Jack Linden has announced on the blog, that he is indeed leaving Linden Lab, he also briefly popped to his scheduled office hour to say goodbye.
Enter The Dragon ….. Fish
A year or so ago Linden Lab entered into a business relationship with Dragonfish, the payment processing arm of 888.com, as reported here. Err when did Massively become linked to Joystiq.com? Anyway, I digress, the deal was designed to expand payment options, allow people to pay in local currencies if they’re outside the USA yadda yadda yadda.
This news was then swiftly forgotten as nothing seemed to happen, nothing that is until recently, as observed in a comment on my last blog post where someone points out payment via Paypal is going to be problematic in the future as the payment wiki states that payment via American Express and Paypal is not currently an option.
Concerns about this are raised on this thread on the blogrums and this thread at SLUniverse. The first thing to note here is that the payment wiki I linked to earlier gives an email support address of @888.com, this is why I believe Dragonfish are processing these payments, rather than Linden Lab. Why Dragonfish, or whomever is the payment processing arm of 888.com these days, have a problem with Paypal and American Express I don’t know, I do know that many people have stated that American Express impose high merchant fees for their payments, but give discounts for bulk deals, so maybe that’s the case or maybe it’s the link to online gambling that’s the problem for American Express and Paypal. I don’t know, I do know that the Paypal issue is a problem that is likely to fester though. The really odd thing is that PayPal is a payment option for 888’s online casino sites, so why is not acceptable for Second Life? Continue reading “Enter The Dragon ….. Fish”
What Are Linden Lab playing at with Classifieds?
I don’t know if it’s my mood that has added to my annoyance with the latest blog and emails about classifieds, I have the cough from hell and I’m currently doing an extremely impressive impression of Grumpy, but the events have certainly rubbed me up the wrong way. First of all I awake from a nap to check my emails and find emails from LL telling me how they’ve nerfed inworld classifieds, and of course they go with the tired old BS of telling me this nerf is an imporvement and then I read Nelson’s blog post about a new classified beta, this right after reading how they are nerfing inworld classifieds.
They should be treated as separate issues, although one can’t help but wonder if the deliberate and destructive nature of LL’s approach to inworld classifieds is to encourage the big players to move to the new system as well as giving them advantages inworld that their classifieds wouldn’t previously have had, again we seem to be back to LL being hostile to medium to small business owners, I have no idea why they do this. Continue reading “What Are Linden Lab playing at with Classifieds?”
Terrence Linden Talks To The Teens
Blaze Borgin, a teen grid resident, has posted a log of yesterday’s meeting between Terrence Linden and the teens (sounds like the title of a bad family comedy) here.
I must admit, it doesn’t fail to disappoint, it does however make it abundantly clear that the environment remains unsuitable for teens and Linden Lab are burying their heads in the sand on this merger. An example can be seen with regards to the sticky area of mature and PG sims bordering each other, which has long been an issue on mainland, Terrence completely dodges the issue:
Terrence Linden: to clarify on the G-rated regions question, about 80% of G-rated regions are not on the Mainland, and do not border M rated regions. Continue reading “Terrence Linden Talks To The Teens”
Battlestar Galactica Content Allegedly Removed
The solution to the grid merger is taking shape, Linden Lab just need to hire Deathwing, he can cause chaos, shatter the world and one of the continents can become the teen continent, and then we can take it from there, problem solved, they can get Kim Linden on the case after the USA holiday weekend.
However today, let’s take a look at the Battlestar Galactica rumpus, reported by Hamlet over at New World Notes, here, and referring to an article in the Harrisburg Second Life Examiner, here. The story reports of a rumour that Universal City Studios Inc. have complained to Linden Lab about Battlestar Galactica content being sold and used within Second Life, and that Linden Lab have removed the offending content, Hamlet points out that a sim is missing but it’s not clear if the sim has been missing for a while or is caught up in this. The Harrisburg Second Life examiner reports that the following message was sent to Battlestar Galactica related sim owners or officers: Continue reading “Battlestar Galactica Content Allegedly Removed”