a rude awakening. Whilst innovation is what attracts the early adopters, mainstream adopters are driven by stability.

If a SL copycat came in with a TOS which indicated minimum service level agreements (in terms of availability, support response time etc.) for paying subscribers, included minimum notice periods for policy changes etc. i.e was customer centric rather than innovation centric, I think it would give SL a major run for its money even if it didn't do sculpts.

Matthew

Online gambling is not illegal in the US. I see commercials on TV for it every day.

Proof that they didn't quite say what they meant. Sploders are gambling.

This is what a sploder does:

Step 1: get payments
--when it goes off--
Step 2: of the list of people who paid into it, choose one AT RANDOM
Step 3: give them an amount of money equal to a RANDOM value (max the total amount of money paid minus the number of other players).
Step 4: remove that person from the list
Setp 5: if there are more people in the list, go to Step 2.

You ARE gambling with a sploder. I've payed into one five times and NEVER got back the L$10 I paid into it each time. I paid in L$50 and I got back L$25 to L$30 while another person paid their L$10 and got back over L$200 in ONE splode (and was pretty much getting sploded first each time too).

Yeah, I'd call that gambling. There may or may not be a "house cut," but it's still gambling.

Sheesh, Draco -- I hope you haven't written a Sploder.

If I thought Sploders actually worked that way, I'd always only put in L$1, or whatever the minimum is. Incidentally, I've had good luck the few times I've played them and I think I'm ahead ... but the thing about luck is it's bound to change!

Of course, some may work that way and encourage low bets. There's certainly no shortage of poor algorithms in SL scripts. If it was typical, though, I think we'd see more people betting the minimum.

If I were to write a Sploder, for each person who bet, I'd pick a random number from 0 to 1, to give them a "weight". Then I'd multiply their weight by their bet to determine their "number of tokens". I'd add up all the tokens, and for each player, and pay out this amount:

better's payout = total pot amount * (better's tokens / total tokens)

Note that it's still possible for a $200 better to get $10, and vice versa, in the same pot. Just rather unlikely.

Of course, the total pot amount would be adjusted for "rake" or "sweetening" of the pot configured by the owner. Also, the above has to be compensated to take fractions into account, for the math to work out correctly. (Yes, I've seen plenty of bad SL scripts that just round off the cents and ignore the inequity. My scripts minimize the effect of roundoff errors.)

None of this has any bearing on Draco's valid point, which is that spoders are gambling, pure and simple. Anyone hoping to avoid it based on a narrow interpretation of LL's oversimplified definition is relying on a weak argument. (Anyone simply choosing to fly under the radar might be taking a reasonable business risk.)

What Draco describes fits with how I've always seen sploders behave (or the original one anyway, never did like that piggy one ). What you describe sounds like a raffle? The more you put in, the more chance you have to win the pot.

If you only care about profit with a sploder, you'd always just drop in the lowest amount, the more you put in the less likely you are to end up ahead. It's really no fun if the minimum entry amount is L$50 with a minimum payout of L$25 and everyone always just puts in the absolute minimum.

It takes at least one person who's willing to put in far more than the minimum to make it any fun, and generally the decent thing is to put a good sized portion of your winnings back in.

A sploder (with no percentage to the owner) always seemed far more about the fun than whether you'd win or not, and there was always a decent chance for those who could use the L$ to end up ahead.

The minimum bet on the one I described was L$10. The minimum payout was L$1, which three or four (possibly different) people got every time it went off, which is how I figured out how it worked. The one time it went off the first guy netted amost the entire pot, the second prize was 1/10th of what he got. Pissed me off so bad.

As for making it a "more you risk the more you get back" but keeping the values closer to how much was bet I'd be more inclined to play.

The commercials you see are the free play money sites, typically the .net, never the .com. It's illegal in the US for an online gambling site which uses real money to have a commercial.

The ones that have already blocked US players don't even run commercials for the free sites anymore.

I'm not actually in a casino, I'm in a virtual representation of one.

Gambling with real money. Your point? It's against SL's rules now. Gah, getting rid of all those damned camped out casinos is going to be so sweet. I for one am DAMN glad of this announcement.

We won't miss the Gamblebots.....................