Linden Lab announced on 15th June 2015 that the Linden Dollar (L$) Authorised Reseller programme will be closing down on 1st August 2015 after 2+ years of operations. LindeX will be the only authorized place to purchase L$ from 1st August 2015 apparently.
In the blog post it mentions that the pilot program was introduced back in 2013 and since then the lab have expanded the payment options for the Second Life community. The lab mentions that “Today, you can easily purchase L$ in more countries than ever before, using a credit card, PayPal, or Skrill, which supports a wide range of payment methods”. This will effect you if you have been buying Linden Dollars from companies other than Linden Lab.
More details can be found in the blog post, see below!
In 2013, we introduced a pilot program for Authorized Linden Dollar (L$) Resellers. This pilot program was designed to give Second Life Residents additional options for purchasing Linden Dollars, particularly for those based outside the US.
Since then, we have expanded the payment options for Second Life users, and today, you can easily purchase L$ in more countries than ever before, using a credit card, PayPal, or Skrill, which supports a wide range of payment methods. We’ve found that these options support the vast majority of Second Life users, and we have therefore made the business decision to close the Authorized Linden Dollar Reseller pilot program.
We are contacting program participants directly to detail the next steps for them, and they will have approximately six weeks to sell off their L$ inventory.
As of August 1, 2015, the Authorized L$ Reseller pilot program will be closed, and the LindeX will be the only authorized place to purchase L$.
What do you think of this closure announcement ?
Daniel Voyager 
Reblogged this on ZZ Bottom misadventures in Virtual Worlds!.
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I find this annoucement worrying because of the well know incapacity of Linden Lab to process payments correctly in the past. Let’s hope that now everything will go well now…
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Hmmm….the proverbial conundrum of putting ones business eggs in another’s basket. Capitalize when and while ya can, but never count the chickens when your only the… egg?
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Last time they ended up with a storm of protests and having to partially reverse their decision. Should be interesting to see what the reaction will be this time.
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That’s just stupid.
I got a sim that I share with a thousand people. Donations help to pay it but I always have to add some money for the tiers. I would never tie my SL activities with RL infos like my Credit Card number or Paypal infos and anonymous paysafe cards or Ukash with resellers is the only way to achieve it, and many think like I do. So I guess my sim will not be the only one to disappear.
Anyway, limiting the ways available for customers to pay is, most of time, against any business idea.
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Just like lib for me i am in the very same position, i refuse to tie my rl info to a virtual world, at that, skrill only allows a certain amount of money you can transfer, if you go over it then they require rl info such as banking garantees a copy of your ID and even a copy of your town registration to proove you really are whom you say you are, this (state documents and papers) is/are in 80% of the world iligal to copy and hand out like this, and very inviting to ID theft and or scamming using your personal information.
Lindenlabs most likely never have thought about the legal side and aspect of this situation or how many people use those “banking” companies to keep to their local laws, time will tell how many people will have to give up rented land and the damage they are doing to shops and sims.
Not to mention how many people might actualy leave the game to play elsewhere….
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