A couple of weeks ago, the legendary Tyche “Statto” Shepherd reported that the grid had shrunk by seventy two regions, although more concerning was that the grid had lost seventy four private regions, two Linden owned new regions had saved the day!
This was picked up as a sign that Linden Lab needed to do something, losing seventy two regions isn’t good. However if you follow Tyche’s stats (and they are awesome) then you’ll see that this has been a trend in recent months, with private regions being shed from the grid, but there are also weeks when private regions increase, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
Case in point being the last two weeks, on May 8th Tyche reported that the grid had grew by thirteen regions, but nineteen of those thirteen regions were private regions, the reason the grid didn’t grow by nineteen regions is because Linden Lab removed six regions they owned, but there was a comeback for the private regions.
On May 15th Tyche reported that the grid had grew by thirteen regions, but only seven of these were private regions, six were Linden owned, quite possibly the ones that went off the week before! So after the fall of seventy four private regions, we’ve seen twenty six added back.
We currently have 31,386 regions on the grid, of which 24,508 are private estates. This isn’t a record, as I’m sure you’ve figured out since we lost seventy two a couple of weeks ago, but it’s still a healthy figure.
If you want to follow Tyche’s info, then go to http://gridsurvey.com/ it’s a wonderful resource full of information about land, which channel you’re on, old incident reports, who took photos on your sim, there’s so much there. Linden Lab should slip Tyche some spending money for the excellent work she does!
However the bottom line here, yes we’ve lost some regions, but in general, things are holding up well considering the economic crisis the world has been facing.
I commented on this a couple of weeks back after Hamlet (again) went overboard citing the April month-end “losses” as a sure sign SL is sinking.
Unsurprisingly, he ignored the fact that March saw a similar “loss”, followed by a healthy pick-up in April that actually lead to LL’s private sim tier incoming *increasing* by 1%.
Indeed, his entire article overlooked the fact that this has been a trend for a while now (large shedding at the end of the month (presumably because people are reaching the end of their billing cycle followed by a gradual recovery through the month to leave things pretty much balanced) – presumably to generate more of a “Shock horror!” element to reportage.
You can bet your bottom dollar that he won’t be reporting on the “recovery” May has seen, either, as that doesn’t fit his position that SL is doomed unless it heeds his call to “go Facebook”.
There’s also the point that less doesn’t mean less for Linden lab, a three homestead conversion into a full prim sim means a minus two on region count but not a minus in terms of revenue.
The trend has been downward generally, there was a sixty sim loss in March and yes, then there was recovery, the seventy sim loss has been ridiculously overplayed and whereas I do think there’s some merit in suggesting LL need other revenue streams, Facebook ain’t the answer there.