I've Withdrawn From Second Life

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Since 2015, I’ve run a store in Second Life under the name, “REVOSA”, and for a semi-shorter amount of time, “Ayashi Systems”. And over that time, the stores have made continuous sales, every month, for around the same amount, even eleven years later. Most of those sales come from the marketplace website, because, I guess, that’s where everyone does their shopping. Never-the-less, these will remain.

That aside, over the past five and a half years, I was maintaining a city on a region I was “renting” from Linden Labs for quite some time. There were visitors, people who lived there, but due to financial difficulties, it had to shut down a few times. After a time or two, the frequent visitors and the occupants … decided to just never come back. So, obviously, I shut that down, probably for good.

I wouldn’t have to do that, though, if Linden Labs’ pricing on homesteads and regions weren’t so egregiously expensive (we’re talking hundreds of dollars per month). It’s really wild, and really mind-blowing to sit and think about how they even get away with something like this, while servers for literally anything else, anywhere are vastly cheaper.

For triple the amount of time that I was maintaining a region with a city I built upon it, though, I’ve always maintained a space within Second Life for my store/s. This means that I’ve been paying Linden Labs, or a land baron, money, monthly, for eleven years, and, while I’m sure people sometimes visit the store’s location, this will be going away for now, maybe indefinitely, I don’t know.

But why am I leaving Second Life?

It’s not really because of my store, I’d like to see sales continue, at least. But I have zero drive to continue making new products, and it’s not even that it’s hard, or that I don’t have ideas.

It’s that Second Life has died. The social aspect is dead. Even with a “dating”/”friendship” app built by a resident in their attempt to help connect people together … you match with piles upon piles of people who just … can’t, or don’t want to talk, or actually connect. There’s always an expectation that you offer more effort than everyone else.

To that, I say: No.

Visit any manner of regions, you’ll find clubs where people are AFK, and all the real traffic is at shopping events. Shopping events hosted mostly by aforementioned land barons who are exploiting store owners/creators for monetary gain. It’s the only way anyone makes any real money in Second Life.

Land ownership and exploitation.

But, it’s been years now, and this is all anyone in Second Life really does. They shop, they dress themselves up and look pretty, and then they AFK at a club, or in a locked region or parcel where nobody will ever see them.

Second Life, again, has died.

This is not anywhere near anything I would consider fun. It’s not the Second Life I came to know in my earlier days in the beginning of the 2010s. I met people, I hung out and created groups, and attended social events, created relationships, played games, and it was a blast!

This version of the virtual world, though, is gone. I don’t think it’s ever coming back.

So what reason is there to stay?

I’ve been hosting my own grid and regions in OpenSim for a little over a month now … 28 regions, for a small fraction of the cost of a region in Second Life, and I can meet and talk to people at any given point, because that’s what people do in OpenSim. There are no shopping events, no ultra consumerism. Just people chilling and building.

That’s Second Life! That’s what it’s supposed to be …

And that’s where I’ll remain.

You can join, too (as long as you ask me for an invite code), or any number of other grids that have open registration, like OSGrid, for example, or Kitely.

I don’t think this message will find any of the people who frequent my store online or elsewhere, or any of the people who once visited the city I built, but just in case it does: I’m sorry. I know some of you were probably hoping for me to continue the multiple product lines in my store, but I just can’t do it. If I want to be alone and to myself at all times no matter where I go, I’ll just log onto like, I don’t know, Quake 1 multiplayer.

But if you decide to check out OpenSim, just come on over to my grid and check the place out (hop://novalandia.online:9000/Novalandia/162/124/26).

Until next time, metaverse residents!