My fake "Patcha Machines," named for the announcer of a deeply devastating policy, which only sell Linden Library flamingos for a $1 and nothing else, and cannot be filled, or which give away only flamingos and cannot be filled. On sale at Flamingo Court Garage and my shop Shaman's Hut in Tofalar.
By Prokofy Neva, Virtualator
If you need a short form of this long blog, go to my Twitter thread.
I believe, based on my experience since gatchas were introduced in 2012, that we will see the worst economic downturn we have ever seen in our virtual lives, and the further stratification and atomization of the SL society as it sorts into deeply divided classes of haves and have-nots. Past economic crises such as GOM, the ban of third-party currency sellers, VAT, island price hikes, Copybot, etc. will pale in comparison. Gatcha evolved to address inequities in SL and RL that involve the need for unskilled people to have a way to enter the economy and prosper enough to pay their virtual-life costs. Without that need, so hard felt in a world that rapidly becomes all about the very top designers and coders who can make the best content, or the very top land dealers who can hold tier in the tens of thousands of dollars, there isn't a world. There really isn't.
I never say that SL will end or be destroyed by this or that event or corporate decision, but I do say that it might be irreparably harmed, and what the real harm is done to its role as a norm-setter for the Metaverse, a role most of the big dogs thinking they are going to build one don't even realize, and which will disappear like rare orchids in an axed forest, taking a long time to reappear.
This poll of SHamlet's isn't asking the right questions, and sorry, but Tyche, who knows a great deal about sim attrition is not making a valid comparison. Gambling was not located at every store, in every home; gambling didn't have huge special events for merchants and Linden-blessed shopping malls. Unlike ubiquitous gatcha machines, gambling machines were only on a few sims, or had a few machines here and there by comparison. Not everyone gambled; it was a distinct minority. But practically everyone has either pulled a gatcha from a machine or been gifted one or purchased one in the secondary market. There is simply no comparison at all.
And gatchas are not merely expressed in "sims retired" as an economic marker. It's not something you measure only by seeing how many merchants have to close their stores and dump islands or homesteads. You have to see it as far, far more dislocating as people who re-sold gatchas, even if only on the MP, have to tier down as well and more important, lose their purchasing power in the economy and any way to enter the economy at all, especially in poor countries and especially in countries so poor they don't have credit cards that are accepted by LL.
(Note: I don't ever post on Shamlet's blog and call him by that nickname ever since his hate campaign against me for criticizing his then-employer (he was a paid LL blogger for years) and his requirement that I must put my RL name to post, a demand he doesn't place on other actual vitriolic writers, but only on me, in the belief this will "get me to behave". In fact, unlike so many I link my SL and RL names easily found in Google. But I don't cross the street to create griefing vectors for myself signing my name at Hate Central in his comments. Hamlet is not really in SL. He writes about a variety of worlds, whoever pays him, and does advertorials essentially. Go and argue with him if you like, but he is not a source of real knowledge and wisdom on this subject.)
I think you can learn most about this from straight news reporters like SLNewser which will at least report the news from the ground up, and not from the company down, like so many SL blogs, although they are not intended as a source of critical opinion. There is no more Second Life Herald or even Clickable Culture as there were in the old days of past economic disasters, and I realized the other day that whereas once, when I was banned for speech which is legitimate, for corporate reasons, there was a littler coterie of people inworld and in RL who could place some pressure on the Lab for this authoritarian behaviour -- professors, journalists, virtual world developers and some creative people and land barons inworld -- now most are gone. I don't like the feeling that I could wake up and fine my account locked "for any reason or no reason" now but it's the reality we all live with.
I had a long talk with Bixyl Shuftan, editor of SLNewser, this evening who is the only person I have heard in three days to come straight to the point, without any bullshit, without any misleading crap:
[19:33] Prokofy Neva: what's your take on the gatcha thing
[19:33] Bixyl Shuftan: Well, I do wonder, why 30 days.
[19:34] Bixyl Shuftan: I haven't heard of any complaints to the Lab by any government.
ROLE OF RAJ DATE?
Bingo. There aren't any. Their perception of the regulatory environment is just that, their perception, largely a political view, in my view, shaped by one of the new owners, Raj Date, Special Advisor for the US Consumer Financial Protection Burea, formerly of the US Treasury Department.
That is, unlike past owners, who were programmers and engineers and start-up kings as well as big game or media company leaders, this fellow is a combination of programmer and liberal lawyer which I always find deadly -- "code-as-law" and law-faring and not really the rule of law. He is a protegee of socialist-leaning Elizabeth Warren and was the first official appointed to her brainchild:
Raj was the first-ever Deputy Director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As the Bureau’s second-ranking official, he helped steward the CFPB’s strategy, its operations, and its policy agenda. He also served on the senior staff committee of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and as a statutory deputy to the FDIC Board.
This is pure speculation on my part as he has not said word one, but just my feel of this situation I have been watching with our new owners and our old Lindens.
Am I the only one who wonders whether, if Ebbe were alive today, we would be having this policy as harsh as we are having it -- or at all?
Note that what's most likely operative here is that Raj feels he is protecting consumers not by protecting the livelihoods of legions of poor people in SL who make and re-sell gatchas, and thereby setting the tone and the legal basis for the Metaverse (I doubt he is barely aware of that), but he is protecting imaginary consumers that he thinks are harmed by what he sees as predatory gambling. No doubt he thinks this is a "Better World". Even if Raj did not initiate this move, he enabled or heeded lawyers or some other unknown leadership or staff who did initiate it, and did not use his power to stop it.
NO, GATCHAS ARE NOT 'LIKE' LOOTBOXES, NOT AT ALL
NO, THERE IS NO LAW ON GATCHAS IN THE US, NO FEDERAL LAW THAT APPLIES,
AND THE CALIFORNIA LAW HAS NOT BEEN SUCCESSFULLY PROSECUTED
There is a HUGE difference between a giant, predatory game company like EA.com bilking little children using their parents' credit cards to buy "lootboxes" to achieve progress in a game, and what we have in SL. Here's where the differences are:
o there are no children in SL
o the company does not run the gatchas or gain from them, except in a fee for currency purchase and cash-out to US dollars and a tax on sales of 10% on the Marketplace.
o the gatchas are created by designers, most of whom are not RL famous or RL wealthy; many of whom are in Eastern Europe or Latin America or South Asia, and make a living of anywhere from US $250 to $1000 per month -- hardly the stuff of predation.
o MOST IMPORTANTLY, gatchas are resold, unlike some gaming company lootboxes as a way for ordinary, unskilled people to participate in the economy of a virtual world and pay their own expenses there or in RL as well
o there is no game and therefore no gameplay.
Therefore the attitude LL should have taken was an adversarial one, referencing Apple's and Google's successful rebuttal of lawsuits bought against them motivated by children being victims of game companies and be unable to advance in those games, but are about adult users who create content that is resold by other adults who then pay for RL expenses or virtual expenses; the random element is merely the glue to make it stick, and not the most important element. Most pulls are 20 cents to 40 cents; the "$9" incorrectly cited now from the tech media could be a reference to the fatpacks of the entire sets on no-transfer, which often sell for US $10.
Again, there is no federal law as such on lootboxes; the California gambling law has just been successfully challenged by both Apple and Google in response to lawsuits by angry parents of children who bought lootboxes. People in the magisterial legal systems of Europe and Asia just don't grasp that laws on the books don't self-execute or merely get literally applied and can't be expected to affect people merely by their existence or putative appearance. In the US, a common-law system, the judge interprets law in light of precedent and the Constitution and makes a ruling, and the body of such rulings constitutes the law. There is more adversarial defense than there is in the magisterial systems. Raj Date surely knows this, but did not likely contemplate it in this context. This difference in how law is perceived and how it works is the hardest thing for the uneducated myrmidons on the forums to grasp or admit but it's worth flagging. No judge yet ruled that lootboxes=SL gatchas. That matters. There isn't even a guidance or a prosecutorial warning that we know of. Therefore, the posture should be, as a State Department official I knew once said about his work in Belarus:
"Better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission."
[19:36] Prokofy Neva: EA.com may have had to pay a fine, but those big dogs shook off the case because the judge ruled there was no damage and no standing
[19:36] Prokofy Neva: so why in that actual climate is LL jumping the gun?
All of this is worth mentioning and arguing about and trying to educate people about although we are dealing with a force majeure and a fait accompli and are -- to put it in the SL Herald French related to the GOM years ago -- phuqued. Yes, none of this matters, as the Lab has spoken and here we all are, from their lips to the Merciless God Autoreturn's ears. But to the extent that it might be MITIGATED and even REVERSED likely in some OTHER WORLD or even THIS ONE, it has to be spelled out.
It's highly unlikely it will ever be reversed, however, given the heavy cultural war going on now over the act of paying US 20 cents and getting an armchair commons, if not the fireplace rare, valued at 50 cents -- acts which helped sustain the livelihoods of designers and scripters and the livelihoods and virtual expenses of ordinary, unskilled people. "Lost Wages" of gambling does not work with the same dynamic.
Yes, those are the figures actually involved.
ANTI-GATCHA CULTURE WAR
The society of Second Life, such as it is, is a strange mixture of American Calvinists and Puritans (even BDSM queens come from this anti-commerce culture with a belief that gains not from hard work are illicit) along with American pioneer destructiveness; then European socialism and even communism; Asian socialism and even communism; Latin American authoritarianism and latifundista criminality. In concentrated form, sometimes the worst features of every culture are manifested when many different cultures come together and have no grounds for cooperation, as the platform itself sets up antagonisms in 100 ways.
I'm seeing an AWFUL LOT of people announcing snarkily that they "never" liked gatchas; that they are "predatory" and even "evil"; that they didn't understand them or never played them; that they played them but really didn't like them. And here's where I come in like Claude Raines and say, "Your winnings, sir." Because most people indeed play gatchas; played them a lot; spent a lot of money on them; liked them; resented them; but their claim now that they "seldom" played them or "never really liked them" are not credible. Pan around the houses in Bellisseria, and there's a gatcha in every one, maybe an old AF dress form (now retired and rare!) or the latest Bee Cauldron rug or knick-knack as well -- they are definitely there. You would be able to immediately land at the K-9 or Epiphany or Equal events on the first and second days without trouble if "nobody" bought them because gatcha machines were often the highlight of these events. Gatchas permeate every square inch of SL. There would not be nearly a million of them for sale on the MP if there were really all these people who "really didn't like them".
And to some extent, I'm no different in noting that in the last 4-5 months since Fantasy Faire ended, I've been "off" gatchas and switched to original art works. Read my Twitter feed to see my dismay at Epiphany consisting of top designers with...teacups stacked on a toilet (sigh) and a racoon by a garbage can. And that was the well-made stuff. To be fair, after this announcement, I went back to an empty Epiphany and played Black Sand's highly unique national table clutter gatcha from different countries which is very fine, and random matter, also very well made, although merely yet another cabinet of curiosities of which I have a hundred.
More on that another time. But I'm at least honest enough to say that only a few weeks ago, there was a who what gatcha at Japonica, I believe. I was fortunate to win the rare train on it and some lights right away. I have long been wanting to put an actual train at the train station I have with my Mt. Fear build in Atis, a tribute to a RL Japanese sacred place. This shiny and well lit and well made train -- typical classy item from who what -- was perfect, I tried it in my office first to see if it was too big, put it back in inventory and forget about it for a bit; the rest of the gatcha was not inspiring. That is the lanterns were very nice, but like a lot of gatchas, there were too many of them merely re-textured. The seats and benches looked like they might only go with the train or station; I already had a station and didn't want to replace it with this one which didn't have the look I wanted. So I was glad I won the rare I wanted early on, a few of the commons, and let's call it a day. And remember that while everybody complains about getting too many commons, some ignorant types even harass gatcha creators over their failure to get a rare, but in most cases, what this sales mechanism is about is a) livelihood for the creator b) cheap products for me to use in my business or home.
Then, a few days later, trying to finish this project so it wouldn't join the growing list of the unfinished, I couldn't find it in inventory, and I went crazy, looking all over it, and thinking I must have deleted it or suffered the usual loss of inventory you often do in SL. So now comes the gatcha crazy part of the story, which I had congratulated myself on avoiding just a few days before. So I went to Japonica and played this gatcha...and played...and won three rare stations I didn't need...and a bunch of lanterns that were of little resale value...and didn't get the train. It wasn't for sale on the MP, either -- of course I always check first before ever dropping a dime in a gatcha machine. Boy was I vexed. I now had one of those stories of spending like US $20 on a gatcha and not even having a lousy t-shirt, but dozens of glowy lanterns no one would buy even for 10L, I know how this works. I then recalled that the train came in a bundle, it had a physics part. I looked for bundles -- couldn't find it. I tried searching under "physics" and "train" -- nothing. Finally days later I stumbled on it under "collision" and mercifully put it out, with some of the many lanterns; I sold a few lanterns for a song on the MP; I put the rest in gift givers. Typical gatcha story, and this from me, who says I left gatchas month ago. So let's not be children here.
FORUMS BITCHES ARE NO DOGS IN THIS HUNT
Most of the commentary on the forums comes from people who DO NOT have significant businesses in SL, and in many cases are resentful that their old businesses that USED TO make money were wiped out by the change to mesh or other upheavals and therefore won't miss an opportunity to harass people rightfully complaining and gloat even viciously. While some might think it's a time to acknowledge that an offensive persona like Drayke was right when he began vociferously banging on everybody about the impending lootbox like doom in SL, but he didn't do it for good reasons. He's one of the failures, forced to retreat from his one-great furry RP sim; he's one of those Boys' Own types who likes war games and Roblox chases and easy building and thinks SL should be like Roblox and for him, like other sour personalities on the forums, his actual game is harassing people there who actually try to do something inworld and work around the many difficulties in SL. You sometimes wonder if characters like this are invented and deployed by the company itself, but he is so predictably stupid and obnoxious that I actually think he's authentic. I want to put more of this on the record when I get back to the forums, but for now, I want to study the effect on the economy.
MY LITTLE WORLD OF 60 SIMS
I can only judge from my own little world of sims in my little rentals, and yes, they are little, numbering 14 but spread out over more than 55, some of which is the land preserve with many mainly cheap Mainland rentals of as low as 25L for a little skybox or 50L for a cabin or 100L for a skybox or camping, with only one private island and one homestead. There are Mainland rentals and sales with dozens or hundreds of sims and of course private island dealership with thousands, and we seldom hear what they know and are thinking. SL is a closed society in that regard, like Russia or China or an American company town in the 1900s (or for that matter, in the 2000s, with an Amazon warehouse and trailer park for Nomads). There is no independent media that can withstand the threat of bans on the forums or inworld for investigation; no reporter can mention any ill-doer by name on the forums; chat cannot be copied and published on the forums or inworld; people fear reprisals and won't talk, etc. There's also no independent judiciary to settle resident-to-resident disputes or disputes with LL, which would yield reams of useful information for the economy, not even those few that used to be doled out before 2007 as to how many avatars spent Lindens in categories ranging from $1 to $5000. So I have only my own stories, anecdotes, and trying to read signals from the environment.
READING SIGNALS FROM THE ENVIRONMENT
o First and foremost, the fear and despair, often behind brave words about trying to adapt, that I am hearing from gatcha makers lets me know that this crisis is way more severe than the GOM and later the virtual currency exchange closures; the closing of the banks and stock exchanges; the change to mesh; Viewer 2.0; VAT; Copybot -- you name it, there have been numerous upheavals over the years with striking losses (sculpty and prim builders of the highest excellent driven out of the world completely not merely for losing business, but because of a campaign of shaming and goading led by Linden Lab at the time that made them the enemy). This hurts more, because there is a greater loss -- gatchas make for real-life livings for MORE PEOPLE than used to be the case in the days of Aimee Weber and her underwear which were about, as one very perceptive woman once said to me, "making geeky Linden women feel pretty" (and I could add, making MTF transgenders feel pretty as well) and Blue and his expensive jewelry or FlipperPA and his lovely life JennyFUR who sold...whatever it was that they sold. And eyeglasses, from one of the most vicious characters in SL, likely an alt, Ms. Samiam.
ABILITY OF NON-SKILLED TO PARTICIPATE IN ECONOMY, ESPECIALLY WOMEN
REAL ECONOMIC ACTIVITY BY REAL PEOPLE
o Even more relevantly, this policy hits on the livelihoods and cost-reductions of ordinary people without skills, who had a way to enter the economy with the ability to collect gatchas, flip them for those who were making sets, or collecting sets and sell them on the MP for a lot of money, especially in the days before the fatpacks by creators themselves. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to have ways for people to enter the economy by buying and selling. They need to be able to exit the economy as well by selling their furniture and having liquidity, as they also need land liquidity. Gatchas gave this to them. Gatchas spread the gospel of mesh that LL and Draxtor wanted to spread, with rather harsh force at the time, and I never heard them complaining all this time about "predatory machines," when gatchas enabled mesh items in every home and club indeed converted a reluctant population with prim and sculpty inventory.
There are more wives in America than you'd like to admit whose husbands do not like them using the joint credit card on a virtual world; who don't have their own discretionary credit card or source of income. There are more people than you can concede who have families or churches who criticize their involvement with what seems like a den of iniquity with its unwed sex, dancing, gambling, and shopping.
So gatchas enabled women especially to acquire assets and sell them. People might think I'm dramatic in my statement that was among the content deleted and serving as the basis for a 3-day ban, when I say gatchas kept women from sex work, but I am not kidding. I see tenants living in both very cheap and more expensive rentals who dole out their dancing Lindens into rentals by the hour, or day, not week. Some are in sex work and some are proud of this as it has given them economic and cultural freedom in countries that lack this around the world; some would rather do more creative things than place their avatar in an "AFK cafe", which might seem rather easy work, but is quite degrading. Many many more are in relationships with sugar daddies or doms who provide them income but for a price -- sex, and submission. The BDSM lifestyle in its hardcore (Gorean) and soft (fantasy) forms is very widespread in SL. If you are forced to get money for your "look," your home, your shopping, your socializing by staying with someone, male or female, who pays for it in exchange for your having sex or other forms of submission, how are you not really a sex worker?
And I see that when gatcha sales, land sales, even a little low-end creativity enable people to move out and have their own lives, lives of creativity and socializing.
How do I know this? Because I literally watch these cycles play out over and over! A tenant, especially women, especially those in poor countries and minorities, but not always, establish themselves solo in a rental, and have partners come on their terms; they work at jobs in SL or sell breedables or gatchas for their rent and clothing (which is way more expensive); then times are hard in RL and they move back in with the boyfriend, who has an enormous dungeon or fantasy RP sim or simply an island condo on those flat, ugly homesteads with beat-up sand cut up into 16 pieces. They disappear from my groups...then they wander back. A couple lives sometimes happily for years. Then often it is the male whose eyes wander and who cheats, sometimes by getting another one of my rentals without his original partner's knowledge. Breakups follow inevitably, creating two rentals. You would think that makes me if anything eager for such adverse events but it doesn't at all. For one, there aren't THAT many. For two, people who are happy with partners and friends simply last longer in rentals than those who aren't, so we should care about how people can stay happy. Sometimes I see my tenants' other rentals, in either cheaper or way more expensive operations of competitors, and it's normal for people often to keep multiple properties, multiple alts, multiple lives. Then they collide sometimes. Some people drift off to the latest Belli home...then drift back, they're out of prims.
People move up and down to bigger and smaller rentals, depending on RL and SL upheavals, but the common substrate to all this is: 1) their ability to buy and sell gatchas to decorate homes cheaply, dress avatars cheaply, and sell the leftovers, along with their breedables, to pay for more shopping or rent; 2) weekend sales 3) social networks of both partners and friends who can house the homeless and give gifts.
Forums mavens are snarkily telling people in a sense to "learn to code" -- "learn Blender" or "stop relying on gatchas" one particularly odious fellow named Da5id Weatherwax, himself an admitted business failure with the turn to mesh, claims that the "house" -- the creator -- set the odds on gatchas to make more than what their actual creation was worth (not true!) and that they've now been rightly exposed and should slink away.
Gatcha creators make anywhere from 300 euros to US $1000 on the average as I've been discovering by asking them (have you?), not the tens of thousands a month that non-gatcha creators like Apple Fall make or gadget makers like Casper who is a monopolist in the vendor and TP space. Nobody has disdain for them. Why disdain for a Polish designer who maybe pulls in $500 actually, after his tier, and given that events come every other month, can't expect to live only on this gig.
Those in a position to investigate this like Shamlet don't bother asking people what they make and seeking a wide field of replies. They deserve every penny and are rightly paid and can't expect to earn more outside of gatchas.
The Linden vision seldom looks at these "soft" parts of the economy and tends to look more at hard forms of electronic taxation at the LindEx or Marketplace, and has always seen the top creators, the most skilled who are both their peers and even their contractors and sometimes even their own employees -- the people I dubbed the "Feted Inner Core" or "FIC" -- as the drivers of the economy. Lelutka with $5000 mesh bodies and Contraption with $5000 packs or Hisa or Cain Maven with $3000 or even $12,999 homes will carry the economy in this view as the top tier, most extensive creators whose wares people, even poor people, are willing to buy, paying for it by running up credit cards or working as dancers or bouncers in the virtual economy.
The next tier of somewhat less expensive houses and avatar accessories may or may not rely on gatcha, but most have the extensive businesses that will enable them to do so. It's more the mid-level and low-tier of merchants to made gatchas out of full-perm models on the MP, or even their own mesh, but who counted on legions of people buying a lot of little cats or ottomans or candles in cages for 50L in the hopes that the rare skybox or adult bed would also be acquired. And that's fine. That's the economy. The economy exists this way with a funny thing called "gatchas" like a gumball machine on steroids because of OTHER dislocations and difficulties too numerous to mention, but should be highlighted:
o purchase of SLexchange from a resident, and introduction of 10% tax;
o the end of the GOM, then later the closure of all third-party currencies;
o introduction of point-to-point teleportation and the killing of telehubs, which meant lucrative malls around them;
o increase in cash-out fees;
o increase in prims, and some lowering of tier, but not more over time, and the promise of cheaper sims that yes indeed was implied by Lindens in office hours was in fact a more expensive world with the move to the cloud, making the company feel squeezed and needing to cut other costs
o breakdown of search/places without repair for 9 months, and constant malfunctions on the Marketplace.
AN ASIDE ON TELEHUBS
I was a big supporter of telehubs because the provided a democratization of an artisans' economy fiercely held by oldbies in remote sims far from the growing green tip of the world when SL was expanded weekly with new full-sim auctions. While the rent was steep, anyone willing to pay it could enter business, like me, a newcomer with a tiny rentals and sales operation. I didn't have to try to curry favour with the old landowner and artisan class to get a corner on their RP sim or colour-sim store to break into the market.
If we still had telehubs today, we'd all be better off as having a place where people could sell breedables and yes, gatchas, still legal to re-sell, in places to rent, not own, and also to socialize. You can have point-to-point and still put telehubs at the 128/128/0 of the sim, or another location, and set the landing there. I urged Philip at the time to keep the settings and even re-set them out of water and trees to Linden infohubs. It's a trivial matter of setting the same discs you would yourself on a private island for the landing point. You could have both, in many, many cases. Look at the map. But instead of havens for commerce that could help the current situation, we have a Moles milkbar in Brownlee with cobwebs all over it.
The resident-run infohubs (14 or so) cannot allow sales on the areas, but in my case, I kept the mall next to it that I had purchased from Anshe for $7.5/m instead of the $20 or more on the auctions (telehub adjacent land was the old Blake Sea of SL) when she got early warning of p2p and began to sell off her land. Today, it is still filled with merchants, some of whom have been there more than 10 or more years. There's a few spots to rent, so come sell your gatchas. I have another mall across the river which also was historically valuable as adjacent telehub land, and that mall is buy with tenants and has just one spot -- other malls I dumped, as there aren't need for them in a world where many moved to the MP. But you know, people still like to shop inworld at actual malls with an ambience and hangouts. Merchant events also replaced malls, but you can't get into them in the first days, they are laggy and crowded, and you are pressured to leave. Not so on an old fashioned mall, although I can't exaggerate their importance. They have steadily waned over the years; they will contine to do so.
GATCHA RE-SELLERS PAY FOR SL AND RL EXPENSES AND THERE ARE WAY MORE OF THEM THAT DESIGNERS DUMPING SIMS NOW
o One tenant on a fairly expensive large rental, who had left when she got COVID and her husband lost some income (a story I saw repeated over and over throughout the last year of the pandemic), and who struggled with COVID for months (before the vaccine) was able to come back and re-start her virtual life, happily hired a landscaper again and such but then suddenly refunded, because of the gatcha announcement. She doesn't make gatchas or any content and didn't have a shop inworld. But her MP shop was paying all her expenses in SL and she couldn't keep up a large rental. She took her tier, which gives a discount in my rentals, to the Linden Homes, so score one for Patch Linden. The US $32 I lose and the $11.99 he gains with a premium account were not frequent occurrences before now for the reasons I have often said, that people come and go from Linden homes, where they are not allowed search, sales, or more prims, unlike my rentals.
But now I don't know.
I can totally see that for some people, a Linden home and an MP store will carry them through this, make them feel secure and loved, especially with all the frenzy of resident and Mole activity in Bellisseria, both as to new content and socializing and that's fine -- we have to advocate for anything that adds stability to SL and to the Lindens' economy, if not to ours, or if not to some of us, in some sectors.
I am TOTALLY aware that group rentals and group land living on the Mainland is in the distinct minority in SL; out of some 5000 sims, 2500 of which are Linden Land (roads, parks, and abandoned!), let's say there are perhaps 33% or 825 of which have some form of active life on them, if nothing else, in the form of couples and friends living private lives, or people driving or breeding animals. Compare and contrast with 2000 or more Bellisseria homes, and perhaps 500 old Linden homes, where there is a great deal of life and socializing, which then means shopping for furniture and accessories. Old Mainlanders make do with prims and sculpties for years. The merchants' community of Mieville, which I am in, has many amateur sellers like me, using sculpties or mesh models, or homely mesh builders who are completely happy because they are independent of the larger crazy world of high expense, high land impact -- and gatchas. Most Mieville merchants at the seasonal fairs don't sell their own made gatchas; they sell used ones. I'm one of the big re-sellers there, but the sales there merely offset things like texture uploads, they can't pay for tier; I have to price them low or they won't sell. There are people in Mieville still in the suits in which Philip Rosedale gave birth to them; others have very complex steampunk wares and builds but outside the mainstream of the Contraption and Hideki type creators. This is why I love them. I actually think they are well positioned not to be harmed too badly by the gatchapolypse or the "Gatcha Eclipse" as one merchant calls it, but still, there are losses, like me not handing Perryn 200 gatchas free to re-sell for charity, as I will need to sell them now for tier myself if rentals decline.
Philip admitted to me long ago that the telehub sims had the most revenue on them and I would say that benefited many in a mid-and-lower merchant class. The sims with the most revenue today are owned or temporarily rented merchant events sims which benefit a few in the high merchant class. All classes are need in SL and there needs to be a balance.
MOVE TO BREEDABLES
o I see some tenants even who have breedable yards tiering down to the 25L rooms or skyboxes, and this may be unrelated to gatcha but tied to another issue of RL, which is that unemployment, which they keep staving off in the US, is waning and coming to an end; so are rent forgiveness programs. Fasten your seatbelts.
o Yet I see other tenants expanding and ordering more rentals. I have no idea why, as I don't pry into their lives. My anecdotes here are anonymous and based only on what people volunteer to me -- I can't go and poll them effectively, although I do have some polls at the Moth Temple and Ross Infohub, and I can't do focus groups, although I once did them years ago as I contemplated whether to branch out with more newbie communities and malls. I did. Then years later they all were closed, one by one.
GATCHAS ENABLED -- AND STILL WILL -- LOW BUSINESS COSTS AND LOW CONSUMER COSTS
o Yesterday I had every landlord's dream, ,in part due to the gatchapolypse, as I sort my inventory and try to unload my rares on a Marketplace that jumped thousands over night and is heading toward the BILLION mark. Note: the category "gachas" on the Second Life Marketplace has climbed in the last few days in number from 901,903 to 902,560 to 903,806 this evening. Gacha machines will be illegal after 8/31, yet resales will not.
I was motivated to start filling every fallow lot that I used to leave as either my own personal sandbox or a community hangout or just stock for requests for more prim, as they can be used anywhere from anywhere in a group. I put up two more skyboxes in Grote, both with e.marie gatcha rares that I won on 50L or 75L pulls. So that's a mere 20 cents or so expenditure for me in this business, on land of 512 or 1024 which I will ask 100L or 150L which, combined with other larger lots and higher prices on that sim, might cover the tier of that sim or might not, given vacancy rates.
Imagine my surprise when within minutes of putting this lot into even broken search/places (less broken on Firestorm), one lot rented out to someone who loved the gatcha skybox (thanks, e.marie!). e.marie, whom I don't know, and who doesn't make very many gatchas or homes from what I gather, and specializes more in clothing and makeup, just made my day and the day of a resident who got a cheap home, possibly out of a need to move from a more expensive one.
BREEDABLES AND MORE BREEDABLES ARE THE NEW "PLASTICS"
o As I flew around the neighbourhood, I met a new neighbour, she was putting up a breedables store briskly and shrewdly, commenting that this was the area to go into now that gatchas were dead. Funny, as gatcha resales are allowed; breedables are teetering on acceptance now, that may change, given the Lindens' announcements.
o A neighbour who had a cat store bought land that I had sold to someone last week when long-time tenants of a large rental couldn't keep paying and moved to a nearby cheaper rental. I decided anything empty that isn't interrupting a whole community, that is on the edges, has to be put to sale in these times. It's funny how the person who bought from me, convincing me to come down in price on the strength of her advertising of herself as a good neighbour, with 100 cats, but not at that location (lol), who did persuade me as good neighbours are worth their weight in gold!, then decided, because an unscrupulous homestead agent dumped her out of her rental with no notice because he couldn't pay his bills and lost his sim, that she should buy mainland, abandoned, or cheap. Good move! So she did, but then she needed every bit of tier, and put her land back on the market, where the cat lady didn't immediately buy it to expand, as she had not bought it from me for weeks, but a land baron came in the interrim, bought and held, until the cat lady did buy it, right after the gatcha policy announcement, probably paid more than I charged, not sure as the map didn't update again.
But thank God for land barons, those "just-in-time" people who both hold tier and keep land available until you can buy it AND liquidate your land even at rock bottom prices so you get something so that you don't have to abandon it for nothing.
IS ABANDONED LAND DISAPPEARING?
o Speaking of abandoned land. I've been noticing another phenomenon that is increasing and continuing -- abandoned land disappearing, as people buy it up. Where for 10 or more years in many areas I had huge empty fields all around me, especially mountains, now I have neighbours breathing down my neck, putting in orbs that send me back home, and returning encroaching trees that were unmolested for a decade because Lindens don't bother with abandoned land. So a combination of Linden auctions -- which have been very steady and perhaps even aggressive in lessening their own abandoned land tier load -- are creeping up on multiple sims -- I count 5 already and haven't looked everywhere, there may be more. It means I will have to abandon and move to more remote areas to get some peace I suppose.
Abandoned land is another way that the unskilled person unable to create content or follow the vicissitudes of the gatcha market which is time-consuming can participate in the economy -- buying land through tickets to LL where it costs $1/m per claim, or on the auction, where it can be as low as 0.5/m, and flipping it. LL's auction is now all abandoned land or land seized by the company if a customer was in arrears.
So there is MUCH LESS abandoned land than there was in the past (see Tyche's surveys or my own anecdotal experience), and this comes as thousands of people realize they can't keep paying tier on their islands, and might buy Mainland -- but now there is less of it.
COMPANY MESSAGE DELIVERED VIA PATCH LINDEN
o I have been putting land to sale that isn't rented where it can be for months because I just feel SL isn't stable. The new VP of Engineering is not hired. The new owners haven't really made any significant statements; before they could manage a "big idea" chat much less a roadmap, they have spoken in the form of a gatcha machine ban (!), which they had Patch Linden, VP of Programs deliver, although the CEO could have delivered it or even someone lower down, in charge of, say, the Marketplace. I feel in my bones that Patch himself did not initiate or push for this change, but was sent out to tell the masses and take the heat, like Tigger in the old Sims Online, crushed between game overlords far less friendly than the Lindens, and a user base larger and often more vicious, if that is possible, than the SL user base. Because he's the public face of this devastating decision announcement, signing the blog announcement and making updates, my parody gatcha machines available at my store are called "Patcha" machines and have ears. Polar bear ears actually, signifying the coming economic chill. This was not my idea, interestingly, but the idea of someone standing to lose a lot from the policy, who doesn't want credit.
That sort of community relations figure we are all familiar with in games or worlds over the decades, ground between user anger and platform owner indifference, we're also familiar with them in milder forms at Catholic Confraternity camp outings and retreats and Club Med G.O.s and various other office picnic organizers and tenant organization movie evenings. Somebody has to officiously "organize the fun," and somebody has to absorb the flak who is trusted by the user base. Somebody in my RL housing complex has to come out and say even children have to wear masks on the crowded plaza and be called names by 4,000 people although it was not their decision.
Why do I think Patch did not initiate or endorse this, but of course will do the owners' bidding? Maybe because to think otherwise would make all of this worse to bear, but because he is not stupid. He knows that every single Bellisseria home has a gatcha if not 50. I cammed around my areas of Belli and saw everything from the latest Why Not and Bee Designs house and garden gatchas to ancient Apple Fall dress forms. Apple Fall, with its low-cost but high-brow furniture, can make poor people feel like they live on Martha Vineyard's Island. Reka (Nutmeg) can less, but still a great deal of that, especially for the "creative intelligentsia" who like to imagine lives of faux poverty in dachas with cracking leather couches and old ballet slippers hung on the wall, possibly because Nutmeg is dialing in from Russia and has to struggle more to make a living. Neither relies much on gatchas (Nutmeg more so) but can likely carry the weight after 8/31.
If I were a Linden, I would quit over this astoundingly cruel impoverishment of the user base absent any actual law or legal notice from any authority, West or East. But then, I'm not a Linden...
BELLISSERIA IS NOT KEPT AFLOAT BY GATCHAS AND WILL SURVIVE
It's not just about decorating Bellisseria with gatchas. Patch surely knows, as someone who was a content creator and store owner himself before 2007, what goes into these little businesses, how hard the work is, how long the hours, and close the margins. I do think he has justified this to himself with two factors of the virtual life he seems in front of him -- different than the virtual life I see in front of me:
o breedables are excepted, and given the number of breedables overloading Bellisseria despite the two-pet only rule like China on children now, the businesses that sell them can carry SL
o avatars and mesh bodies and accessories are only in part sold via gatchas and those creators will do fine; and most of the middle class of Bellisseria who can afford a premium account (and that would not be somebody in Turkey where it is impossible even to buy the account) will be fine buying $2500 or $5000 fatpacks that replace gatchas. The "consumer basket" for Bellisseria might be US $11.99 plus another US $50 in Linden dollars for content, or $62 per month, tolerable for more Americans, although I see this as about 3 days of groceries and don't take it casually myself. For someone in Russia, that's 10% of their monthly income, not 3% as for Americans of the lower class still hooked up to the Internet and still with disposable time.
I imagine Patch was the one who was able to intervene to give 60 days for real enforcement, i.e. with first-time offenders after 8/31 essentially given another month to clean up their act, and he is likely now intervening for breedables, which I personally view as no different than the game of chance of gatchas. The technicality of buying just the mutt and his food, or just the rod and its bait, and then claiming that the rare that comes down the pike later isn't gambling is one I accept without scorn because I want any form of this to be tolerated, and would have preferred an adversarial approach to California gambling laws, or threatened Belgian lock-out of SL (or whatever that real story is, which we don't know) because I see there is no actual news of any actual move against LL, let alone ruling on lootboxes. Again, Apple and Google won their cases, and LL is more like them than EA.com, which suffered a fine.
And it's in that sense that I wish he were more a voice pushing against the owners' decision and bringing that experience to bear. I have no idea whether the "troika," which consists of Patch, Grumpity and I think the Tilia VP of Engineering now in the absence of Oz, or possibly another marketing Linden, gets to really sit in the counsels of the board and the owners. They used to in the old days; not sure now.
MAINLAND IS KEPT AFLOAT BY GATCHAS AND WILL SUFFER
o Yet I see a different world, not populated by avatars in Lelutka heads with $1500 furniture sets from Fameshed. I see people still putting out Linden Library furniture, if you can believe it. People putting out furniture from makers I've never heard of selling to Brazilians, Portuguese and Hispanic on the one hand or Southeast Asia or Eurasia on the other, very flat and low prim. I see acres of 30L or 35L or 60L weekends sales items from Simply Shelby or Velvet Whip or Kraftwork, the same items I buy because that's what people like and some of it is very good. Not everybody can have Circa and Loft & Aria. In this world, there are few premium accounts, partly due to the difficulty of getting credit cards in some countries or using them for SL or because of fear of recurring costs. In this world, a rental that costs on 50 cents or one US dollar a month may be cut when there is a pandemic and job loss, because everything is cut and this is something one can cut. Yet by the same token, there might be more or those 50 centers or even increase to US $5 a month because people do pay for entertainment more in times of trouble.
In a world where refunding from a 150L a week rental can be a sign of distress as much as paying for one, how to read the signals? You can't.
WHY ARE PROFESSIONAL AND EXPERIENCED GATCHA RE-SELLERS AND YARD SALE AGENTS SO WORRIED WHEN THEY SHOULD BE HAPPY?
o Now let's come to the last topic, which puzzles me but I can only report on it. I would have thought, even with the glut of gatchas, even with me, a great student of gatchas with my Tofalar build and my own purchases and sales, able to sell them now and then, there would be MORE inworld yard sales. I'm certainly adding a free one for my tenants in addition to the rent-free Refugio Free Market. But I do know their value is trending towards nil, as I literally cannot give them away, and have not been able to for years. I have group gift givers, givers at the land preserve, and a VIP group where you can get 4 free gatchas a month, and I cannot give them all away as planned. It's not just about the new and the fresh. It's that everybody has too many and cannot put them all out. If there are a billion gatchas on the MP, and probably three times as much on the sims (I estimate my inventory of now 185,000 items is 45% gatchas), and only 25,000 sims, well, do the math. There aren't people to take the gatchas and put them on sims -- there aren't enough prims.
o One tenant is worried about her store rented from me but is holding for now, but she indicated she thought Epic, the largest gatcha yardsale agent, was in a panic. This may be sheer conjecture. I have no idea as I'm not at Epic any more. But the reason I'm not at Epic any more is very basic: I couldn't sell enough gatchas to pay their steep rent. With all my groups, advertising, venues, and visibility, I couldn't do better? No, and not even in my own stores. There are people who can afford to keep their non-productive Epic stalls so that they can feel they are "playing store" credibly and because they live in hope if they can't afford it. But there is turnover and now there really may be a move out the door.
If yard sale agents are worried due to the glut on the market, we all have to be worried
The appearance of people making new breedable stores and extending old stores and asking if I can stand 50 horses on a rental (I can't, but maybe I will have to reconsider) means that's where the stampede is going of people who need to stay in the economy and sell little things
What about my own breedables, too many cats? I've put a fair number of them in inventory, which I never used to do, or sent them to the Menagerie. Who can afford $1600L to feed their cats for a month? Not me. I hardly ever bother to sell them, however, I think their worth in K dollars from having been sent to the Menagerie is probably greater than the occasional 400L sale on the MP?
o "What Residents Are Buying" on the MP is useful to watch although I think it's tilted. Individual gatcha sales don't reflect there; only full packs. You watch an endless parade of Lelutka heads and Cyber Boots and Tuff boat rezzers going by, but when you yourself buy a $199 full perm model, you can't see it on the line-up. Or any of them, ever, despite clearly a lot of sales of such items.
o I have seen a few of my rares sell on the MP, but it is too early to tell whether more of them will, or that was a fluke. Generally, I sell a few items a week for only 20L to 40L, hardly any income at all. I spent a little time putting up more items, and re-stocking stores, but honestly, I do not feel this is time well spent now. I think selling land and sprucing up rentals is more the way to go, but this may convert even by next week into making decisions about what gets abandoned.
THE VALUE OF THE LINDEN TUMBLES
o the LindEx, even while heavily controlled by Lindens, reveals the story now, too. You cannot sell Lindens for 240 as you could last week and months before them, keeping the value at US $4 per 1000L. You'll have to sell at 241 or actually even 242 unless you have days to wait. Currently there is 73 million Lindens waiting to get out the door on the exchange. Those are people that sold land, or sold content which they may not sell again with this new policy, or obtained Lindens from something, and now want to cash out while the going is good, as next week, it will be at 242 or 243. Watch that space. Forums ignoramuses argue that the Linden has "always" been this rate or "stays stable" but look at the 3 month chart. It doesn't. Far from it. And part of that stability comes from someone like me willing to lose one dollar as they pay tier, at least today. That adds up.
I was surprised how many complaints I heard from homestead renters and island renters who spend more on rentals how much the new fees and lesser cashout affected their tier, in their perception.
SOFT LAND SALES
o Another signal I see is that land isn't selling. Waterfront was able to sell for $5/m or $3/m; now 1 isn't enough. A big RP guy who bought most of the sim where I am and wants to edge me out, and already bought out a neighbour, thought he was offering me the princely sim of $3/m as "three times the going price" for flat meadow interior mainland. It used to be $5 if the view wasn't spoiled. When my land has sold, it's been for $5 on very good waterfront; or $3 for very good Mainland, but $0.3 for everything else. The time was, if you put out land for 0.3/meter a land bot or a real person would instantly buy it. Now, you wait days.
NON-GATCHA SALES
o another signal is that my little amateur creations have sold more than usual, but that's merely because I issued more of them, and just happened to get noticed on social media; inworld advertising and being noticed on the MP is awful, as search is broken and the MP has problems, too. I look at my store selling my own creators or gatchas as merely off-setting the cost of texture uploads, content, and tier. And not by much! "Learn to code," the tech bros tell you if your life as a waitress or even school teacher does not give you income to live on. The equivalent of that is the forums bro who shows up to tell us that we should make mesh and sell content or if we are learning after our businesses based in sculpties failed, we should perform live music or make RL art in the interrim. I personally don't think creating MORE is the way out of this crisis and I am worried how this will play out for those brave fillers of 30L Saturday sales who will now scramble even more crazily to mark down and step up in their skills or numbers of releases.
I have absolutely no illusions that I will sell more gatchas now and more non-transferable creations I make with models why? Because far more skilled people who have sold non-transferable original mesh content mainly in gatchas as that's where the money and the people were are worried, and do not think that selling sets will cut it.
Dozens of merchants I've talked to say they do not sell as many sets at all as they do gatchas, which make up their living. So we are about to see a very hollowed-out world, where top creators who do sell sets or individual items on no-transfer will go on succeeding and even have more success with no cheap gatcha competition now. Their customers will not be able to afford their wares, they will come down on their prices at weekend sales, but these are already so overstuffed, along with every other day of the week, that this is not a valid outlet waiting to save people now at all.
Droves of middle tier and small tier creators will leave SL or significantly decrease economic activity that will be a real shock to the economy and a long one. Those speaking airily of our ability to bounce back each time the Lindens throw a debilitating crisis at us like this, or "our ability to be masochists" as Mitch Kapor, former board chair, aptly put it are in deep illusion. The world will continue to contract, as it has from its peak in 2007.
EXIT TO OTHER WORLDS?
o An aspect of all this always threatened at each type of crisis is that people will go to other worlds. As there aren't very many viable ones, and Open Sim and Inworldz were visible failures, along with LL's own experiment, Sansara, this seemed pretty fake. Now it isn't so fake. I go by what I see very smart entrepreneurial people doing. One friend used to sell expensive compete gatcha sets on the MP for prices like $50,000 and did very well; he ran a RP community that despite a very good run and Fantasy Faire attention and such, he decided to close while the memories were still good; he began learning Blender to go produce content for Sinespace, the world of Adam Bisby, a former fortunate son of Philip Rosedale's and land baron, which I have seen and can say does have promise and looks good, although does not have many people. Then he swerved off to become avidly involved in Upland as a first mover and pioneer. I don't understand Upland, which seems like glorified domain squatting to me; it has no world you can go to yet, and it relates to bitcoin which I don't believe in. Still, listening to the videos associated with it I can see where it will be as compelling as EVE Online for some people and have transactions in the six figures. Decentraland, I have no idea about and don't wish to find out, but someone will.
o While bemoaning her now ruined income and fearful of the future, one creator said to me interestingly that she was thinking in fact of moving to making 3D content for Turboquid where game developers buy content. Why stay in SL which is aging and outdated and waste my talents? Why suffer these upheavals? I could add that many content creators could be going to Shutterstock or Pond5, where my son and his wife makes a living with photography and videos far more interesting to him than SL once was -- as they take out the least percent of any such platform provider. Well, yeah. SL might seem quaint with fairy-hugs and unicorn-kisses and little mushrooms you make for the next Arcade until they don't cut it any more. The social aspect of groups and customers and sales might be exhilarating, the grind of more packaging and CS sure won't be. One grate thing about gatcha machines is the ease of packing and vending that no Caspar vendor really brings to you with the same uptake.
o Casper Vendor, the monopolist, who put my name as a "sample griefer" in every TP of his sold, so that to this day, I still find stores where the 2nd floors are banned to me, won't suffer as he did not sponsor merchant events as such, or gatcha machines as such and will now be in more demand as those gatcha makers have to stuff more of his vendors with things to sell otherwise.
o Read the decisions -- or lack of them, in fact -- on what merchants in the Last Gatcha Sales advertised on SeraphimSL will do after 8/31. Some say "repurposed/repackaged," i.e. sold in packs on no-transfer, or in singles, not clear; some says "undecided"; a few say "retired". I think none of them can afford to decide this month when they can still get sales! So they won't tell you. I now have 50 Nomad gatchas for 20L. What will I do with them? Some of the rares I will use to decorate; perhaps something can be sold, but I actually doubt it even tho Nomad has very high quality items and is one of my favourites. I don't want to burn $100 to see if ionic, who is almost entirely made up of gatchas, and expensive ones with hard-to-get rares, has said anything indicative.Anyone?
I didn't see anything on Arcade's web site or social media and naturally wondered what their policy was on all this, which was going to ruin them. I still boycott the Arcade in protest against 100L gatchas and the failure to add player rewards to compensate all those empty pulls free of rares. Leave it to Daniel Voyager, a court reporter and anti-fax conspirator as I just found out, more's the pity, to find out the news, however because he thought to look on their Facebook page. Odd they couldn't post this on their web page;
On Tuesday 3rd August the Arcade team announced on their official Facebook page that the upcoming September 2021 in Second Life will be cancelled due to the recent Linden Lab news about banning gache at the end of August 2021. The Arcade team have said they will pause operations now to re-imagine the whole event and the event will return back even stronger in the near future. Yay!
Yay, nothing. They are toast. They are just another merchant's event with sets and fatpacks in the new dispensation -- and their former customers will not have the cash to pay them expensive booth fees. Re-imagine -- nothing. Their customers, who made the event -- the merchants -- are imagining themselves out of SL in some cases, or in a quandary about boxing up merchandise or retiring it or repurposing it. What I think Emilio doesn't want to admit is that he is a middleman between those creators and us, and part of the reason their gatcha pulls up was to pay him for booths. These sponsors pay more to be at the landing and in the view:
They're going to pay him now again when they need every penny and actually need to draw customers into their stores more now? Where their main stock is now on no-transfer. Arcade was invitation-only, so the booth fee and terms are not made public. Interestingly, as I just found out from reading their FAQs, they have a certain formula for the chance for rares that apparently all vendors using their machines must accept, which I suppose makes it more predictable. As you can tell, there is no love lost between me and Arcade, as I have been a long-time critic and am now banned from their event. They really began gatchas in 2012 at Christmas when the 25L gatchas were a nice Christmas decoration and stocking gift and intended to remain such, but then grew to a mammoth event with multiple cam sims and 100L gatchas as I've blogged repeatedly. I'm very sorry to see creators' gatchas go but not sorry to see the middlemen go, especially this one. This is a very underreported part of SL and very secret and it is very hard to find out what people pay. I know from having been in just a few events at the lower end of the spectrum that $1000 or $2000 was the norm for those lesser-knowns, and that $5000 or more must be what they pay at the top. But you tell me. We are about to find out just how much longer they can live, especially when, as with independent artists who make their own records, merchants may band together to make their own events as ionic once did with Chapter Four. Sure, some event organizers ARE the merchant companies. But not all. BellaTech with her sky-defacing ugly giant domes damaging the view is not creating content, only blight containers for others to put their content in rentals.
I'm almost at 10,000 words now, with only 3 days of signals to monitor and report and 27 more to get through (yes, notice that LL didn't really give people even a full 30 days).
So finally:
GRIEFING AND CRIME
o What happens when poor people, which is a lot of people in SL because if they were RL designers of real merit, they'd work for Disney or Facebook, not on a laggy Linden sim, or they'd shop at least at Wal-mart! (if they had such a thing in their countries). They do with less. They become more innovative. They think of garage sales or appliance repairs or Tupperware parties or things like the okaziya system in Russia or sex work. But then they sometimes turn to crime:
o Copybotting -- that has been put at bay, although has hardly disappeared and is still a real problem for some people. The permissions system help, they are a deterrent, but LL can't police all the IP theft especially if not inworld as such using an exploit of world mechanics.
o Extortion -- cartels, mafias, threats, violence appear to make people sell things they don't want to sell or pay "protection money" to be free of at least all the other mafias except that one -- and not for long;
o Extortion disguised as high event or booth fees;
o Various unscrupulous practices related to merchants -- putting them in disadvantageous positions, low on sales lists, etc.;
o Catfishing -- luring of lonely people into giving their account information and steal of content and identity;
o Possibly RL crime like drug sales although I don't think this has had significant presence in SL. I've seen only a few actual outright drug sales put on the MP and not for long.
o Griefing - I'm not a believer in the hydraulic concept that some have regarding young men's energy, that if they are put to "creativity" they will destroy less. Doesn't work, and not will have every reason not to work more.
o Bellisseria house trading -- socializing and presence will mean even more to establish commerce circles if the era of big events is forced to end or diminish, and I believe it will. I don't need to go to a laggy sim to buy a $750 furniture set; I can buy it at that creator's store. The event was often about the gatcha machines, which were ONLY present there, and creator's deep discounts, which they can't justify any more. So my theory is that people will use the hawala as the Arabic countries call it or okaziya as Russians dub it to transfer property and money. I get a high value Belli house on waterfront with a clear view or a rare in the newest releases; I set it to a group. You pay me money in person on another sim, and you move into that house and live in it, setting to the group. A rental, without a rental box. This already goes on, although I actually think, it's not very widespread.
o Will there be secret gatcha pulls in the sky at midnight? No, because Lindens can easily see scripts being used and could simply deprecate all gatcha scripts at root on the asset server if they really want to be thorough about this, as they have deprecated various types of griefing scripts or animations. I just think there will be less public activity, more insider deals, more corruption as a result of this, not as if it didn't exist before!
If anything, the main feature of Bellisseria I see these days unadvertised or admitted by the Moles and Lindens are EMPTY HOUSES. With people's names on them. Empty of furniture. Not seized by Linden Lab for weeks. And I am guilty of empty Belli too, keeping now two empty houses in the anticipation of dumping them for tier I'll need or a move to "magic" Belli which I'm less inspired to make now after my ban.
Why? Why this slumlord activity now mercifully outlawed in NYC? Keeping valuable property empty. Well, because people's eyes are bigger than their stomachs. They want, but don't have time to decorate. Sure, I enjoy sitting in my empty Belli house, it's very peaceful. But I don't think that's the reason! These are mainly houses in the interior with nothing special around them, so I suspect that people just got them merely to keep getting "the new and shiny" but don't want to spend now even on gatchas to furnish. I suspect there are more reasons I don't know about. There will be some shrinkage especially of these empty extra houses in Belli but most will instinctively do what my tenant did who took her tier out of my group and gave it to Patch for security. I'm only one more rentals agent likely to be so impacted by this downturn I could dump land. I don't flip land and don't sell my rental land as they are mainly in contiguous communities. I will be forced if it is really bad to take some entire group and community and sell it as a group, as Campbell Coast's owner Bjoyful did even before this devastating announcement, due to serious health conditions. The new owner, a land baron back in SL after a hiatus is mainly known for land chopping and holding back land that can fill with signs and offering it for sale to new buyers of the larger parcels, but no matter. I actually think he won't chop Campbell. I also don't think the owner got what it was worth, which is precious: artists who joined together in a community to sell works, and tenants who like the ambience.
There's no question that when economies suffer, so do communities, the "loose ties" that bind SL graciously, the comraderie of trading in groups fed by the influx of fresh content. It's more than likely some gatcha sets once in demand will sink into the abyss of inventories as nobody remembers them or sees them in the glut on the market. I stared at a gatcha couch in my rentals last night made by someone who while in the people list, turned up two abandoned lands in her picks for home and store, and had no MP presence. We'll see more of that, and I want to mark them passing.
"No, Gachas aren't lootboxes, not at all"
I do disagree, but could you explain what makes them different?
Posted by: Adeon Writer | 08/10/2021 at 04:12 PM
@Adeon Writer I have you blocked inworld because you're an asshole on the forums
No, I'm not going to explain again what I repeated at least three times in the 150 page thread. You can go look there, and if you can't be arsed to do so, go chase your tail.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 08/11/2021 at 10:02 PM
Yikes. Sorry if I ever insulted you. Didn't intend.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | 08/15/2021 at 02:24 PM
That's exactly what's wrong with you, Adeon. You're an idiot. You don't change, and keep acting like an asshole, because you think the "problem" is that you "insulted" me and I was somehow "hurt" or "upset" about being "insulted". You can only see it in those terms, which merely maintains your own sense of superiority, and your contempt for others. It shines through. You argue and argue just to get attention and be contrarian -- and again, you're an ass. I have you blocked on Twitter and inworld for good reason -- you're an annoyance, always pretending you're having an interesting argument when in fact you're just being an asshole to goad other people, the end. You don't need to be on my blog. I ban people under a specific policy: if they incite damages against me in RL or SL, or if they become chronic annoyances.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | 08/16/2021 at 11:37 PM
I emailed Adam Frisby at Sinespace, and I asked him a few questions. Here is his reply.
Hi Frankie,
Unfortunately, I have to reply that we have similar controls on gacha's - we believe the regulatory environment no longer permits those kinds of products to be sold in virtual worlds where there is a chance that the user may "cash out" the value.
We do operate a split currency system which allows us some more latitude - our non-premium currency, 'silver' can be used for gaches, gambling and other activities, provided that no mechanism is instituted to allow users to exchange these for any 'real' currency or products; however we have to restrict these from sale in our 'gold' currency due to legislative requirements, and the fact we do not hold a gaming (gambling) license in any territory.
Camping is perfectly fine however, and no - VR goggles are not required (we generally optimise more for non-VR users). Sinespace is not part of OpenSim, while I was involved in OpenSim heavily, the Sinespace platform is a new architecture entirely; resultingly that does also mean that scripts unfortunately cannot be transferred at this time.
Hope that helps,
Regards,
Adam
Posted by: Frankie Antonioni | 09/06/2021 at 11:07 AM