Hard Alley To Be Cleaned Out March 10?
by Pixeleen Mistral on 25/01/12 at 4:33 am
Failing rental revenue dooms historic Second Life sex sim
The notorious Hard Alley may be doomed by the faltering Second Life in-world economy - a shocking development for both militant protesters and forced urban roleplay fans who are likely to lose a formerly vital venue.
Hard Rust - the owner and mastermind of the Hard Alley experience for over 5 years - has been circulating a notecard warning that he can no longer cover his expenses from rentals and donations. Unless an investor with deep pockets steps forward soon, the sim is slated to close in early March.
We can only hope that well connected fanboys will prevail on their special Linden friends to save this historic site so that future generations of noobies can experience the finest Second Life has to offer. As this priceless artistic treasure's fate hangs in the balance the world looks toward "thought leaders" such as Prokofy Neva and Dusan Writer for hope. Oh wait -- did they check out too?
After 5 years, Hard Alley can no longer cover expenses
The closing is the latest chapter in a series of sim shutdowns that threaten historic Second Life landmarks - and ultimately the viability of Linden Lab's virtual world. While Linden Lab is unwilling or unable to reduce land "tier" fees, virtual world entrepreneurs such as Mr. Hard Rust are increasingly hard pressed to cover their costs from revenue earned in the virtual economy. The economic pressures are intense, with regions running $295/month USD and Linden Lab showing little sign of cutting costs to stimulate demand. For all but the most wealthy, the long term outlook is grim.
After the sim is gone, how long will the Hard Alley web site last?
If the virtual sex and land rental business is failing to cover expenses, what is left for the Lab? More importantly, where will the Hard Alley Reform School and School Girls Gone Bad inmates be housed?
IntLibber Brautigan
Jan 25th, 2012
Given the capabilities of the Class V server hasn’t changed in 6 years, this means that LL’s cost to maintain each server has dropped in half four times since its introduction. LL pays less than $10 per sim per month in their own server costs. Why they are keeping sim fees at the outrageously extortionate rate of $295 only demonstrates their criminal rapacity.
PirateBay
Jan 25th, 2012
I will leave this here since the fucktards at SLU banned me ages ago.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/pirate-bay-to-allow-real-object-downloads-339330303.htm
Pappy Enoch
Jan 25th, 2012
“More importantly, where will the Hard Alley Reform School and School Girls Gone Bad inmates be housed?”
Oh my gawd. Miss Petunia Courtney Amaryllis Taliaferro were moved there after she done busted up a guard (by fallin’ on her) at her last prison.
If’n it closes, ol’ Tater-Butt am a-comin’ after poor me an’ my hillbilly famberly.
Orion
Jan 25th, 2012
@PirateBay – You mean for the cost of a $3000 printer I can download a model of Brad Pitt’s dick and have my own personal plastic orgy? WOOHOO!
Jumpman Lane
Jan 25th, 2012
And Jumpman Lane stands unopposed in Second Life!
if ya listen for it…u’ll hear the sound of A Lane’s laughter hehehehehehehe!
Jumpman Lane
Jan 25th, 2012
plus if that broke fool cant pony up an measley 100usd extry a month then he deserves to go under! sap! hehehehehe
Yep
Jan 25th, 2012
Must have been a dive if the weirdos stopped supporting this sim. No great loss.
Carol Darkthief
Jan 25th, 2012
It wouldn’t astonish me if the female AVs which revisit Hard Alley have male players. It’s roleplaying some really ugly activities, in an analog of the here and now. In the real world, nearly 1 in 5 American woman have been raped or sexually assaulted. When I first saw that figure from the CDC. I doubted it. Then I remembered things I’d heard from American friends.
I hear there’s a sim where you can play being a prisoner at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. I hope they go bust too. There’s this very recent article on US films: http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-captured/posts/the-bigger-picture-what-happens-when-we-find-the-line-as-viewers
And you let the notorious IntLibber Brautigan shoot his mouth off, alleging greed and dishonesty.
At least Hard Alley is honest about what it is.
Reader
Jan 25th, 2012
“Must have been a dive if the weirdos stopped supporting this sim. No great loss.”
isnt that the underlying theme for the whole of SL in 2012 ?
Paul
Jan 25th, 2012
@Yep.
Well, it IS a great loss for people, such as apparently this Hard Rust fellow and his friends, who built, played, and enjoyed this sim for years, and now have to face the prospect of giving it up. That is terrible for them, and it must hurt and be sad. This fact is obvious to anyone reading the article, including you, so I am curious as to why you would flippantly say “no great loss” when you know certainly that it IS a loss for many people. Is this a demonstration of affected disaffection that shows how “cool” you are because you have contempt for the feelings and losses of others? Your just that badass? Or Is this part of the internet culture that eschews any sign of empathy for others and advocates jumping on a person in a moment of weakness like a pack of jackals as the right thing to do? Either way, I feel very sorry that you are so emotionally damaged, and can only hope that people around you are more generous. But maybe they aren’t, and that is the problem?
GG3
Jan 25th, 2012
Oh look,
A perv dench going down the swamp!
Wouldn’t mind if some of those animal-rape sex sims would close down too!
Reader
Jan 25th, 2012
shut up Mies!
lolol
Jan 25th, 2012
This is the reason that someone should not buy a sim that they cannot afford. With the marketplace,a seller can avoid renting in a laggy sim and reach more people with very little overhead.
There is no need to support another person’s sim now in order to sell things.
LOL
Jan 26th, 2012
This is a very accurate look at the Future of SL. When Pixel sex sims ,by far the most popular places in Second life; like this fold up and shut down, the only people left in SL will be?????
Gladstone
Jan 26th, 2012
If you buy everything from Marketplace, and all the in-game stores close and the sims they support close, then you are left buying things to use in an empty game.
Axel Oakleaf
Jan 26th, 2012
This election get someone who will fix the economy,instead of just promising to fix it. Obama promised to fix the economy,but after a while he backtracked. Get someone who will fix the economy now.
Overwean
Jan 26th, 2012
“historic second life landmark”
It was a perv hangout in a doll house world. Let’s keep the overweaning hyperbole to a minimum, k?
Spacetard
Jan 26th, 2012
SL’s only got probably…3 years max left in it. By that time it’ll be gone forever. Or something completely different.
Dontspill McGinnis
Jan 26th, 2012
@ GG3
Now you’ve gone and upset “Reader”
It looks like he’s a fan of those animal-rape sex sims.
Pappy Enoch
Jan 26th, 2012
If’n them pervs had elected me mayor, I reckon ol’ Hard Alley would be “Hard Holler” by now, with some stone-cold-Deliverance RP includin’ some banjo-pickin’ fun.
Fat men wood not have to bekum girly-girls to play.
They could still be fat me in SL an’ squeal like pigs!
I’d give ol’ Jumpy a run for his money (an’ I still plans to soddymize him, come what mite). Git them-there Fruit-o-the-Looms on, boy!
Hoo-whee I needs a drink after that.
Tux
Jan 26th, 2012
I too think nothing of any value will be lost. If you cant afford a sim, don’t have one simple. I read this as a begging letter, nothing more.
I for one find the fake porn/fetish female avatars, often controlled by grotesque overweight middle aged men (less often by grotesque overweight middle aged women), culture quite revolting (btw I include Jumpy in this category). The only entertainment I see with them is trolling.
LOL asked who the only people left in Second Life would be, I say: Griefers, Trolls and a whole host of freaks who fail IRL.
Second Life isn’t a world of creativity, ie NOT your world, your way. Second Life is an environment where outrageous fetishes can be played out.
This year, for the first time I can remember, places like Help Island and Orientation Island have avatars amounting to single figures. Previously these would have been difficult to get in to.
Sandboxes are on griefer meltdown. Alias, there are too few Lindens to manage it. If only there was some group to help . . . . oh wait tried that . . . . and failed.
What is happening right here is the cycle of SL, the Lindens have given more ways than ever before to grief and crash sims. This is by design. They now wait for a high profile event to get griefed and hit the media. Thus producing a massive influx of new residents. It happen before and will again.
Hope Dreier
Jan 26th, 2012
@Carol Darkthief The CDCs statistic that 1 in 5 women have been raped or sexually assaulted trivializes the crime of rape by lumping it in with such trivial forms of sexual assault as placing a hand on a woman’s ass.
Required
Jan 26th, 2012
Hard Rust bought his sim 5 years ago, and rentals and other revenue allowed him to pay tier. So he actually could afford it at one time.That revenue stream went away, and now he has to close the sim.
This is the real story, not that Hard Alley is going away, but a lot of sims are going away. Apollo and Mouse Cot, just to name a couple. It’s a combination of problems, first that LL charges as much as they do for a sim and, second, that too few people can or do feed the SL economy. We, the visitors of sims who don’t contribute to them as a way to show our thanks to the owner, are a large part of the problem. If you have L$ and you pass up the opportunity to thank a sim owner for their efforts and expenses necessary to give you a place to wander, then you may as well take a good long look because you might be helping them close the sim.
I am not a sim owner, I am not an SL business owner. I am just a wandering avatar. But I understand what it’s like to be a business owner in SL, hoping that patron revenue will let me keep my doors open another week, looking at my own dwindling real world assets and wondering if it’s all worth while.
Emperor Norton
Jan 26th, 2012
Tux @ “This is by design. They now wait for a high profile event to get griefed and hit the media. Thus producing a massive influx of new residents. It happen before and will again.”
TL:DR version: my wife makes me punch her
Newt Gringrich was in Second Life and wasn’t griefed the entire time. Short of Phil Liden arrested for sacrificing virgins at the Legion of Honor with a “Your World, Your Imagination” t-shirt on him it don’t get much more high profile than that for Second Life.
This brings up an interesting VR philosophical question; if an empty sim is griefed, will anyone give a shit?
I am expecting a full essay response Tux.
Reader
Jan 26th, 2012
“I am expecting a full essay response Tux.”
and from Spill(t) milk, GG3, lol and any other idiot that finds it necessary to endlessly rant like a little bitch. Get out much?Funny how they all start to sound alike after a while, isn’t it? Wonder why that is? (rhetorical)
still waiting on all the gorey relationship details between these “famous” actors of the AH bar-fly-club:
Tux Winkler,Rob Nelson,Kobe Varnish,Muziekfreak1980,Raine Brucato,Dontspill McGinnis,Economic Engineer, and Tater Topaz
Dontspill McGinnis
Jan 27th, 2012
@ “Reader”
No “gorey relationship details” to be had I’m afraid. I know three of the other persons you mentioned but non of the rest. I think it’s a mirror that you need to identify the person with multiple sockpuppets.
Isn’t it funny how history repeats itself?
I think it’s best that you up your dosage again.
Miss Petunia Courtney Amaryllis Taliaferro
Jan 27th, 2012
I hear the Bells of Freedom chiming!
At LONG last, the campaign to purify the den of smut called Second Life scores a major victory!
Onward, army of purity! Bukkake Bliss will be next in the Great Purge. With my release from prison, no corner of the cesspoll will be safe for rancid hillbilly perverts such as Pappy Enoch or wigger morons such as Mr. Lane.
Jumpman Lane
Jan 27th, 2012
I offer to buy Turd Dust’s Turd Alley and I Plan to turn it inta a sandbox for the people! I offer 1L$ and then I’ll take over tier payments! It’s all Turd Dusts contributions on SL merit and plus it’s market value to for such a laggy ol sim! Hehehehe he ought to pay ME to take over tier payments lmao
hobo_kelly
Jan 27th, 2012
Rats, I didn’t make the AH Barfly Club list. Must try harder.
LOL
Jan 27th, 2012
Sex on SL makes up over 60% of the revenue stream for residents, Merchants, and Linden Reasurch inc.
Once sex stops selling on SL we all may as well find a new videogame to blog and bitch about because Linden Lab will not be able to afford to keep all thoes empty servers online for long.
Reader
Jan 27th, 2012
wipe that tear from your eye hobo, indeed, you must try harder. but since you are keen to remind the masses your name gets added to the updated list with a new entry added to the discussion in-world just today:
Tux Winkler,Rob Nelson,Kobe Varnish,Muziekfreak1980,Raine Brucato,Dontspill McGinnis hobo kelly ,Economic Engineer, Tater Topaz and Vergil Hellershanks.
who is this late coming vergil character anyway? dunno but many thanks to cryoklane for that bit of interesting twist and emerging backstory on the rise
props to Smegma Highwater as well
Yep
Jan 28th, 2012
Reader is making a list and checking it twice. He wants to see who is naughty or nice……
Mesa
Jan 28th, 2012
I always wondered how purely artistic SIMs are supported financially if not by the artist alone or group of artists itself. IRL museums asks for membership or sells tickets. While small art galeries are free to visit at the artist expenses.
Visitors or Roleplayers could pay en entry fee or a membership fee. Not suggesting that the latter would cover all SIM tier expense, but to help. It’s not common now i know. Donation boxes does not seem to be efficient anyways.
The marketplace is indeed an issue for sims that relies on commercial renters to fund their operation. Indeed SL entrepreneurs see no reasons to keep paying for their various inworld point of sales if they are entirely successful only with the MP alone.
I think that the premium membership in SL is a good example of paying for certain features and services that go beyond a certain *visitor* scope of activities. But IMO if something is worthless in SL It’s certainly that stupid membership fee. 512sq/m of land on the mainland and 300L per week, WTF ?
If LL could make a Market study and start supporting roleplaying sims and artistic sims by allowing em to have a certain status and a special price Level. (hm, say, 150usd a month!
) and allows only premium member to acces such RP or Artsy SIMS for *free* now THAT would be a good deal !
Mesa
Jan 28th, 2012
Given that roleplaying or artististic sims fall in a non profit category the project could be reviewed by LL and given a certain period of time to be *allowed* to benifit of the special price. I mean, 295USD the first month, and ???USD after the special status is granted by LL.
Would that increase the Sale of Premium account enough to make the lab cover the expenses of their (not so up to date hardware) server and be profitable enough to stimulate the world growth ?
Jumpman Lane
Jan 28th, 2012
its a publicity stunt to promote a pervy auction! i say boycott hard alley!
Anguissette
Jan 29th, 2012
Linden Lab is charging us way too much. I pay a fee to LL when I buy $L. I pay a percentage of all profits I make in my Marketplace shop to LL. If I want to convert my earnings into real life dollars, I pay a big percentage fee to LL when I sell the currency I earnt on Marketplace, even though I already paid a fee on earning those $L, as previously stated. If I want to cash that money out to paypal rather than using it to pay for tier or memberships, I pay yet another fee. I also pay a fortune in rent for a tiny place to live in that is subject to lag and performance issues, and though the rent doesn’t go to LL directly, they still make tier off of the land, so they’re getting paid a princely sum. And I pay for premium membership, for which I can get in return some free items that often aren’t worth that price and a Linden home that is lagged to hell and so close to other Linden homes that I have a view of flashing ban lines through EVERY window.
If land were cheaper, more people would rent land, so LL would still make their money. Only, LL would also have more people buying more furniture and other home-filling stuff from Marketplace, so they’d make a lot more money in commissions that way. It seems insane that in this current economic climate that LL isn’t discounting more, in order to attract more custom.
Once again, I fail to understand something that LL does. Or doesn’t do.
Carol Darkthief
Jan 29th, 2012
@ Hope Dreier,
Checking the actual CDC report, does “20% to 25% of women in college reported experiencing an attempted or a completed rape in college.” sound like they’re counting anything trivial.
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/SV-DataSheet-a.pdf
Jumpman Lane
Jan 29th, 2012
well Hard Alley kept crashin! the perv contest didnt its projected donation goal. i guess hard alley’s doomed! hehehehehe hard what ya got planned next
LOL
Jan 30th, 2012
1\3 of all the Mainland has been abandoned for over 16 months…
How much $ does it cost Linden lab to keep thoes empty servers andsims Online?
I Liek Corm
Jan 31st, 2012
if they’re smart they’ll migrate their resources to a grid like osgrid, which has become pretty stable recently. plus they can co-locate a server that can run an entire grid itself for less than 1 sim costs in SL.
and I hate opensim (as well as SL, I consider further development on this platform a step back at this point, it’s almost 10 years old, and still manages to run like shit on new PCs.)
But if they’re smart and technically inclined (likely not, otherwise they wouldnt be spending their days in SL, they’d be out making money with those skills) they’d move off SL, and leave a tiny presence there advertising the new location to all the hard alley visitors before the lights go out.
Honestly, who thought that anyone could keep a private sim up on SL for more than a few short years? It costs too damn much and the dwindling userbase isnt worth it. SL has become niche, but the pricing structure is not for a niche userbase. If you want to go niche, and dont do anything crazy with physics (like these lamers dont do. animated sex shit doesnt need physics) then creating a few small sims or megaregions on an open grid (osgrid, openlife grid, etc) will probably be your viable alternative.
Dontspill McGinnis
Jan 31st, 2012
@ Yep
There is another group of people who have controversially been keeping lists, though their name somehow escapes me.
Coincidence?
Observer
Jan 31st, 2012
LL introduced mesh. All the hobbyists are leaving since they see what LL did. When the hobbyists close shop the estates renting to them drop regions. Now LL introduces arc muting to destroy the fashion business which is all that carried LL all these years. Everyone needs to just get the fuck over their SL addiction and move to alternative open sim based grids and cut LL off. And SL won’t last 3 more years. The board will close it when the revenue bleed exceeds a certain threshold and they will liquidate the assets.
IntLibber Brautigan
Feb 1st, 2012
The fact that LL has to introduce ARC muting rather than put money into making the client run properly on normal PC’s just demonstrates their complete lack of intelligence, their lack of understanding of basic economics and how the world they made really works. But hey, a lot of us have been telling them that for years to no avail.
GG3
Feb 1st, 2012
Ol Reader sits in his poppy pants
Boohoo Bohoo!
Twaking off to dogs and cats
Boohoo Bohoo!
Peter Pedant
Feb 2nd, 2012
Has anyone got reliable stats about the pecentage of Mainland that currently is either abandoned or For Sale? That would be interesting reading.
(After a quick look one hell of a lot seems to be For Sale).
marilyn murphy
Feb 3rd, 2012
holy cow. this had tongue in cheek so firmly planted from the git go it took a while to figure out it had a point at the end. very funny post. the message is, since you all got the joke, there is a school girl jail problem in second life that will end this web site if it is not addressed quickly. duh.
Persephone Bolero
Feb 4th, 2012
Linden Labs charges way too much for their sims, and it’s a business model doomed to fail if they don’t start lowering their costs. No doubt. But that’s just part of the story of what’s happening in Hard Alley and other places in SL.
The Alley was one of my first haunts when I started in SL in November 2006. I have friends I made there who are still my friends to this day. But few of us spend any time there anymore. In those days, HA was a world of ultimate “anything goes” liberty. It was magical to experience so much freedom, and I have very fond memories of my time there.
But today, there’s nothing shocking about the place. It’s old news. No offense to Hard Rust. I am eternally grateful and in utter admiration of what he created. He went where no one had gone before and took a lot of us with him. But nothing new can be new forever. And the appeal for old and new residents just isn’t there anymore like it used to be.
This is what I call the “stinkfist” syndrome. It’s not enough. I need more. Nothing seems to satisfy. I don’t want it. I just need it: to breathe, to feel, to know I’m alive.
So, what to do now? Keep digging. Spiral out and keep going.
Quite possibly, the platform LL offers no longer gives us the space to go where no one’s been, as Hard Rust did, and it’s time to draw outside the lines of SL’s confines. And LL’s insistence on maintaining ridiculously high tiers is really helping to push many of us out there, perhaps sooner than we would have on our own. The end of Hard Alley is not just a symptom of LL’s failing business. We may be coming to the end of our coloring book.
Mesa
Feb 5th, 2012
Hm, I dunno why the “End of the world” scenario is so popular these days ? Some mad trolls post where ever they see a fit these kinds of schizophrenic antisocial theories that some obscure force pushes the Lindens to run a business that have for sole goal to toture the users.
Yeah indeed, their *mad* plan is working they found a way to doom themselves over the past 10 years and it’s so rotten that they’ll prolly keep doing that for the next 10 years to come. You guys shoul be prepared to see their ship continue to slowly sink, thats obviosly their business model.
Please try to start a grid with the os code and be succesfull. Write a book. Start a Podcast, but damnit stop to publish the same delirious end of the world type of comments !
Jumpman Lane
Feb 5th, 2012
Say….is it march 10th yet! hehehehehehe
GG3
Feb 5th, 2012
I had land before. Nakies with big dongs invited themselves over all the time!
I took out the ol shotgun and shot a couple of em off my stuff in my rocking chair. But they still came even when i left for the day!
Nothing more satisfying than putting invisible detonators on furniture and stairways and an ugly face on the walls! If their going to do it, at least they’ll go out with a bang!