Inara Pey has reported that Lab says “no” to an independent future for Versu. Inara’s blog post links to a blog post from Emily Short, who had been trying to negotiate a deal to buy the IP and codebase for Versu after Linden Lab announced they would no longer be supporting the project :
After careful consideration, Linden Lab has decided to cease development and support for dio, Versu, and Creatorverse. We’re grateful for those who took the time to experiment with these products in their early days, but ultimately we have determined that due to a number of factors, we and our customers will be best served by focusing our efforts on continuing to provide exceptional service and compelling new experiences for the users of our other products.
So Linden Lab don’t see a future for the project, but like the boy with the ball, they’ve decided to take their ball home instead of letting someone else play with it. Emily had previously tried to convince Linden Lab to Open Source the project, which Linden Lab refused to do.
Then Emily tried to negotiate a deal to buy the IP and codebase, which as Emily announced on her blog, ended up with a no :
So for those who were curious, Linden has now given me a definite no about selling me the codebase and IP.
However there is another pain point in all of this for Emily. Blood and Laurels, which had just been completed has obviously now been shelved, but as Emily explains in the comments, Linden Lab own the text :
Blood and Laurels can’t meaningfully be rewritten — they own all the text and images as well as the engine it runs on. I was working on that story concept, on and off, for nearly 15 years, so having finally finished it and been really excited about it, only to have it vanish into ether, makes me sad. Still, on a total scale of possible bad things to have happen to one, it’s not very far along the bad thing spectrum. So we go on to the next.
Emily puts on quite a brave face there, but that must hurt. So why would Linden Lab do this? Why would they refuse to release something they have no interest in? There are a variety of reasons, they may think it’s worth more than Emily can offer them, which may sound strange for a product they appear to have no use for, but Tateru Nino explains it rather well in the comments of Emily’s blog post:
Whether it gets used or not, it represents an asset (that is value) on the books – which has a variety of uses for a corporation. It is regrettable, because I really wanted to see Versu go somewhere.
That’s the thing with the business world, sometimes a business has to play the evil empire role and lots of businesses play this role from time to time. Versu may not be going anywhere but it does have value. Whereas it seems cruel for Linden Lab to do this, they will have their reasons for doing so.
I do find this all extremely disappointing. Versu was a product I was very much looking forward to seeing, thinking that it will be shelved and become dusty when it has so much potential really is a crying shame but it does now look like it has reached the end of the road.
It dose look like the end of the road for Emily Short since she will probably be thinking how can she make a living from her talents now after Linden Lab is shutting the door in her face at every suggestion she makes to try and revive the Versu project in some other form. Perhaps she should consider developing a similar engine under a new name that works in Second Life and/or Opensim grids (certainly, for OS C# or some of the new OSSL & OSSLNPC functions are very useful for this). As you reported previously, Ciaran some Opensim grid owners – notably, Nara Malone of the Greyville Writers Colony – are exploring Interactive Fiction (or IF for short) as well and I have since found out others are working on code for building stories that invite travel across many regions and even onto other grids as the story unfolds. IF is a niche market I’m sure and Linden Lab dropped it after the departure of Mr Humble because I think the new CEO is clearly after mass market big time and has no time for niche. But Opensim can have many many niche activities and, collectively, they must eventually grow into a bigger market so there is another way to look at niche but perhaps it’s not the hard nose commercial way of looking at it. In any event, we at G+ Opensim Virtual aim to promote IF in the free Metaverse at every opportunity because I am sure the market for it is growing and I hope Emily Short looks at it. Please visit https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/116284417302234467612 to learn more about the open Metaverse and the cross grid community it has developed.