The Alphaville Herald

Op/Ed: Seven Days in Second Life

by Pixeleen Mistral on 17/06/07 at 9:00 pm

by Inigo Chamerberlin

It’s not just me, is it? I mean, being a whinger or whatever is one thing. But noticing the current state of affairs at Linden Lab is another. And unavoidable lately. Just this last week is absolutely mind boggling.

Last Sunday I got an Email telling me I had no payment information on record (didn’t bother mentioning that my Estate charges were due within 24 hours though!) and would I please update my account. So I did, and, as usual, it failed to update. I reported this (again!) and was told to go to my bank and instruct them to make payments to Linden Lab/Second Life because payments to them were being blocked by my bank.

I asked “Why? What have you done now?”€™ – I mean, fair’s fair, for the past three months there have been problems making payments to Linden Lab through their new payment partner.

Well, here’s the reply – a direct quote:

“The reason for the reoccurring (sic) billing problems is that some banks/credit card companies automatically reject billing attempts from Global Collect (which is located in the UK) for not providing the complete billing address of the user. These issues will stay unresolved until you directly authorize all billing from Linden Lab/Second Life.”

No shit Sherlock! So, you decided to change your payment partner for one you say doesn’€™t provide sufficient information to make a transaction -€“ and I have to run around to my bank to fix your problem?

Well, besides not much fancying popping along to my bank and telling my account manager that in future all payments requested must be made to Linden Lab/Second Life, [elided by Uri], I considered my options carefully.

Something about the form I’d filled in when re-entering, for maybe the 10th time since April, my card details was nagging at me. I went back and looked again. Surely not? They couldn’€™t be THIS stupid? There must be a second part to the form?

I went through the process again. Card Type – OK. Card Number – done. Expiry date – done. Submit. “Your details are being updated”. Fifteen minutes later “no payment info”.€ Hey! Numbnuts! WHAT ABOUT MY CARD SECURITY CODE????

Yup, the “Crack Team” at Linden Lab had set up Visa Electron transactions NOT to ask for a three digit security code. And without that – as I know from my RL experience with online and customer not present EPOS – the transaction will NOT be accepted.

Not because of Global Collect failing to provide the user’€™s full billing address. Not because my bank was blocking payment to Linden Lab/Second Life. Because Linden Lab can’€™t put together a simple online transactions form correctly.

Luckily the form had other errors, one of which enabled me to convince it that my Visa Electron card was another card, thus causing the form to require a security code and making the transaction possible. Yes – I’€™m well aware that should be impossible for a whole variety of reasons, but it’s not, trust me on this.

And here we are, five days later, and it hasn’t been fixed. Which means anybody attempting to submit their Visa Electron details to the Second Life transaction system will be unable to, and thus unable to spend money with Linden Lab.

Why am I not surprised that Second Life appears to be suffering a recession at present?

Oh, and here’s the kicker. Linden Lab carried out the transaction approximately an hour and a half before my bank opened on Monday – so no way could I have gone in and attempted to get them to stop “€˜blocking”€™ payments to LL, which they weren’€™t doing anyway.

And to ice the cake, they attempted to run the transaction three times, tying up a sizeable sum for three working days before the system realised there was a problem and released the two spurious “€˜transaction pending”€™ sums.

And that’€™s just my problem with Linden Lab this week.

Now let’€™s look at the rest.

SUNDAY – Linden Lab’s phone system was on the blink, in fact for much of the weekend. Making it impossible to contact them by phone (handy when you need to try and contact a responsible adult about your payment info issues). Actually, that doesn’€™t seem that different from normal weekend “€˜service”. Or normal weekday “service”€™ either.

MONDAY – Nothing. The calm before the storm. Except the search system wasn’t finding anything.

TUESDAY – They paid the stipends they didn’€™t pay last week, but they aren’€™t sure they’€™ve paid them this week. Excuse me? How can you not be sure you’ve “paid”€™ over L$30 million out? Even if all you did was ran your virtual printing press?

This is the same day Linden Lab published its “€˜key metrics” BTW! – €˜We know exactly how the virtual economy’s performing, look, here – but we can’t tell if we just pumped over thirty million L$ into it today or not€™. Yeah. Right.

Dare we ask how they can tell those “Key Metrics” bear any resemblance to what’€™s really happening?

Oh, and the asset AssHat system decided to have “€˜one of those days”€™. Happy Tuesday!

WEDNSDAY – Update day. Be afraid, be very afraid. The AssHat system continued sick as ever. A bit sicker in fact as purchases weren’t being delivered. Friends stopped working. Search was lost. IM’s failed. The map was painfully sluggish. But as “€˜updates”€™ go, it was pretty good. As long as you didn’€™t really want to do much.

THURSDAY -€“ The “€˜Support Portal” fell over.

The AssHat system continues to cough, splutter and give a fair impression of being on its last legs. Having said that, I can’€™t ever remember it being on its first legs and that’€™s harking back to a population of less than ten thousand!

FRIDAY – Oh happy day! The drama day. Everyone braced for the usual real ballbreaker of a post at about 16:55 PST by Robin or one of her creatures were sadly disappointed.

All they got was the news that something was preventing L$ purchases – you know, US$ in and Linden Space bucks out? However, not to disappoint, Cyn made the supreme sacrifice of hanging about until 18:12 to tell us that L$ sales were being shut off for the weekend. I see – not that the L$ purchase system was broken you understand? Just, it was Friday, so screw it, we’€™re off?

No. Not at all. Linden Lab made a decision to switch it off! Right! And poor Cyn drew the short straw.
Oh, and she did wish all a “great weekend”€™ before running for the door. So, that’€™s OK then.

We won’t talk about the exploit early this Sunday morning that made all scripts readable by anyone – that is just how we get the new week off to a fast start.

One week in Second Life

Ignore my personal gripe over the credit card processing shambles. I’€™m a self centred sod, so you ignore that. And the problem anyone trying to spend money with a Visa Electron card will have encountered. And still will until they finally fix that form. Just look at the rest of the week. Six days in Second Life. Five of them with fairly serious issues which will have affected quite a few people. Many of the issues affecting the SL economy:

Search lost again
Transaction failures
Inability to process the purchase of L$ for US$
Stipends – did we pay or didn’t we?

Is it any wonder that the SL economy is showing signs of recession? Infrastructure failures are making it difficult for customers to find products. When they do find them the products may not be delivered.
Customers may be short of cash due to unpaid (there again, maybe not – who knows?) stipends. So they try and buy a few L$ through LL and…

Add to that, unpaid rentals. And unfortunates wrestling with a dementoid CC system. Is this a recipe for a healthy growing virtual economy? For an investor-pleasing bottom line at Linden Lab?

If anyone there thinks that, they really do need to get a grip.