Linden Lab have formally announced the return of a 50% discount for educational and Non Profit organisations. This is a welcome step and sees the return of something that should never have been taken away in the first place. The blog post informs us:
“We’re pleased to announce an update to Second Life pricing for educational and nonprofit institutions. Effective immediately, any accredited educational institution or any organization with a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit tax status (or equivalent) is eligible for a 50% discount on private region set-up costs and a 50% discount on private region maintenance costs.”
The discounts are effective immediately to any organisations who meet the criteria Linden Lab have set, which can be found here. The discounts apply to setup fees and tier costs for private regions and homesteads.
On top of this there’s a special orders website mentioned in the blog, this is for invoicing of educational and non profit organisations as well as invoicing for those aged 16-18 as their parent of guardian needs to pay the bill, details of the can be found here.
There’s a criteria to this, those eligible have to pay at least six months in advance. Invoicing is for setup fees, maintenance (tier) fees and bulk purhcasing Linden Dollars. The website is out of date as it mentions there’s no longer a discount for education, however as that’s now back, the first line will soon be changed… I hope!
I’m not sure why Linden Lab can’t invoice businesses in this manner to be honest, I’m sure some business owners would prefer this method of billing.
Earlier in the year, stories appeared claiming that Linden Lab were offering discounts to recently departed educators to woo them back. I covered that here. Linden Lab acknowledge this in their blog post:
“More recently, after reviewing our pricing, we have been offering this discount directly to individual organizations, but today we are happy to formalize this pricing, extend the discount to also include set-up costs, and open applications for all that are eligible.”
Whereas the previous position was a welcome move, it was also an inconsistent one, so it’s good to see that Linden Lab have now formulated a sensible policy around these discounts.
This is, as I said, a positive move. I don’t think it will do much to stop the the decline in private regions because quite frankly, the tier is too damn high for individuals. Whereas it’s good to see Linden Lab reaching out to educational and non profits again, they really need to start thinking about how they can reach out to others because tier is a stifling hurdle to creativity within Second Life.
However I do think we should welcome the positive move Linden Lab have made here, putting right a wrong is very welcome indeed.