I reported a while back, here and here, that Linden Lab was trying to make a free life difficult to impossible in Second Life. They’ve eliminated most forms of gambling, eliminated almost all camping, and now they are effectively eliminating most freebies and cheapies being offered on XStreet SL.
Miranda Milestone, of Milestone Creations, sent this notice out to her subscribers:
Hello,
When I came home from work today I was looking forward to being able to spend a few hours on Second Life in order to create some new items and chat with friends. But instead I logged on to the following notecard I got in the Free*Style group:
“Linden Lab is killing freebies on xstreet. There is a survey running on this topic you might be interested in voting on to express your opinion:
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/11/survey-on-xstreetsl-freebies-policy.html
Here is the blog announcement which also covers the mandatory monthly listing fees for anything on xstreet (important if you are a merchant):
https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/commerce/blog/2009/11/18/roadmap–managing-freebies-on-xstreet-sl
And the Commerce Forums disussion:
https://blogs.secondlife.com/message/38291#38291
Of course thare are additional discussions not under Linden Lab control at other SL related forums too.”
I brought this up to the Fabfree admin a few months ago, when camping was being sharply curtailed, because I could see where this was headed. I was told that freebies and dollarbies would never be eliminated because SL couldn’t control what price a shop owner or designer set for their goods.
Well, maybe LL can’t control the price, but they can “tax” the hell out of low priced goods to the point where it makes no sense for shop owners and designers to offer dollarbies or freebies anymore. If Linden Labs is already taking this route on XStreet SL, can a similar policy on the grid be far behind?
Linden Labs would like us all to be paid members. Freebies, dollarbies, camping, and gambling allow a great number of SL users to have free accounts, and to live our Second Lives quite well on those free accounts. We can own businesses on free accounts (look for this to change in the future) and to own land on free accounts (this will likely change too), both of which allow us to make a SL living without having to own a paid account.
Thank you to Freestyle for sending this information out to their group members, and thank you Miranda for passing this important information on to your group members.
To this end, I have closed my XStreet SL shop. Art from my gallery and products from [M&K] Hidden Treasures can now be purchased only in world.