Linden lab eliminates subsidized “first land”
By Adam Reuters
SECOND LIFE, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Linden Lab has ended a subsidized real estate program known as “first land,” which allowed new premium users to buy property for L$1 per meter.
“Increasingly we have found that these cheap L$1 per meter parcels were not benefitting those people as intended. Because of the low price, they were being immediately sold, or bought via alts, purely for profit,” Jack Linden said in a blog post. “We have discussed many methods to ensure that First Land is used as intended but have decided that there is no way to do this without significantly impacting on resident freedoms.”
The move comes amid a steep run-up in Second Life real estate pricing, due in large part to a severe land shortage. The average price of a square meter of land rose from L$6.67 in November to L$12.30 in January, making land at L$1 per meter hugely desirable and profitable to speculators.
Land developers and speculators created alt accounts and used automated “bots” to snatch up land as soon as it became available, making it difficult for beginners to take advantage of the first land program.
Xon Emoto (in real life, Hanno Tietgens from Hamburg, Germany) has been a resident of Second Life since December and a premium member for the last two months. He told Reuters that his attempts to buy first land were “a time-consuming disaster.”
“I found it impossible to find any,” he said.
Linden Lab Chief Financial Officer John Zdanowski aka Zee Linden told Reuters last week that he expects real estate prices to return to lower levels as the company creates more land, including a new continent.
The elimination of first land will make premium memberships, which currently cost US$9.95 per month, less attractive to Second Life residents, although they will still carry a monthly stipend of L$1200 (US$4.48 at Tuesday’s exchange rate). Second Life had 57,702
premium members at the end of January, a tiny fraction of its 2 million unique users.
“The free land and the free money you get when you sell it were nice perks,” said Second Life resident Tammy Nowotny (in real life, Timothy Horrigan of Durham, North Carolina). “The free land was a heck of a good program when they were still putting it up.”
Nowotny said although she was disappointed by the end of the program, she would still keep her premium membership.
Linden Lab also announced on Friday that when the grid comes under severe pressure, it will restrict access to premium users as well as those who own land or have purchased money on the Lindex currency exchange.
