Cecilia D’Anastasio’s recent article for Kotaku regarding Linden Lab’s Sansar has certainly started some heated discussions and one point of major discussion has been regarding subscription pricing. Cecilia wrote :
Right now, only 2,000 select virtual artists, builders and designers have access to Sansar, but later this summer, Sansar will open its doors to everybody with its open beta. Users may pay a small subscription for access.
Hamlet Au over at New World Notes covered Cecilia’s post : Sansar May Launch With “Small Subscription” Fee, Kotaku Reports. with Hamlet pondering whether this would be a subscription model similar to that used by World of Warcraft.
The comments on the New World Notes article are lively, but into the fray stepped Gray of The Lab from San Francisco, AKA Peter Gray, senior director of global communications for Linden Lab.
Peter Gray’s comment should hopefully clear up any confusion about whether Sansar will have a free to access option :
You will be able to access Sansar for free.
There will also be subscription packages available, and the details of those offerings and pricing will be announced at the opening of creator beta this summer.
So in terms of a subscription, it sounds like the classic free to play option with benefits for subscriptions. A thing to bear in mind at this point is that we don’t yet know how expensive Sansar subscriptions will be and what they will cover, but a free to access option is the only really sensible option at this point in time.
The images used in this post are courtesy of Linden Lab’s Flickr Photo Gallery : https://www.flickr.com/photos/lindenlab/sets/