First of all, for the purposes of full disclosure, I am a paying customer of SL Go from OnLive. I pay a monthly fee of £6.95 for unlimited access, other than the times when there’s server maintenance going on, which will be happening around now on the server I was logged into.
I also like OnLive because they provide a press pack with icons! I like this a lot and wish more companies provided such icons for stories on their products. Now that being said, let’s move on to the big news, the news that new customers of SL Go can now pay with Linden Dollars : SL Go – Now, Pay with L$ :
For a limited time, if you sign up for SL Go with a NEW USER account you can buy weekly subscriptions in-world using Linden Dollars (L$). There is a private sign up booth where you can create your free SL Go account, and then pay for subscriptions using L$. Each week is only L$650, and you can buy up to 4 weeks at a time. Also, you can return and renew or extend your subscription in-world at any time.
This is a very interesting development. Inara Pey covered this yesterday : OnLive announce pilot L$ payment programme for new SL Go users. Inara’s post is worth reading because Dennis Harper of OnLive contacted Inara to provide some extra information.
An important point to note is that the option to pay for the service using Linden Dollars is only available to new users. This means I can’t use that option :
Sorry, but existing users with monthly subscriptions will need to wait for this feature. It is much more complex to transition an account from US Dollars to Linden Dollars. We will be bringing this feature to you soon.
Paying for SL Go with L$ has been one of the most common requests we have received in our forums and chat rooms. We are very excited to offer this now to new users. We hope this makes it much easier for you to be a part of our growing SL Go community.
However if you’ve never used SL Go before then this is an option that may appeal to you because this is far from the only time that Second Life customers have requested the option to pay for services in Linden Dollars, rather than cold hard cash.
When I arrived at the information point on the island of Sunny Dream (Home of SL Go) a few people were gathered around checking out the information. An OnLive representative was there, floating in the air for some reason, providing feedback.
An interesting part of this initiative from OnLive is that you don’t have to provide any personal information to signup for the service. The information boards state that you don’t have to add a credit card or even provide your real name to signup for this service using the Linden Dollar option. The service can be paid for on a weekly basis and you can pay in advance for up to four weeks of the service. Unfortunately there’s no recurring payment option, which is something people in Second Life would like to see for a variety of services.
In the past Linden Lab have signed up with third parties to offer additional services. I can recall going to office hours whereby an advertising initiative was offered that would allow people to advertise on Second Life properties such as the website. The flaw in the plan, as many users pointed out in the meetings, was that this service required people to pay for said advertising with a credit card, rather than being able to use their Linden Dollar balance to pay for those adverts.
Therefore the option to use a service such as SL Go with Linden Dollars is one that will be interesting to watch to see if further development of Linden Dollar payment options is something that is worth developing. This isn’t tjhat straight forward an issue, there are technical as well as legal issues that everyone needs to be mindful of.
The price of L$695 a week compares very favourably with the price of paying with a credit card. Whereas it does technically cost a few cents or pence more, you have to take into account that if you wanted to withdraw your money from Second Life to pay for the monthly service, you’d be hit with Paypal fees which would reduce the value of your Linden Dollars.
Another interesting part of this development is that I discovered Sunny Dream, the home of SL Go in Second Life. SL Go may not be for you, but the island is rather pretty, features a nice shipwrecked ship which may or may not contain ghost pirates and buried treasure.
There’s also an area where you can watch or even ride a dolphin, which is a fun thing to do.
SLURL To Sunny Dream : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sunny%20Dream/230/147/22