LL announces Openspace price increases, effective January 1.

Wow. Just.

Wow.

If you’re an Estate owner of any kind and have Openspaces (or rent them out) at all, this latest blog posting will knock your socks off.

And when I say knock your socks off, i mean seriously make you wanna throw up your hands and give up on LL completely.

Openspace Pricing and Policy Changes

A little background, if I may?

Back in May of this year, Jack Linden announced that Openspaces would be made available for purchase to existing Estate owners individually, rather than in groups of four. Additionally, it was mentioned that prim alottments would also be raised to double what they were originally – so from 1/8 region prim alottment to 1/4.

So of course that very month, there was a *huge* jump in Openspaces.. and from that point onward, many private estate owners began marketing use of those low prim islands for rental use.

Since then, opinions have emerged either for or against.

One problem that is part and parcel of the use of Openspaces has to do with the reduced ability to run many scripts, or time-dependant scripts. As such, many content creators who make products dependant on
high script time tend to be against this usage. Additionally, Openspace sims that are rented to many tenants and which are home to heavily scripted clubs, etc, end up aggrevating user experiences for
neighbors.

On the other hand, Openspaces allow, for the cost of 1/4 region’s tier, a full region’s space, privacy, control over terrain texture and terrain map upload capability. This allows for a much more customizable environment for a low script home or nature area for personal use. This is a very powerful alternative from the atrocious condition of the SL Mainland as it currently stands.

adbunker2 For years, Linden Lab has allowed adfarmers and extortionists to riddle the Mainland with useless ad lots and spinning ‘for sale’ signs, adding hover-text, particles, shouting text chat spammers, as well as any other sort of visual griefing imaginable. This alone has driven people off the mainland to private estates. The Mainland would never have been in such a pinch if Linden Lab had actually done something about the parcel-cutting situation long ago, and done something to keep folks interested in keeping a cohesive community running there.

By making Openspaces more accessible with individual purchase and additional prims, they practically DROVE people off the mainland and left a ghost town behind.

It’s not as though they can really claim they weren’t complicit either;
Darien Caldwell mentions:

“LL has to share the blame for this. They actively pitched Openspaces as a way for Estates to make money”

and goes on to post a chat log with an unnamed Linden from back in July of 2007, mentioning the possibility for Estate Owners to market Openspaces to tenants as rental property.

*sighs*

I guess there’s really not much more for me to say except to mention how I feel about this.

I took on ownership of Sylvan in mid-July, and opened Organica for business August 3.

Since then, I’ve been slowly recovering from changing my location from off the mainland, dealing with the slight increase in Openspace sales (but also the stark decrease in value and overall usage of land – especially on the mainland). Land values have been plummetting lately. I was lucky enough last month to drop my mainland land usage from about 14.5K sqm down to 3096. I was thinking that might give me a leg up on promoting my business a bit more, and as a result generate more sales… and maybe lead to a full-fledged sim.

But Organica, at best, pays for its own rent, some advertising, and a little personal pocket change in world. I don’t cash out anymore, and what money I do make gets kept in my account so I don’t have to worry about losing my land because I can’t afford it.

I no longer have to pay for both Tier and rental to Azure, and that’s about a $50 reduction in my overall costs, but this recent announcement has basically shot that cost right back at me with a vengeance.

Ultimately, I understand that my personal in-world businesses will probably never make ‘real money’ beyond supporting the land they are hosted on. But it’s becoming increasingly evident that it will be more and more difficult to do even that. The increased cost is totally coming out of nowhere and if it’s a measure to increase the marketability of the Mainland, I certainly don’t believe this is the way to do it.

I don’t often agree with what Khamon Fate has to say, but here he hits the nail on the head;

“They’re shooting in the dark and hitting their supporters square
between the eyes. They don’t even have enough common sense to impose
covenants on their new Mainland Nautilus sims.”

Which basically says it all about how well this effort to make the Mainland more attractive will ultimately screw over everyone.

This has been a tiring and stressful day, and this latest announcement really hasn’t been the best news to end it with. All I can really say is I will try my best to make things work.

But what LL pulled today is incredibly hurtful and totally without merit.