RandomCruiser

So you're assuming that some (not all i hope) large Estates are the result of a paroxysmal pulsion of some rich person, or group of, with no cogent business plan behind ?.......maybe . Looking at few recent examples, you can be right

Whitestag Gothly

wewe : )

Whitestag Gothly

Does this include LL whose region sales price tier have been $295 solid through a real life economic turn down, where real estate has dropped in some places up to 75% ? I would call that price fixing so do not see why it would not work, its worked well for them..

Second life is only mildly controlled by real life indicators and that based mainly on ones ability to spend real life money in game.

Khamon

Y'all please get a room and stop trolling this useful thread.

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A Journey Through the World of Lever Harping

RandomCruiser

Yes useful, in fact.....
I think that its interesting have some Land Lords here. All these data about the number of sims and the general trend of SL land economy are useless and without any interest without comments from users involved in land renting. So you are wrong IMO.

Tyche Shepherd

Without the data it would all be just hot air and speculation - So you are wrong ... IMO.

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RandomCruiser

The reactions, proposals and opinions of Land Lords give a sense to your job........IMO.

Tyche Shepherd

Well that's so good to know that you have sense of my "job" now . I'm so glad the last weeks input from Land Lords had validated the past 4 years of work I've put in

pancake

I don't know that it's trolling, but I do certainly think it would be a good idea to split the topics.

Some people prefer to have just the straight stats that Tyche works so hard on. For them to have pages and pages of theories and infighting between those figures makes this a less useful resource for those that come to the thread called "New SL sims in the past week" to see... well... stats on new sims.

Conversely, those that are trying to investigate what's going on with big landlords, or distribute information on the market value and what not, would probably be better off doing it in their own thread to. There are probably people who would be interested in reading or participating in that conversation but don't think to come to this thread to do that because... well.. that's not what this thread has traditionally been for.

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UlaaC

I am the person who shared this conversation with Marcus, because I am the person who IM'd his alt to try and warn him to not rent from these bitches. He hasn't altered anything in the conversation outside of changing my name and the name of the resident who got screwed as well.

So far as I can tell he hasn't done anything wrong...

Tyche Shepherd

Clumsy posting by me and I'm sorry . I do appreciate the disclosure by estate owners and other interested parties and I personally have found the tack this thread has taken very interesting.

ETA: I still agree with my post before

FemGhost

Again... nobody said he did anything wrong. It might look like it... but I can't help that.

Katya Dirval

a) Hmmm im not sure how the laws for price fixing would apply in a virtual world (I mean you could be right, I dont know if it would be illegal on SL). However I do agree it woud be fragile

c) You're right about this, too many people still see SL as a game (and I dont blame them) and its indeed difficult to talk business sense into these people. And I do agree that even in the top segment there's people who would rather pluck a few K's in lindens from people today than making thousands of extra in the long run of these same people and any sense for logic is indeed far to find. That said, The more succesful variant of an older alliance used to have around 35 estate companies working together and the project was supported by LL. So all in all was not a bad idea, alot of people tried but I guess it was just not possible to realize in the long run for reasons you already mentioned

d) The only obstacle is not just trying to get people to work together. Another major issue is the public. Ofcourse they want everything as cheap as possible (not understanding there wont even be SL anymore soon if business just keeps dropping). So for this reason an Alliance (with good intentensions to keep SL alive) would get alot of haters.

So yeah, even if I would get businesses to work together, the public would turn against it. So I guess there's just nothing to do right in everyone's eyes here. I guess I got too excited posting my idea without actually thinking it through first myself

Cincia Singh

The number of people willing to pay a single L$ more for ANYTHING in SL than they absolutely have to is dwarfed by the multitude of Walmart shoppers trolling the land business.

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*My concern can be measured in micro give-a-shits, and I'm working on nanotechnology!*

Marcusgay Lefevre

Katya, when i read your suggestion about the group and joined it inworld, i actually didn´t think of price fixing, and i do not believe it works either...

But i still believe, and keep telling, to whomever i talk to, thats it always does some good, if the estates, whether larger or smaller, keep to communicate with each other, share some information which may be useful for all and debate about things. Regarding RGF i recently learned that the reselling agencies appreciate this internal communication to know what plans RGF has.., and i think it may help to extend our all external communication for all, willing, estates as well..., for ourselves as well as for Second Life. So, there the group may be still some useful.

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Marcusgay Lefevre - RGF Estates Director

Katya Dirval

Yeah I was thinking the same thing, however even with so called "info" we have to be careful as people make up alot of stuff too so I kinda want to close off the group and only get the larger estates in and people we think we can trust. For now the group will be invite only

Whitestag Gothly

Hello Kat when this group was first formed I thought it a great idea so I joined, If my estate is not big enough, or if anyone feels I can not be trusted please feel free to remove me.

This idea of groups of estate owners is a good one as a think tank at any level of holders and estates. In a real life corporate think tank that would be all around beneficial they were comprised of Upper management, middle management, and the workers or as would apply here ( Large Estates, Middle Estates, and Renters ) would be very hard to pull off in SL though. They all looked at a given issue from all levels and the titles and positions of the people that were there were left at the door.

Transparency of information I have seen increase production from 70% to 126% only because the workers were now not working for but with the owners.

All other systems in the RL world were considered ( Old School Management ) ( Hammer Management ) or ( Mico Manageing ) these still work but there is a lot more secrets, and mistrust between the upper and lower structures.

Lizard Howl

Hi Katya -

I don't think I was "badmouthing" you in my last post, your name wasn't mentioned at all. Any error I made in summarizing Marcus' thread was an honest error, thanks for the correction.

Everyone else -

I think we are all in agreement that Linden Lab is the real villain here by keeping their discounts secret. It would make way too much sense for them to let it be known publicly: own X number of sims and you can qualify for Y benefit.

Personal squabbles aside, I care about the end users of Second Life having good experiences with Estate land.

There are tons of us in the land game, and most of us are honorable and treat our customers well. There are always going to be a handful of customers who have a bad experience with any Estate - mine, ACS, anyones.

What matters is, overall, do the Estates take good care of their customers?

When a handful of Estates drive prices below cost I get concerned for two reasons:

One, the downward pressure on the prices can make it more difficult for smaller Estates to turn a profit.

Two, Estates that aren't in profit are the ones that end up ripping off their customers and giving all land barons a bad name.

At the end of the day, if all that is left in SL is the top 5 Estates, and they take good care of their customers, so be it.

Anyways, I have a feeling this particular debate will continue indefinitely. Thanks to all the Estate owners and observers of the land market for participating in this thread, thanks to Tyche for providing the data, and thanks to SLU for providing an independent forum where we can debate LL policies freely and openly.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Lizard Howl
Segarra Estates Owner

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Hi, I'm Lizard Howl!

Katya Dirval

My name was actually mentioned a few times in marcus post including in one of the chatlogs, people who only took time to read the first few minutes might actually come to the conclusion that people paid rent and that I came in out of the blue asking for rent again or asking people to leave (The person in the 1st chat log actually thought i was part of the scam because of this). But thanks for clearing it up

Anyways, someone made a huge effort and made a new thread with alot of info about this matter. So for anyone from SL who got directed to this thread to collect info or has something to comment, Please use this thread instead

Regarding the Trixie/Bunny scam (part 1)

I totally agree, allthough statement nr 2 can also just be caused by newbies giving it a try and no matter how profitable the market would be, just fail because of lack of experience or funds

By the way, I know Segarra was one of the estates in the old alliance trying to improve things for us business owners in the land game (it was a public project so not much of a secret who participated in the project).

Respect for trying

Sid Nagy

I disagree completely.
If a company cuts someone a deal, the last thing they want to do is make it public. Before you know, they will have to drop the prices in general.
If you want a discount you have to ask, have to make it work for the other party in return and negotiate.

If a car dealer sells the same car type and configuration a dozen times, he will probably sell for a dozen different prices, all depending on the situation.
He will advertise with the catalog price though.

Aztek Aeon

The estate owners, big and small, who have been willing to communicate and discuss business trends and practices have been doing so all along in groups like FSBO and to some extent CIG. Its not uncommon to send customers to one another that we are not able to accommodate at the time.
There are certain of estates that this core group know are either not willing to communicate/work with others and/or have questionable business practices & that information is usually shared. I don't see these 2 groups ever coming together.
I think if you want to carry that type of information sharing and discussion into a more free, open & productive place, it would need to be outside of SL to either a discussion board or email group.
There is certainly a need for it and I think if its not 'policed' by one individuals personal philosophy, it could be quite successful.

Perhaps it would be even possible to have a few sub forums added to SLU for this purpose. Most of us are here anyway.

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Waterfalls & other stuff
Virtual Kennel Club - Second Life's only pets with true A.I.

Tyche Shepherd

Time for this week's report of comings and goings on the grid.

Well whilst this thread has been very busy, the grid has been rather quiet this week with an overall net loss of 42 regions all amongst Private Estates.

Total number of Main Grid regions is now 29543 ( 22426 private estates & 7117 Linden owned)
48 new regions were added and 23 returned to the grid, with 115 regions removed (24 were renamed and 1 came and went since last report)

There were no major changes noted amongst particular private estates this week

Total number of Adult rated regions grew again, this time up 16 to 3558 (12.0% of the grid) and this week General rated regions also increased by 31 to 4435 (15.0%)

Breakdown of current regions by Ownership and Classification:

• Estate - Adult: 3205
• Estate - General: 2692
• Estate - Moderate: 16523
• Estate - Offline: 6
• Linden - Adult: 353
• Linden - General: 1742
• Linden - Moderate: 5022

Breakdown of Host Server Classes by Ownership:

• Estate - Class 5: 8728
• Estate - Class 7: 12603
• Estate - Class 8: 1
• Estate - Class Unknown: 1094
• Linden - Class 5: 4445
• Linden - Class 7: 2443
• Linden - Class 8: 3
• Linden - Class Unknown: 226

The 71 new/returned regions are :
ª indicates region which have returned to the grid


The 115 regions no longer on the grid are :
ª indicates region came and went since last report


Of these 24 are renames :
Estate groupings going off line

• 1 (n=2): Aelin,Gypsy Falls
• 2 (n=2): Aspen Hill,Cinematic
• 3 (n=3): Coronado Beach,Encinitas,San Diego Port
• 4 (n=2): CZESTATE Kipona,CZESTATE Kohola
• 5 (n=2): Devachan,Devaloka
• 6 (n=2): Digital Nirvana,Sky Mark North
• 7 (n=2): Dunes,Isla Vallejo
• 8 (n=3): Heartwood,Tainted Hearth,TOTU Inc
• 9 (n=2): Riverrun Haven,Riverrun Sanctuary
• 10 (n=2): Vampire Coven I,Viventes Mortuae Horde

Estate groupings coming online

• 1 (n=3): Arab World,Jeddah,Jeddah Sea
• 2 (n=2): Butterfly Valley,Darkness of Dawn
• 3 (n=4): Haug,Norway Fjord,Stranda,Vik
• 4 (n=2): Hot shot,sparkel
• 5 (n=3): Monkey Cove,Monkey Paw,Monkey Tail
• 6 (n=2): Serena Siesta 1,Serena Siesta 2

The following 6 regions were on the grid but marked as down when the last survey was run:

• Devils Cry
• Flawless
• Hells Ridge
• Magnolia Island
• Tha Slump
• Unique World

Zeebster Colasanti

OMG, this thread sure has gotten busy over the past few weeks! I'm on vacation this month and this is the first time I've decided to peek in on here. I should have been taking notes on all the things I've read posted over the past couple weeks but I did not, so I'll just make a few comments on some of the things that came up.

1. Nobody other than I use the avatar of Zeebster Colasanti either in-world, on this forum, or any other forum that I am aware of. For corporate use we have avatars with the last name of DreamSeeker and those are shared by the staff, with specific functions assigned to the various avatars.

2. On all occasions when we bought sims from other people, we have first investigated whether there were any existing residents and how much tier they had prepaid at the time of transfer. All our purchases included explicit agreement on accounting for the prepaid tier and all prepaid tier has always been honored. This is true even in a particular situation where the previous owner has failed to keep his end of the agreement to transfer the prepaid tier value to me amounting to $600. This was about 3 years ago when DreamSeeker was just another small estate and so this hurt particularly badly at the time. A judge of the Superior Court of Vermont ruled in my favour on this particular matter. A resident who got scammed by the previous owner for a year of tier at 50% discount got all the money refunded by me. Others who had up to 3 months of tier prepaid were not asked to pay a single Linden dollar until their prepaid tier expired. I would invite other estates to follow a similar practice.

3. We do not change in-world estate owner of our sims as some other estates do because we believe in transparency and want to avoid scams. Our sims are clearly labelled as belonging to us and no one can pretend to own one of our sims. We are considering relaxing this policy with a very small number of resellers who have been with us for a long time and have earned our trust.

4. Of all the estates I've spoken to, it appears to me that I have made the most thorough research with respect to how RL laws apply in SL. As I am sure countless of other estates have been doing, I have been reporting my SL income on my Canadian income tax return. I would record revenues, costs, and net income. A friend of mine is a lawyer for Revenue Canada and she enjoyed having conversations with me about this virtual business. That is until I have reported a yearly revenue of just over $30,000 (don't get too excited, it's revenue, before my tier and other costs). She has suggested to me that at this point I should be withholding a 5% GST (Canadian sales tax) from all my collected tier. She indicated that because of how fast my revenues were growing, it would raise red flags and I would get audited, at which point I would most certainly go to trial because there is no precedence of such business in Canada (as far as Revenue Canada is concerned) and so a judge would have to rule. That sure put a fear of god in me. She recommended a small tax boutique law firm that I should consult with. $16,000 later, I had my legal opinion. So here it is in a nutshell: a) I am in a business of reselling software licenses; b) I realize revenues when I collect tier, not when I sell Linden dollars; c) Linden dollars are a currency and I must maintain accounts for each avatar, reporting all transactions; d) I must withhold GST tax from all revenues collected from Canadians. As I mentioned before, I had attended court in SL related business before. These two experiences have taught me one thing: our virtual business is as real as it gets.

5. Price fixing is illegal in both US and Canada, as well as several other countries. I believe (see above) that all RL laws apply in SL as well as they do in RL, despite the fact that they may not be well (or at all) policed in SL. Having said that, laws were made for a purpose and in both Canada and the US the intent of the law is more important than the law itself and a court decision can be easily overturned by a higher court if it is discovered that the law itself is in a particular circumstance contrary to the intent. The intent of the price fixing laws in particular are there to protect the consumer as well as other competitors. Putting this in perspective of top estates in SL, a) price fixing below market price would be clearly illegal as it would disadvantage smaller competitors who do not have as large cash reserves; b) price fixing above fair market price would be pointless as countless smaller competitors would still offer to the consumer services as fair market price; whereas c) agreeing on minimum price within the fair market rate would ensure survival of smaller estates (no, we do not want them wiped out - quite to the contrary in fact) and higher security for consumers who could find themselves without services if uncontrolled price wars forced smaller competitors out of the market.

6. It is significantly more expensive (in terms of effort) for LL to move a sim than it is to delete a sim and put up a new one. For this reason, a lot of the sim moves and renames are accomplished by top estates through taking sims off the grid and getting new ones. So while they certainly look like and in fact are "new" sims, they are often de facto moves and renames. It is not something that LL can take advantage of for most estates as that would really screw up their billing, however for top estates that are on a monthly billing cycle it is something that they can do at a much lower effort than if they were to process them as moves and renames. For such moves, the new sim comes online before the old sim comes offline. And no, we don't use both the new and the old sims at the same time.

7. The reason why the month end trend became so noticeable in the past few months was because of the October promo. You need to realize that only the top estates have any sort of visibility now as to the actual private estate portion of the grid vacancy rate. With 4 top estates controlling some 25% of the grid, we are very well aware of (yes, we do share this information amongst ourselves) what the current vacancy rate on 25% of the grid is like. Historically this information has not been openly available to LL although we have shared it from time to time on request. We are now working with LL to make this information more readily available to them. So as a result of the October sale, the market got completely destabilized, and our vacancies went through the roof. We dumped many of those fully vacated sims in November. When the market did not recover through the winter, we focused on shared regions. We have attempted several high cost ventures (which involved massive moves/renames as described above). At DSE we have focused on significant sponsorship of various large SL charitable events, as well as we have created a new mini-continent with professionally developed landscaping throughout the continent. Both projects proved to be a failed attempt to boost sales and all the involved sims were subsequently removed off the grid end of last month. Yes, you could say I made a mistake. It's part of business. If someone isn't prepared to make mistakes, they should find something else to do. For ACS, as has been mentioned a few times on this forum, they have been involved in an attempt to increase newbie retention in order to grow the market. Although they have been highly successful at accomplishing the task, it has come to them at such huge cost that the project has been discontinued. One thing that you can count on is that top estates will continue to work together as well as with LL to stabilize the market, and we will continue to take on all sorts of projects that are outside of our core business to grow the market and make SL a better place. And yes, we are well aware of the fact that many such new projects will fail, yet we must keep trying.

And now on a final note, as I said before, there is no free lunch in SL.

And now I'm going to dive back into my vacation and forget about this blog for the next two weeks. I am hoping that this makes things a little clearer and dispels some rumours, although I am just as certain that someone will try to poke holes and as Marcus said, "dig in mud for something that isn't there". Speaking of Marcus, I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his thorough investigation of the Bunny scam.

Signing off for two weeks...

~Zeebster

Katya Dirval

Have fun on your vacation Zee

Tyche's last report didnt really come as a suprise and the reports might get pretty quiet in general for the rest of the year. As I mentioned earlier top estates agreed together not to buy too much sims anymore and even let the grid shrink some more.. The summer is a perfect time to use to have people return sims to LL due to the slowdown. When the summer is over there wont be alot of vacant sims on the grid so through this way we hope to increase the market prices. I wanted to speed up the process even more but didnt know price fixing was illegal in some countries

Because there will be less supply soon the prices will go up.
So anyone renting sims now, try to hold on to it if you still have a cheap one. Or if you're planning to rent, now would be a good time to still look for bargains.
Use common sense when looking for bargains by the way, estate owners have to convert about 76.240 L$ to pay monthly tier which is 17.600 L$ weekly. Anything lower and you most likely end up getting burnt


Also another good thing will come out of this, the sim transfer market will recover as well. It probably wont take too long before people realize sims are worth alot more money so hopefully we can go back to selling sims again for 100+ USD + 100 Transfer fee + Tier expenses rather than everyone having to dump sims just to recover tier expenses (or even less).

Whitestag Gothly

Only a Few comments to this I just could not pass it up..

In 2009 the total size of the Second Life economy grew 65% to US$567 million, about 25% of the entire U.S. virtual goods market. Gross Resident Earnings are $55 million US Dollars in 2009 - 11% growth over 2008.

This is a lot of money but for the ones that have never got involved in other games before SL started, and their ability to create income Ill post this from 2009 to match the 2009 figures of SL

In 2009 the global market for gold farming was valued at around $3 billion annually

Makeing money in a online game is nothing new nor is the legalities behind it, only in the information on how to do it. Ultima Online started selling gold and farming it in 1997. My account there is 15 yrs old, parked it yrs ago to try a few games out and ended in SL. Started in 2005 and took a few yr WOW break and came back in.

If info is not transparent digging in the mud is a good way to find it, asking in SL sometimes hits tree hugging roadblocks but only a few I have run into are like that most are very helpfull.


As far as Marcuses investigating the bunny scam we already knew who was involved before the investigation took place that was the only interest to Marcus, not all involved only the owner or scammer not how they got the ability to do it or the strange facts revolving around it denoted as not needed for a investigation by him, whose ending was known before it even started. From reading the other thread seems Bunny is confirmed as Ladysmack Gears alt by her own omission but hey there was most certainly a reason for that right? Read the explanation and think about why someone would do that? ..it is unprovable as to the reasons and rumor and I guess up to all to consider rumor or fact..

Me well ill keep digging in the mud and maybe post that info but i have seen it takes up a lot of space in the thread and is debated as rumor by those that do not like what they hear, so I would not hold my breath on that one...

My interest was the connections involved that could have placed this many regions in one spot that started it all and the strange facts revolving around it .... We knew who sold them and did the scam before any investigation took place.. The 15k a week rental 4th of July special started the investigation as to who was involved for me, the scamming came a few days later...


Zeebster have a great vacation...