Re-evaluate land costs and more
tracked
Chanticleer Evergarden
As its known that most users in second life cannot afford land. Premium users, free users, new users, old users.
It was told years ago the cost of land, sims, homesteads, would come down by being hosted on the Amazon Cloud Service.
It can cost around three hundred US dollars per month to 'own' your own sim in second life. This is not a small cost whatsoever.
Some other virtual platforms (Roblox specifically) operates almost like second life with it's land building but the difference is it's cost and customization. It's free and very customizable, although chunky.
I feel like owning a private place for you to go to is wonderful, or even somewhere to open your own shop or more. I feel like making it more affordable would be even better to bring more income and users to SL, as well as new locations. A lot of places I used to go to have closed down due to the cost of running or even renting a sim.
I feel that cutting the costs by either half or even 25% might be helpful in bringing in new locations with better affordability. (Math might not be correct or accurate.) (The price was times 25% so it'd be a reduction)
Type: Full Region
Parcel Size (m²) 65,536
Price: $349 (25% cut would make this $87.25) (New price 261.75)
Maintenance Fee (monthly): $209 (25% cut would make this $52.25) (New price 156.75)
Skill Gaming Region
Parcel Size (m²) 65,536
Price: $600 (25% cut would make this $150) (New price $450)
Maintenance Fee (monthly): $345 (25% cut would make this $86.25) (New price 258.75)
Homestead Region
Parcel Size (m²) 65,536
Price: $149 (25% cut would make this $37.25) (New price 111.75)
Maintenance Fee (monthly): $109 (25% cut would make this $27.25) (New price 81.75)
Please forgive me if the math's wrong. It isn't one of my best skills.
But the point remains that things just aren't affordable. So if we do the percentages correctly, it can be more affordable to users and friendlier for wallets overall.
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Anne Forbes
Cloud billing is usage‑based, not fixed.
SL is on AWS now. Regions scale down when idle (quiesce). Most regions sit idle most of the day. The infrastructure no longer behaves like fixed hardware, and lowering the price for large estate owners is not the same thing as changing the pricing model.
A free 1024 store is nice, but if creators can’t build there, it’s like having a restaurant without a kitchen.
A mid-sized creator with L$200,000 in monthly sales can see up to 20% of their profit erased by tier fees and new asset costs.
The Lab wants creators to rent in order to build, but creators can’t afford land.
The estates need creators to rent, but creators can’t afford land.
The Lab depends on estates, but estates can’t rent to people who can’t afford land.
No creator should have to pay someone else to create the content that drives the economy.
The estates depend on the middle class, and the middle class is shrinking. Creators who would rent them are being priced out.
Large estate owners can’t rent to other large estate owners, and large estate owners are suppliers, not customers.
This strategy seems to be for a version of SL that no longer exists.
Oatmeal Linden
updated the status to
tracked
Hello Chanticleer! Thanks for the suggestions and feedback. We do periodically evaluate our pricing structure.
Zia Underwood
Oatmeal LindenThese changes don't provide a benefit to anyone but large land owners. It is not a clean consumer deal. It is a mixed price restructure that looks better in the marketing post than it is in practice.
For large land owners, especially private island owners, there is a real discount. A Full Region 30K dropping by $30/month or a Full Region dropping by $10/month is meaningful. Linden Lab is openly framing that as making land more affordable.
But for ordinary consumers, the deal is much weaker. The L$ change is being promoted around the lower minimum buy fee, but the official pricing update also shows the transaction fee increasing from 10% to 11% and the maximum buy fee doubling from $14.99 to $29.99. That means small L$ buyers may benefit, while larger L$ buyers pay more.
The membership increases also claw back some of the land savings. Premium annual goes from $99/year to $119.88/year, which eats $20.88/year of any land savings. So a Full Region discount of $10/month is not really $120/year better if the user also has to absorb the higher Premium cost; it becomes closer to $99.12/year net, before taxes. The pricing update confirms paid membership price changes begin July 8, and quarterly plans are also being closed to new buyers.
So my read is: this is a deal for a narrow slice of consumers, mainly people paying high recurring land fees. It is not broadly consumer-friendly. It lowers one visible cost while raising less flattering fees elsewhere. Calling it “making Second Life more affordable” is selective framing, because some users will save, some will pay more, and many will only get a smaller benefit than the headline implies.
Lurr Macbain
When I first joined SL, I had a full region and a homestead - just to build and create and make a space for people to explore and enjoy -- not to earn money. It became too expensive to maintain, which was sad, but over the years I've rented parcels to have a space to create and share with others. A lower price point allows for people to create non-revenue generating spaces for exploration, role play, or just fun. And shouldn't that be a big part of what SL is - a fun creative space that we share? When people are enabled to build outstanding spaces, they gain attention - both within and outside of SL which drives engagement. And engagement drives revenue. Even that math should math for LL.
Devilgrey Resident
so many great sims eventually close because it costs users more than my monthly car insurance payment to rent digital land. i think it would only benefit LL & users if land prices went down. more people paying for land and keeping it because of reasonable prices is a net positive.
Christina Riederer
Ive been saying this since forever, Id quite happily purchase a full region if it fell into the 50 to 60 dollar catagory, It would help more communities stay active and would massivily increase the numbers of new regions. Regions really shouldnt be costing the same price as a real life mortgage.
Ziel Omizu
I agree that the land costs compared to other virtual world or game server options are ridiculous. The general user does not and will not ever appreciate if there is some specific special reason for it due to the resources needed - they will just see that SL costs more than the alternatives.
SL being more mature and allowing adult experiences without requiring VC is what it really has over the competition, but even those regions can struggle with activity, and thus close because the cost isn't worth it.
Lower the cost of users creating their own spaces, retain more users because SL doesn't require coding knowledge to build spaces. Building in SL is relatively simple compared to alternatives - the problem is the costs of the space itself is too high, and the process too complex to understand, for most users to even bother - despite the desire.
Jennifer Fluffington
The prices did come down. Estate sims used to be $295/moth and $1000 purchase price.
Spidey Linden
Merged in a post:
More prims for mainland users
Dan Redangel
Since the linden homes have had a prim allowance increase, it would be nice to increase the mainland regions so people paying for mainland instead of a home could have more prims as well
ST33LDI9ITAL Resident
Or you know.. could always give people the option to run their own regions...
Tech Robonaught
ST33LDI9ITAL Resident Self hosted to spec? I'm game. Charge a monthly tie in fee.
Chanticleer Evergarden
ST33LDI9ITAL Resident That'd be pretty cool actually.
Jon Nielsen
Chanticleer Evergarden It's done fairly often in Opensim.
Aiwena Resident
I 100% agree with this! I am giving up my land this weekend because it is just too expensive. While I love to keep it and redo different themes I just can not anymore.
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