Virtual Worlds – Page 177

November 19, 2013

Linden Lab Blog To Clarify Tax Information Requirement

Having previously reported that Second Life merchants had been reporting they’d been sent forms related to tax information by Linden Lab, I’m pleased to see that Linden Lab have now issued a blog post regarding the situation. There are still some remaining questions regarding this, some Linden Lab may have the answers to and others the IRS will be the only people with the answers.

The post says:

“The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires Linden Lab to collect and retain Form W-9 (for U.S. residents) and Form W-8BEN (for non-U.S. residents) at certain transaction volumes. If you reach the transaction threshold and we do not have your completed and signed W-9 or W-8BEN on file, we are required to withhold funds from your account (at the current rate of 28% of your gross amounts received). Additionally, for U.S. residents with 200 or more transactions with a total amount in excess of $20,000 in a calendar year, we are required to file a Form 1099-K with the IRS reporting those transactions for that year.

If you are required to submit a W-9 or W-8BEN form to us, we will email you before the end of the year with instructions on how to do so. Please follow the instructions to complete and submit the required Form W-9 or W-8BEN within thirty (30) days of receipt. You will only need to complete this paperwork once unless your information changes from year-to-year. If you do not receive an email from Linden Lab, we do not need you to complete these forms.”

One would hope that there will be an accompanying knowledgebase article or wiki reference regarding this. As I stated in my previous post on the subject, the likes of Steam and Paypal have information regarding this on their websites.

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November 19, 2013

Why Don’t Amazon, Paypal or Linden Lab offer Virtual Currency Exchanges To Other Business?

One of the issues regarding Cloud Party is the inability to cash out. This is understandable as content creators are more likely to be tempted to engage if they can find financial reward. Cloud Party do allow you to pay for services such as island rentals using Cloud Party coins, so there is a degree of economic movement but it stays firmly within Cloud Party.

Kitely on the other hand allow people to list items on their marketplace with the option of a Paypal payment as well as Kitely credits. There’s no cashing out from Kitely but paypal payments are a way of a merchant getting cold hard cash. Again, like Cloud Party, the inworld currency can be used to pay for services.

However what people would really like to be able to do is to sell Cloud Party coins or Kitely credits in the same manner as Linden Dollars can be bought and sold. The beauty of this solution is that it adds an added level of consumer confidence, because when they make a purchase, they are doing so with an inworld currency, they aren’t handing over details to a stranger in a virtual land. That’s the beauty of the virtual currency.

Recent legislation in the USA has given platform providers the heebie jeebies about users selling virtual currencies, hence why they aren’t that widely available. However you would think that someone would seize the opportunity to tap into this market, be that Paypal, Amazon or even Linden Lab.

Now I’m sure plenty of companies would like the idea of selling virtual currencies to consumers, the part they aren’t so keen on is allowing users to sell that virtual currency. Linden Lab of course do this with the Lindex, so why can’t they expand this to offering a service to other companies?

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November 18, 2013

Dwarfins Continued Evolvement Is Good For Second Life

The Dwarfins team have been busy evolving the Dwarfin experience, back in October they announced the release of achivements to compliment the breedable experience. More achievements were announced shortly after with more in the pipeline.

Achievements add a new dimension to the Dwarfin experience, rather than just concentrating on traits you can now pick up bonuses along the way. Most of the achievements are birth related, for example if you manage to birth a Dwarfin with 7 miner traits, you wll earn the 7T miner achievement. This gives a lease of life to miner traits. However there are a couple of traits that aren’t birth related, for example if you mine up 8 special items then you earn the Dirt Master award …..

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November 17, 2013November 17, 2013

Isle Of Dee Refugees Find New Home

Rather freakily, as I was getting this image of the Isle Of Dee before the storm caused by the tier monster sunk the island, “We’ll Meet Again” started playing on the stream from the machinima expo. Which is very fitting because for many of the evacuees from the old Isle Of Dee, they will indeed be meeting again.

The calm before the storm above was soon replaced by Dee sinking beneath the waves, even the Goblin King couldn’t escape the barrage:

The citizens fled, on ships, there are always ships involved. Tales of the adventures that took place on those ships may or may not be told:

Those ships took the hardy citizens to a halfway house but now I’m reliably informed they’ve also found a new place to call home.

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