Update on total net loss in private estates so far in 2012

Daniel Voyager

Tyche Shepherd posts a weekly update about regions counts in Second Life during the past week on SLUniverse Forums and this week I wanted to share the current total net loss in private estates since 1st January 2012. Apparently the last time it was this low was back in July 2008 and April 2009.

  • Total number of Main Grid regions is now 28, 254 ( 21168 private estates & 7086 Linden owned)
  • The total net loss in private estates since January 1st this year is now 2689 , a decline of 11.3%

I think it’s very alarming there is a big decline of 11.3% in private estates in Second Life in 2012 so far and it does not look good at all for the future of the grid if rates continue as they are. I really do hope private estates will pick up again in 2013 however I do trust Tyche Shepherd on posting these figures of the SL economy.

I’ll publish another update at the end of December 2012/early 2013.

19 thoughts on “Update on total net loss in private estates so far in 2012”

  3. its frigthing when you loom on the map at one continent and reliaze how much abandoned land is avaiable, just in 2 weeks!|
    But the way Second Life is behaving, with constant roll outs (Even on Saturday, they made a restart of all regions) is not encouraging to nobody!
    And its sad, as it is still the grid to be in!
    Linden Lab knows that most users are not from countries that are rich anymore, Europe is striving with recession, Brazil got is own private grid in Open sims!
    So it is time to make more use anf give more power to premium users!
    Increasing the m2 that any premium can buy on mainland for its tier level!
    I would not touch private sims, as i think those are much better handled when on the hands of Landlords.

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    1. Hi zuzu

      My thoughts on what LL should do urgently is to aim for a full third drop in tier and setup fee across the board to for everyone in order to maintain the balance of the economy and attract residents back to the land market. LL could also make it more expensive to sell on Market place so in-world sales are more attractive where they can make stuff cheaper to residents than buying on Market place (need to get folks back on the grid urgent!). They could also double the stipend even at a loss to themselves to inflate the economy too. It’s called fiscal policy and it works in the real world so it should in SL. Just my thoughts.

      Gaga

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    2. Thanks foneco for your comment.

      I think looking at empty land like the old teen grid regions and other areas of SL. People can’t afford the tiers or there’s not enough traffic to keep them running.

      Rolling restarts are very annoying during peak hours and should be done around 1am to 6am SLT. Another reason I think there is a decline is that the current real life recession is to blame due to higher costs of everything at the moment.

      I think premium users need more in terms of the premium package LL give to premium users.

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  4. The facts are what they are, Daniel and they can’t be hidden behind a wall of silence and yet even I have been cautious about blogging the down turn of Second Life because it always brings an angry response from SL diehards and merchants worrying over their profits. For all it’s creativity SL is still at base a money making machine so this huge fall in regions and the loss of in-world buyers to Market Place is hitting the bottom line of stores, malls, markets and, inevitably, Land Barons too.

    At the end of the day the buck must stop with Linden Lab’s failure to manage properly and concentrate exceptional effort on their Flagship product. They just wont accept it and yet the vast majority of residents constantly tell them what is wrong. They stopped listening years ago but the alternatives, Opensim, Cloud Party and others are improving all the time so LL needs to get their act together pretty quick but, IMO, I think it is already too late.

    Personally, I still have two role play regions in SL and lots of friends there so I don’t want to see it collapse. But I do have regions in OSgrid now and extend my role play across grids. My world is bigger and more interesting too with a new hypergrid accessed standalone Opensim world. This is the kind of thing Linden Labs has to contend with. People have more options now and a broader horizon. I really wish they LL would open up and get back to the days when they looked outward and explored interpolarity across other platforms. They wont though, there thinking is too closed. The best they can come up with is trivial video games. If they make it with those you bet they will let SL quietly die.

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  5. i don’t think they are as terrible on their bottom line as i used to. i agree it’s a huge drop and something like this at my company would result in layoffs (for the last seven years, we have 20-26% annual growth)

    my “new” perspective is here:

    http://iliveisl.com/sls-slow-loss-of-sims-affect-on-lls-bottom-line/

    BUT . . . not knowing what they have in their projections and with their acquisitions, it’s hard to say of they think they have a rosy outlook

    as long as Philip can pay his $40k a year property taxes, he doesn’t seem to care either!

    it’s easy for me to sit back and ponder about LL but who knows, maybe they’ll move to the cloud, cut their server costs by 80%, and blah blah blah

    it certainly seems as if they don’t care very much about Second Life – the service has really not changed much over the last 8 years – same price, same prim limits, same need for a high-end PC, etc

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    1. Thanks for your view on this Ener.

      Likes the “new” perspective link.

      I think Rodvik and the rest of Linden Lab need to focus on a roadmap for 2013 so the SL community knows where they heading towards if anything at all.

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  6. Pingback: Second Life Land and You – what does an 11.3% decline in private estates mean to (and for) you? « Prim Perfect

  7. @ener hax predicted a loss of 2,500 private sims in 2012, if I’m not mistaken. That prediction has now been surpassed. The Lindens should stop publicly ignoring this fact and do something about it. The best thing would be to reduce the absurdly high tier. As a few of us have been reporting on this state of affairs, we’ve been accused by Linden staffers of “schadenfreude.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who takes the time to chronicle these statistics must care a lot.

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  8. I think SL needs to plan for the long-term and:

    *Create a fourth permission setting — Export — and set all existing content, by default, to “No export”

    * Turn on hypergrid connectivity

    * Allow marketplace deliveries to foreign grids (if merchants so choose)

    * Allow foreign grids to use Linden Dollars as their default in-world payment mechanism

    * Offer low-cost OpenSim-based private grid hosting. After all, would you rather rent land from a one-man startup, or from an established company? For school and enterprise clients, in particular, this is a serious issue — and a big potential source of new revenue for Linden Lab.

    The Lindens will lose some land revenues as a result of some folks moving to OpenSim (though those folks are moving to OpenSim, anyway.) But they would gain long-term revenues from marketplace sales and currency transactions. Plus, Second Life will become the crossroads of the metaverse, instead of — as is happening now — OSgrid taking that role by default.

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  9. Currently it’s almost impossible for a new estate owners to get into business, as the old ones have their arsenal of the homesteads with grandfathered prices. Who knows, if those new ones could bring some new ideas to the grid, but the pricing policy makes competition impossible.

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