Second Life Lowers Initial Price Hurdle; Becomes Virtual Real Estate Broker

Culture

from the well,-why-not dept

Second Life, the virtual world that has tested the borders of real world laws in a virtual world, has finally realized that if they’re trying to make money by selling things in game it probably helps to get rid of the initial price barrier. That means that they’re doing away with the initial subscription fee, and hoping to make money in the virtual real estate business. The reasoning makes sense — and it’s almost surprising that they didn’t do this before. They figure with more people joining the world, more will get involved in “buying” real estate in the world, and the company will make their money from those sales. Though, if you look at the details, owning property involves (oh, look at that!) a regular fee — so, really they haven’t ditched the “subscription” fee. They’ve just changed what the fee includes. Of course, as we’ve noted in the past, this raises all sorts of legal questions. What happens if their servers go down or the company shuts down? If people actually “own” the property they’ve bought, but it all lives on Linden Labs’ servers, does the company have any liability should they “delete” or “destroy” someone else’s property?