Skill Gaming – Page 2

Cerise over at SLUniverse has noticed some new wiki pages being published by Linden Lab with regards to the thorny area of skill gaming in Second Life. The wiki pages are official Linden Lab wiki pages, which means I’m not supposed to distribute or copy any content, which is a shame. However I can paraphrase and link. The pages are :

However hot on Cerise’s heels are Linden Lab, who have now blogged about the subject, which means I can officially quote them : Coming Soon: Skill Gaming in Second Life. I should have had a wager on how long after Cerise’s post Linden Lab would blog, of course that would not have been a game of skill and is therefore forbidden! Where was I? Oh yes, skill gaming coming soon to Second Life. The coming soon part is important and is also likely to be controversial because skill gaming exists in Second Life today. However things will change on August 1st.

There’s a lot of detail in the blog post and more importantly the wiki pages, but here are the key points to chew over :

Skill games that offer Linden Dollar payouts will be allowed in Skill Gaming Regions only.
Only operators approved by Linden Lab will be allowed to run skill games that offer Linden Dollar payouts on Skill Gaming Regions.
Creators of skill games that wish to make them available in Second Life may do so only through Skill Gaming Regions and only after the games have been approved by Linden Lab.
Access to Skill Gaming Regions will be restricted to Second Life users who are of sufficient age and are located in a jurisdiction that Linden Lab permits for this kind of online gaming activity.

The devil is in the detail so I suggest that anybody interested reads the details carefully. However there are some very interesting concepts being applied by Linden Lab here. For a start, to apply for a Skill Gaming License …. wait that’s too long, I’m going to rename this as a SGL, ok? Right, to apply for a SGL you will have to pay a non-refundable fee of US$100.00. Note this is just for the application and will be applied even if your application is rejected.

The above fee and licence applies not only to those wishing to run skill games on their skill gaming region, it also applies to those who want to create skill games in Second Life. On top of this the fact that the tier is getting even higher! Skill gaming regions will cost US$345.00 a month in tier, instead of US$295.00.

Other fees are mentioned, for both creators, owners and those who want to operate skill gaming venues, they are all required to pay a quarterly licence fee . I do not know how much this quarterly licence fee will be, it is being waived through to December 31st but it would be nice if Linden Lab gave people an indication of how much this fee will be.

Continue reading “Coming Soon To Second Life – A Licence To Skill”