Hamlet Au over at New World Notes has broken a very interesting story regarding Linden Lab offering discounts to selected educational and non profit customers: Linden Lab Quietly Offering 50% Discounts to Select Non-Profit & Educational Groups Who’ve Given Up Their SL Sims.
Inara Pey has excellent additional coverage: LL offer discounted regions to educational and non-profit organisations on the QT.
I have a deep and passionate interest in education, both professionally and recreationally. This is not a good way to go about encouraging educational institutions to come back to Second Life, but I suspect Linden Lab know how badly they dropped the ball when they removed those discounts and that many wouldn’t come back even if hell froze over. The reason it’s not a good way of enticing educational institutions back is due to how vague the qualifying criteria for educational discounts is, indeed the criteria is almost non-existent, this isn’t how business planning works and at this stage of the year, many educational institutions are deep into business planning for the next academic year.
I suspect this is why Linden Lab are apparently targetting the recently departed, rather than the long departed, the recently departed are more likely to be able to make a business planning argument for keeping a Second Life sim if the costs are reduced by 50% or not being increased by 50%. However for the longer departed, they will look at such news with scorn and it’s hardly likely to improve their mood over the tier change Linden Lab made.
In the great scheme of things, for Colleges and Universties, the cost per year of a Second Life sim is not onerous. Compare it to the cost of yearly new hardware rollouts or something like the Microsoft Campus Agreement and it pales into insignificance. However a 50% rise is going to catch the eye of any eagle eyed finance director and when such a rise comes, as it did, in the middle of the financial year, it throws next year’s budgetary and business plans into turmoil, it creates instability.
If Linden Lab really want to regain the trust of educational institutions then their pricing structure needs to be clear, the qualifying criteria also needs to be clear.
Then we come to the wider matter, there are people educating people in using Second Life who do not get such discounts, there are people who want to create places for people to do something, aiding user retention, who do not qualify for discounts. Again we’re back into the arena of the tier being too damn high.
I welcome moves by Linden Lab to retain educators and not for profits, but there also needs to be clarity and Linden Lab need to address the wider issues, the clock really is ticking.
This move can do little harm but is unlikely to reverse the damage wrought by the 2010 decision. But I do wonder if this could be in reaction to current Edu already in Second Life forcing the Labs hand.
I have no clear idea of the sim numbers held by Edu/non profit as of now, but if there were significant numbers that had indicated to the Lab that their budgets no longer supported their SL presence and that they were terminating and seeking pastures new, it would be sensible for the Lab to try and find a solution. If this is the case then it would also be likely that the Lab would offer this to a more targeted group, at least to begin with.
The 2010 decision was difficult to fathom and crudely executed. It also damaged the Second Life brand.
Whatever the reason I hope that this new development achieves some success.