Residents Displaced as AzureIslands Takes a 5% Haircut
by Alphaville Herald on 11/10/09 at 3:15 pm
Sim closures blamed on Linden Lab price increases, bad economy
by Pixeleen Mistral, National affairs desk
Evidence that the virtual land market is not immune to real life economic woes appeared this weekend when a number of residents were informed that their parts of the metaverse will be closed by the end of the month. The sad news came from AzureIslands – one of Second Life’s largest land resellers – which distributed notecards asking affected players to move to more popular neighborhoods before Halloween. Azure is waiving land setup or “purchase” fees and offering the displaced residents their choice of unoccupied land in the estate. One can only hope re-creating the in-world builds will not be too much trouble.
As for the cause of the trouble, the AzureIsland notecard states, “From the start of this year, due to economic forces from last year to price increases for a good portion of our estate from Linden Lab — we've been hit with a rather tough set of decisions. While we have tried at length to negotiate a solution to the issues at hand, we have finally reached a point that other large estates came to earlier this year.”
Asked for comment, Azure Support said, “We are dropping some regions which we acquired when someone who had formerly leased them from us went bankrupt — the estate was never profitable for us to run and had an average occupancy somewhere around 15%. We made an attempt to integrate it and boost that figure, but after over a year, we've decided to merge those customers into our main estate.”
How many residents are affected? The AzureIslands notecard saysresidents of “roughly the bottom 5% of our estate in terms ofconsistent residency” will need to move to more popular parts of theAzure land empire by October 31st or risk losing whatever objects theyleave on the soon to be decommissioned land.
Apparently Second Life’s anemic expansion in the number of paying customers and stagnantconcurrency are making it difficult for even large, well-run landresellers to grow their way out of an over-extended position. Thisshould not be a complete surprise. We have noticed a troubling silenceon the part of reliable Linden cheerleaders such as Tateru Nino andHamlet Au on the subject of in-world population and concurrency forSecond Life – topics that were perennial favorites for the fanboybloggers in days of go-go population growth.
In the new world order of serial Linden Lab-induced shocks to the in-world economy, flat population growth, and a weak real life economic situation, we may well see similar haircuts taken by other land barons. Can anyone really blame residents for wanting their own private backup copy of their builds in this sort of uncertain situation – despite the problems this creates for the DRM-dependent shopkeepers?
The complete text of Azure’s announcement to the soon-to-be displaced residents is below:
Hello,
This notecard is being sent to certain customers in our estate and unfortunately it's a rather important notice. From the start of this year, due to economic forces from last year to price increases for a good portion of our estate from Linden Lab — we've been hit with a rather tough set of decisions. While we have tried at length to negotiate a solution to the issues at hand, we have finally reached a point that other large estates came to earlier this year. Simply put, we have to close a small number of regions.
We have selected roughly the bottom 5% of our estate in terms of consistent residency. These are regions we have been unable to make a solid return on investment and unfortunately this is affecting our estate as a whole. We believe that by closing down just this set of regions, we will likely be able to maintain the rest of our estate for as long as Second Life exists.
While we understand this might come as highly distressing news that we have selected the region you live in for closure, we are prepared to assist as much as possible with a transition. We are prepared to offer the following:
- Any available property in our estate can be obtained from us for free. No up front purchase, cost you may simply have it just by asking us. You may select a larger property or a smaller property, without question. If you own multiple properties, you may pick an equal number of properties should you wish.
- While all the regions selected are closing on October 31st, you are free to move into your new property immediately and you will not be expected to pay tier until November 21st. This is upward of over a month in free tier if you take advantage of this offer.
- One of the popular additions to our estate have been homestead beach regions, which offer more privately spaced out lots for folks to call home. We have a small number of these regions on reserve that we're offering exclusively, though these regions will go on general sale November 1st. They are named: de Vico, Singer, Aquarius, Olbers, Tempel, Lulin
If you have found a property that interests you, all of which can be found via http://www.azureislands.com — please contact us at either support@deepthinklabs.com or sending an IM to Support Azure. We strongly suggest email as the best means of contacting us.
On October 31st, all selected regions will be closed and all content still rezzed in the region will no longer be available. We need all customers to collect their objects prior to this date, as we cannot assist you past this date. If you do not wish to take advantage of our move and free tier offer, we will not be able to credit you in another fashion.
Please be sure to contact us if you need assistance selecting another property to move to. Again, we apologize for this inconvenience.
– The Azure Team
All Seeing Eye
Oct 11th, 2009
ebarbies better pull head out of ass and get back to that day job and worry about keeping it. LL don’t give a flying shit about you. LL already decided who will stay in business. Only so much money around. Time to stop letting anyone but lindens and their boyfriends get it. duh.
LIttleLostLinden
Oct 11th, 2009
Holy Moly!
The end is near.
IMHO
Oct 11th, 2009
One of the things they should do is to start making accounts that have no payment info on file,become trial accounts,because so many of them hog the camping pads and never buy anything.
Swythe Armistice
Oct 12th, 2009
Wasn’t Azure massively undercharging anyway?
Sounds like LL wants to curtail any chances of undercutting mainland rates. I agree with them, private sim tier pays for the loss mainland generates anyway.
Ari Blackthorne
Oct 12th, 2009
So based on the notecard:
“We jumped on the Openspace bandwagon in order to maximize profit by ripping you off, chargiing you standard rental fees while we gorged on profit”
Then: “Linden Lab jacked the prices up and we got caught with out asses hanging in the wind because we were too fucking greedy in the whole mess”
Then “You are a bottom feeder as you are among the bottom 5% of our business, meaning you are a dreg and a worthless customer, so we will let you have your pick of alternate parcels with no worries as we know your dumbass isn’t reliable for more than a couple weeks anyway, you losers”.
Asure Islands is the perfect example I write about here: http://commonsensible.net/2009/09/30/second-life-why-copybot-shouldnt-matter/
Muahahahah!
Funny thing is, it’s not the renters losing-out here.
Ranma Tardis
Oct 13th, 2009
What do you expect? in this sense of entitlement companies are expected to retain excess capacity no matter what. In this case 5% of their sims are going to be closed. As compensation the affected renters will receive a month free. Get over it!