Friday, November 20, 2009

Outrageous!


XStreet Product Boxes


No XStreet Product Boxes

Written 20 November, 2009

Outrageous!


My friend Tozh Taurog sent me this URL about a recent decision by the Lindens in regard to merchandise on XStreet.

"In a move that continues to shake the Second Life community of content creators, merchants, and consumers, Linden Labs has declared that free virtual content will no longer be searchable without listing payments on their website portal; and additional fees will be added with the intention of discouraging content listed for inexpensive selling prices. The move is particularly troubling because the online Web listing service is the de facto search engine for virtual content in Second Life, since the in-world search tools are unable to provide information about an object beyond name and location — basic textual descriptions, pictures, or descriptions of licensing, size, or content-category are not possible. While initially the change was explained as a response to community feedback, the residents involved in this feedback process were revealed to be fewer than 100 in number, primarily larger merchants among a community of millions. Within 24 hours of the announcement, the feedback thread has swelled to over 1,000 overwhelmingly negative responses. Additionally, in-world protests have erupted throughout the day, and over 20,000 objects have been voluntarily removed from the online store by angered merchants."

This is so outrageous I had to go outside and walk a couple of miles to even begin to cool down.

What seems to have happened is that a few merchants complained about their sales being negatively affected by freebies. The Lindens asked for feedback on, of all places, a merchants' forum. Then they had three office meetings no one knew about, and announced the policy as a done deal.

Bottom line is we will have to pay for our freebies on XStreet, and pay $10 per month per item for listening items that have a price.

I'm heading to my land on Jessgate right now to deactive my SLEX boxes.

More on this later.

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