Second Life: No, You Don't Get to Dictate What Creators Do

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In Second Life, anyone can be a creator, and make their creations available to the virtual world for purchase, and some have found major success with this. Others, it exists, maybe, as more of a hobby. For me, that’s mostly what it is, for now. But this all comes with a downside, because, like in the real world, the customer sometimes thinks they know best, and if you’ve ever worked retail, you know how very wrong that is.

I touched on this topic a little bit via Mastodon while I was on break at work, but I wanted to break it down in more detail, because this is a problem I see a lot of in Second Life. I’m not saying this is every person in the virtual world who buys things, but it is more or less, a pretty pervasive idea that I don’t think gets challenged enough. But, to break that down, basically, when people sell things in Second Life, you can sell it with permissions that allow a buyer to modify your content to their liking. You can also choose not to do this, in order to keep your work the way it is when it’s sold (especially if you want to sell different variations, which is, again, entirely up to the creator). Some people have a very big problem with the latter …

This is a screenshot of a Reddit post that got a lot of traction … a lot of people in agreement, and because Reddit is a place where dissenting opinions get buried and heckled, I felt it a good idea to write it all up here. So, let’s tear this apart, shall we?

As I'm customising my avatar more and getting more creative. I'm realising that there's no good reason for 99% of clothing to be non mod Perm (especially if it's a fatpack).

A lot of this language will probably be pretty alien to people who don’t peruse Second Life, so … “fatpack” is something creators make that contain all variations of a certain product, such as a shirt. We’ll go with that. So, a creator makes a black shirt, and a white shirt, and then maybe five other colors, and they sell them all individually. Then, what they’ll do, is they’ll make a pack that contains all of them together, along with, maybe, a couple bonuses for buying that pack, i.e., a “fatpack.”

I don’t see any real problem with this, but we’ll get into that when I’m done here.

This Redditor believes there’s “no good reason” for most clothing to not to be modifiable by the buyer. And I say, there is a good reason! If a creator wants to sell their virtual clothing in specific colors, patterns and textures, and not allow people to change this, that’s up to them! You are not the person running the store. You are not the person creating these things. And most of it is sold for prices below 2000 linden.

A fatpack will usually run anywhere between 600 to 1200 linden. And maybe you’re thinking, “Whoa, is that expensive?”

No.

Some people look at that pricing, within Second Life, and they’ll call it expensive. They always do. But why don’t we look at the actual exchange rate.

So … for less than a value meal at McDonalds, or a cup of coffee at Starbucks, you can buy an entire set of clothing? For a little bit less than 5 dollars USD?

Another way to look at this, is that people are spending hours and hours on making clothing and accessories for people to buy, to customize their avatars, and to spice up their little virtual lives, for almost nothing. For less than a Fiverr gig. When, in the real world, if I were making you a custom 3D modeled product for a game, with complete textures, UV mapping, skeleton rigging, and weight painting … I would charge you at least 500 dollars.

Fortunately, we’re talking about Second Life, where all of that work is done behind-the-scenes, and people sell things at prices that are easily digestible to the masses, which, I think is beyond fair. It’s almost highway robbery.

Removing hidden faces, unliking and linking items is a must. Especially because you often start running against attachment limits.

We step into the next point of this user’s argument, in that, their perceived issue, is that clothing in link-sets should be able to be de-linked, because sometimes you run into an issue where your avatar has too many attachments, and you can’t wear something that you want. And, a linkset, is basically just gluing different items together so that they count more as one, but, even in doing that, they still cost server resources.

So you can only attach so many resources to your avatar until you hit that limit, you know, so that you don’t become a walking DDoS.

But … what’s the attachment limit in 2025, for a Second Life avatar?

Quoted directly from the Second Life Wiki, “Max. # of attachments - 38 combined HUD and body attachments.”

An outfit someone might wear, will usually consist of a top, a bottom, and maybe shoes. So we’re talking … three to four attachment points. But then, of course, you have to account for your body, whether the hands and feet are separate, your hair, maybe custom eyes, and even fingernails.

So what would that run you?

To be generous, we’ll just say … 15. Even though that’s more than what I’ve listed, we’ll go with 15, to be fair to the original quoted post.

You’ve still got 23 additional attachment points.

Now, some people like to wear HUDs, like body HUDs that make hiding texture faces on your body easier (although, I’m not sure why you would wear this at all times), or gaming HUDs, like a system that makes it so your avatar is a vampire, or sexual HUDs that make your virtual life a little more … spicy. And, of course, you probably walk around with the HUD for your head on, at least, sometimes, so that you can control your eye and mouth movements.

But … that’s like, maybe 3 to 5 more attachment points.

You’ve still got a lot to go.

I can’t remember if server weight is counted in addition to attachment points, but we’ll just say, it is, and some of these attachments are taking up multiple points. Odds are, you’ve still got room to put more stuff on your avatar.

My point here, is that, in most cases, this is a complete non-issue, and it’s an excuse being made in order to aid the original argument. That creator’s should do what non-creator’s say, or else. And maybe you’re thinking, “Wh … what do you mean by that?”

Just wait.

When you're new, you don't care and I think it's a bit cash grabby to sell non mod Items with shiny branding pages and stores.

There are so many stores that are less shiny on the outside but their stuff is amazing and mod Perm.

I’m going to tackle both of these points together, because this is already pretty long. So. This kind of circles back to my point on pricing, and how utterly entitled it is to say that creators in Second Life are pushing out “cash grabs” when they decide they want to sell specific colors and designs, that you can’t rip out and replace with … whatever.

That sounds, not just entitled, but … and this is a little ironic, but greedy.

I’m not sure what being “new” has to do with this.

But then in their continued final point, basically, stores that aren’t flashy and less established are, apparently, more inclined to sell their products with the ability to tear things apart, and do with them whatever a customer pleases. And hey, that’s also fine! If someone wants to sell their products in a way that makes it so customers can do whatever they want, go ahead!

There is no wrong way to be a creator in Second Life, and you can do whatever you want, because it is your work.

And now, we’re going to circle back to my comment that hinted at an ultimatum …

So, and this is also a point I’ve seen come up elsewhere, in that, and I’m going to be blunt, these entitled as all hell people, are trying to say that if a creator sells their work in a way that you can’t modify it, this incentivizes people to steal. To use ToS breaking scripts to rip your work out of Second Life, and to then re-upload it so that anything they want to do with it, can be done, for free.

It’s no secret that there are unscrupulous, grifting, uncreative, jerks out there in the world. We know this, especially now, because of generative AI. But to say that creators should let you tear their work apart, or have it stolen … That’s just ridiculous. It’s especially ridiculous, when you realize that there are people stealing work in Second Life, that costs, most of the time, less than five dollars to have.

When I say, there are some petty, entitled people in Second Life, I mean it.

A large majority of work sold on the Second Life marketplace goes for less than even a dollar, sometimes 30 to 50 cents!

And there are people threatening to steal the work of these creators, because they want to color the shirt you made baby-puke green.

I have enjoyed running a store in Second Life for 10 years, and I’ll continue to do so, in exactly the way that I want, with complete disregard for what people like this think. Because they need hobbies. They need things to occupy themselves.

They remind me of the people who walk into Walmarts with shitty attitudes, who yell at staff about pricing, and about item availability, and then stomp their feet and whine like a baby.

Because that’s what they are.