Will Second Life Ever Be Able To Address International Issues?

I was listening to MetaReality Podcast over the weekend when Qarl mentioned that Second Life under Mark Kingdon had been considering ways to bring back gambling, according to some it has never really gone away, but the days of casinos on the landscape are certainly long gone.

This remined me that I’d been reading about real money Facebook apps: Facebook strikes deal with 888 to launch more real-money gaming apps in the UK. The key here being the in the UK part, so as to not fall foul of laws regarding online gambling in jurisdictions where it’s not allowed.

A quick recap on gambling in Second Life, as far as I’m aware it was never licensed. However it was popular and it did require land, so it generated tier revenue. Linden Lab took a business decision to ban it, but I can recall a forum or blog post where Zee Linden, former CFO, said they had been considering finding a way to bring it back. However that has never happened.

When Linden Lab struck a deal with Dragonfish to process payments, I wondered if this was to do with introducing gambling back to Second Life, as Dragonfish are related to 888, the same 888 who are introducing gaming apps to Facebook. When you used to email support, they had an 888 address. This was for the now defunct Local Payments System, US residents didn’t have their payments processed in this fashion.

Now one way of bringing gambling back to Second Life would have been to do what Facebook are doing, and restrict it to residents of a certain country, so for example if 888 had opened an 888 sim, only UK residents would be able to enter. This would obviously be problematic, especially as gambling winnings would find their way into the wider economy, but it does raise the issue of restrictions on Second Life based on the geographic location of Linden Lab, rather than their customers.

I’m not saying that finding a legal way to bring back gambling would bring back the boom times of land for gambling sims, because legal gambling is a different kettle of fish. A lot of people hosted poker tournaments back in the day, this wouldn’t fly if you needed to be a licensed authority, but it is interesting that other companies can restrict access to their apps to countries of residence where said activity is legal. We see this a lot on the World Wide Web itself and this may explain why companies have European, US and Asian versions of their business, it’s easy to process payments and keep in good standing with authorities in different parts of the world if you play nicely.

I can recall, although I can’t find the quote, Philip Linden once saying that Second Life should not have to play to the lowest common denominator, at that time I wondered if they were looking into restricing access to certain content based on the location of the customer.

Leaving gambling aside, as virtual worlds grow (and they will in one form or another) these international issues will need to be addressed at some point. There are pro”s and cons from providing such an approach and in the main I think Linden Lab have got it right here, chopping people out of certain activities would lead to confusion and disappointment, but as virtual worlds grow the sort of solution that Facebook and 888 are engaging with, will become a solution that virtual worlds do consider.

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