Around the 25th July 2007 parts of Second Life were rocked to their foundations when Robin Linden blogged – Wagering In Second Life: New Policy. This was pretty much the end of gambling in Second Life as we knew it, although skill games would still be allowed. The blog post stated :
While Linden Lab does not offer an online gambling service, Linden Lab and Second Life Residents must comply with state and federal laws applicable to regulated online gambling, even when both operators and players of the games reside outside of the US. And, because there are a variety of conflicting gambling regulations around the world we have chosen to restrict gambling in Second Life.
This ban did unleash some pain for Linden Lab themselves, but they took a business decision knowing that would happen. The issue for Linden Lab was user to user transactions, as explained in a blog post by Zee Linden entitled Second Life Economy Grows 15% from Q4 to Q1 :
User to User Transactions. Total user to user transactions, a measure of the gross domestic product in Second Life, grew from an annualized rate of $261 million in Q4 to just over $300 million in Q1. The economy has grown 33.6% since the low point after the gambling ban.
There’s a graph in that post that demonstrates how stark the drop was in user to user transactions. Happier times didn’t arrive until Q3 2008 when Zee again blogged, this time in a post entitled Q3 closed on a high note with an unusually strong September :
Resident-to-Resident Transactions Top $100 Million. Total Resident-to-Resident transactions, a measure of the gross domestic product in Second Life, grew 21% from the prior quarter to $102M – or just under $1.00 per user hour. The Q3 total translates to an annualized rate of $408 million. By breaking $100M for the first time since Q2 2007, the Second Life economy has now fully recovered from the restriction placed on games of chance in Second Life in mid-2007.
Personally I always felt that gambling money largely stayed in gambling circles, that’s why the rest of the Second Life economy didn’t experience great pain during this period. However Linden Lab would definitely have felt the pain. However the other issue with the gambling ban was in terms of people trying to circumvent the rules with cunning plans :
ok so u have a “free” casino, but to use the machines you have to put in special prims instead of L$, but to get these “special prims” you have to buy them, eg L$5 a peice then play with those, you either win/lose depending on the game, then if you win you can give these “special prims” to someone in exchange for some lindens – A sneaky way around the gambling ban
There were plenty of these sort of ideas around and none of them really worked because people wanted to gamble for Linden Dollars, not prims in an elaborate scheme that were likely to be deemed as against the wagering policy. The horse had bolted, although some horses kicked a lot more than others as they left.
So we move forward almost seven years and we see people suggesting :
Pay out in tokens lust like L$ that have no value ^^ said tokens can be exchanged at our terminal !
edit to add your need to buy tokens first of course ^^
That’s not going to fly because the token has value. Seven years ago we had people wondering if Money Trees, Sploders, Contests etc. were now banned. Seven years of Money Trees, Sploders and Contests going largely unhindered by Linden Lab governance we have people asking if Money Trees, Sploders, Contests and even Gachas are covered by the new skill gaming policy. The bottom line is going to be whether Linden Lab deem them to be, although one would imagine that after surviving for seven years after the gambling ban a bit of a precedent has been set.
Then there are the “Poker is a game of skill“, “Oh no it isn’t” exchanges. The discussions are eerily similar to those of seven years ago. I’m not for one moment suggesting people shouldn’t ask questions by the way, it’s important for people to ask questions but Linden Lab are highly unlikely to give any game that hasn’t been submitted to them for approval the green light.
The new issue is skill games, they were given the green light before, now they will require hoops to be jumped through. There’s a reason Linden Lab are doing this and it’s not just to annoy residents who have been happily making and playing skill games. That reason may well come to light in the near future, for now people just need to follow the rules and comply with Linden Lab’s policy.
I firmly believe Linden Lab are doing the right thing here, I’m not 100% convinced about their fee requirements and legal requirements, for example I’m not sure why both a creator and an operator need to produce legal opinion on said games, but the basics of the policy are encouraging. A regulated gaming market is far more attractive than an unregulated one. Then there’s the bonus for people who have land in regions where gaming operations exist, these locations can be busy, leading some residents to be miffed that they can’t get into their own region or that visitors have difficulty visiting, this policy should eliminate that issue.