It appears dear readers that we’ve upgraded from Land Barons. Now they’re forming Cartels. This particular cartel is called Federation of Estate Owners. You can currently find their sim by searching for Land Center under regions. Also, they appear to have a website.
FedEO (every time I see this name I hear the Phil Collins song “Sussudio”) appears to be a collection of land owners who participate in Linden Lab’s Atlas Program. For those of you who don’t know The Atlas Program is run by the Lab and is designed to help out large estate owners. They receive discounts on sim purchases (full sims and homesteads) as well as discounts on tier as long as they increase their land size by something like 5% a quarter. It’s something like 440USD per full prim sim, 110USD per homestead. Tier is also apparently reduced which undercuts smaller land owners. But there you have it. This of course encourages the big land people to get fatter and then starting land owners to suffer. Here’s a couple links that explain in more detail about the Atlas Program.
If you look carefully at transcripts of office hours of Jack Linden on June 10, 2010 you will see that the owner of Regent Estates happened to be very upset that ACS was able to obtain Homesteads at a lower price with reduced tier. (see Regent Estate’s blog). It also looks like Equinox Pinon, also complaining in that June 10, 2010 transcript is also a part of the FedEO. On first glance, it looks like a few of the people who were upset over ACS getting reduced tier/cost of land are now participating in the same program. Official page for Jack Linden’s office hours although it looks like it’s not been updated in a while.
The list of participants in this cartel are as follows:
- ZoHa Islands
- Fruit Islands
- Segarra Estates
- Island Oasis Properties
- Costa Rica Sims
- Regent Estates
- Royal Properties
- Bell Estate
- Luxory Estates
- Tribe Islands
- dAlliez Estates
Hey look, BOSL has something to do with it. Color me fucking shocked. I am going to start calling these kids “Shady Crabs”. Whenever I see something shady there is a BOSL banner.
Now what does this hold for the future of Second Life? Well, let’s go by what we’ve seen so far.
- We will continue to see skewed listings in search favoring whoever is tugging on the Lab’s happy stick at the time.
- Smaller estate owners (There is a minimum amount of land you must own to be in FedEO and the Atlas Program by Linden Lab) will continue to struggle to make it
- Linden Lab will continue to favor tickets coming from their sacred cows rather than the common people. It is true Concierge support has dwindled but has it dwindled for ACS and FedEO?
- The SL Land market will continue to slide downward as it has been doing since the land bubble burst post 06 and the second slide after the Homestead debacle.
- Anshe Chung will become butthurt because she is not the only kid getting the special treatment
It’s easy to say “if you want to participate then spend the money to own over 20 sims and get into the program”. However the land market is so depressed right now that many abandon Homesteads because their resale worth is almost 0 dollars and there’s not enough users to get it rented out. Having a subset of landowners capable of offering land at tier prices while still making a profit is a pretty good advantage. Is the Atlas program just a way to ‘fake’ land growth for Linden Lab’s quarterly reports? What happens when these landowners get pissed off and demand something of the ‘Lab? These land owners are increasing their payments to Linden Lab quarterly. When you pay that sort of money if you don’t like how something is done you will complain. Linden Lab then has a choice – make their decision to keep a customer or risk losing one? While Linden Lab has a history of ignoring their customer I have a feeling that if one of these landowners demanded something, the Lab would provide it. This puts the Lab in an awkward position. Essentially the Lab has to cater to less than 1 percent of their customer base in order to keep them while the rest of us continue to put in tickets and receive the run around.
The bottom line is this. Second Life has changed. It is no longer a haven for just the creative, the internet people, the….fuck what did Phillip call us again? It’s now a business run by monkeys that only answers to a specific dollar and nothing more. If you happen to not be one of those favored residents/businesses then no soup for you! To be honest, it makes me sad.
SCD would love to hear from Linden Lab about the FedEO, giving preferential treatment in search, and the current land market.
 | Dr. Doom | JINX YOU OWE ME A COKE |
 | Sick Boy | it's pretty much the same issue as net neutrality |
 | kesseret | how is it like net neutrality? Comment on the post! |
| Sick Boy | I don't like being seen in public |
| kesseret | finallysnapped: i feel ya. Im allergic to the public too |
About Dancien
It has been brought to our attention that BOSL is involved because BOSL Estates is set to launch. Oh Joy?
Great blog post, and a big Ugh. This sheds light on some things..
I am sure you will respond in some snarky response here but I really don’t get your gripe. These people are consolidating to leverage their buying power – it happens all the time in a funny thing called real life. I mean if SL is going to be a “virtual economy” it is going to eventually mimic what happens in RL. I understand your concern about pricing but unfortunately this is something that protesting and blogging may not resolve. If anything the federation resolved it for themselves by banding together and coming at the Lab as a unified front. There is power in numbers and I mean unified numbers – not 10 people complaining about the same thing and not figuring out their own way to work the system. Success involves working the system to your advantage often. That’s reality.
And customer service declining??? I had an issue with my measly little premium account, got on chat and it was resolved in 15 minutes. I do get your issue with search though. I hate 2.0 search, for me it’s pretty much a joke. Sadly the only reason I stuck with Emerald was largely because of search. I much rather be on 2.0 – it runs a hell of a lot better on my pc. And now with Emerald’s future in question what am I going to do now *sigh*. And this ends the “unsane’s” too cents for now. Signing out.
Customer service is declining indeed.
It took FOUR WEEKS to get my concierge ticket replied to. FOUR WEEKS! When I asked in Concierge chat someone said what I needed to do could take up to 6 months. So I’m expected to pay 3k a year in fees to wait what can be up to 6 months? While Concierge support took their time on my ticket I paid 300 dollars for the full prim sim AND 95 dollars for the homestead that was part of that ticket waiting to get these 2 sims settled. I couldn’t rent either out b/c they were both involved in the ticket.
The issue is between the lines – this Atlas program basically admits that the current tier fee structure is too high! Clearly land growth won’t occur naturally with the current tier structure in place, so Linden Lab has to artifically grow it using a program like this. What this will do (and is doing) is oversaturating the land market.
Another in between the lines is that the people actually complaining that Anshe had the advantage with being the first person in the Atlas program are now quiet and not giving a crap about the rest of the residents land issues because they finally got what they wanted – discounted tier and sim purchase cost.
What I also know is medium to large landowners in the past have requested either discounts for bulk purchases or a higher level of support tier but have been denied. I am not sure what planet Linden Lab is coming from but if someone pays 8000 dollars a month I don’t think they should be expected to wait 1 month for support. Hell, I remember waiting ONE WEEK while my sim was completely unuseable. If you rezzed anything on it it disappeared forever, if you tp’ed into it you lost all attachments forever. At that time we were paying a significant amount per month. I think that’s pretty darn unreasonable.
Anyway, hope this clarifies a bit.
Ah yes I see what you are talking about in terms of the Lab and CS. The author more or less made blanket statement that CS sucks vs saying for example my friend Kess…blah, blah. When I go to sell a product I can’t say things like “Oh its just better.” I have to explain why its better to up my products position in the decision making process.
I have for the most part had great experiences with The Lab so when someone says CS sucks with no examples, I am going to come back and say why I dont believe that statement.
<3
CS is bollocks, i downgraded my account as LL stopped live chat between midnight and 8amSLT, which is when im online, so I cant get any Live support at all
Before you go coloring yourself funcking shocked, you should probably know that BOSL is not envolved in any of this. They (Patch Thibaud and Frolic) were just kind enough to build this for us in less than 2 weeks.
Do your homework!
So Captain Courageous, which one are you?
Hi Dancien,
Interesting post. Not very accurate, but interesting.
You don’t know me, so by way of brief introduction: hi! I’m Lizard Howl, co-owner of Segarra Estates. I’m not going to address your various speculations, but I will address some of your conclusions.
First, I certainly don’t tug on anyone’s happy stick (except possibly my own), and I pay no attention at all to Search listings or results. I have no idea how it works, or why, and I don’t care.
Second, I disagree that a starting land dealer today is disadvantaged by any Linden Labs program (real or imagined). I’ve been building my Estate for three years now and from what I see new dealers starting today have it much much easier than I did when I started. Anyone in SL can create their own opportunity, and grow their Estate to whatever size, if they have the capital (money), skills, time, willingness, and energy to put into it.
Third, while I’m not a sacred cow (I’m a lizard!), I do have a slight edge on tickets since I qualify for Extended Support. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:What_is_Extended_Support
This means the Lindens address my tickets more quickly than they do for someone who pays less than $5,000 USD in tier. Considering I pay Linden Labs roughly $20,000 USD per month in tier, I’m happy they pay attention to my tickets!
Having said that, I think Concierge support has gotten worse over the last 2 years. I have no idea what support is like for ACS, but I’m pretty sure its not much different for me than it is for you.
Fourth, well, I won’t speculate about what the “land market” will or won’t do. I work hard every day to grow my business, take care of our customers, and get a good return on the many thousands of dollars I have invested in Second Life. I’m not going to stop any time soon.
Fifth, I’m quite sure whatever I do in my little 90 region Estate is not going to make one iota of difference to Anshe Chung or anyone else who has 500+ regions.
Have fun, good luck, and let me know if you need any land, I have plenty!
Lizard Howl
Segarra Estates Owner
I don’t really get what the bitching is about either. So what, they should be discounted, as long as they pass it on to people like me who rent land, I couldn’t care less and nor does the average SL resident
Well I think as soon as Damien would own a couple of sims and would be invited to join the FedEo he would immediately shut up and be delighted. Those who not benefit from something will always complain and be against it. That’s human nature. Fortunately not everybody has a blog to post.
What they do is no crime, it is no violation of the TOS or any other rule and it is no unfair behaviour. They simply do what is best for their business and that is what every smart business owner would do. Everybody is invited to join, it is no closed organisation, all you have to do is to make sure you own enough land. The minimum is 25 sims.
The funny thing is, Anshe is taking them for a ride…With all the fresh homesteads she recieved, she’s moving citizens to them whilst tiering down her full prim sims.
She knows at the end of the day she can charge same for her homestead space and make way more profit while cutting costs on the full prims.
But sense from the Lab definitely isnt what it used to be…Just look at this Jira from the key programmer behind the marketplace.
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-2641
Jack Linden has been promising more transparency for MONTHS to the Concierge group. There’s nothing stopping him from doing it, if he wanted to…He just doesn’t want to let the cat out of the bag on just how much of a leg-up these large estates were given.