someone asked how the breakdown was on Second Life sims. using the numbers from Grid Survey for september 4th you get the chart below
Tyche Shepherd goes even further with server type and percentage by largest estate owners here with 1,594 regions owned by Anshe!
This really surprises me and after seeing this pie chart i am shocked. Just on full sims, Linden Lab is making over 4 million a month in tier? Really? How the hell can they not be profitable?
Alec Inglis
5 Sep 10 at 3:23 pm
Tyche goes on in his forum posts to break down what LL makes, something close to $5 million on private tiers
i am like you, wondering how they are not profitable. we have our own dedicated server for half a normal sim cost and we have the OpenSim hosting company and the server company they use which both make a profit. and LL has serious buying power and i have no idea on what servers cost them (has to be less than $50 a month i would think)
using their salaries from glassdoor – to total workforce must be about 200 times $110K (to include benefits) plus the salaries of the ‘C” level officers and building space and you still should be clearing serious paper!
and all the little crap – like the $100,000 they make a month on just texture and photo uploads!
Ener Hax
5 Sep 10 at 4:02 pm
It really is both crazy and sad at the same time. Linden Lab has absolutely no excuses for not making a profit when they 1) bring in that amount of cash flow per month and 2) seemingly have done nothing since 2006 to make 2nd Life a more stable environment.
I still find the numbers in that pie chart borderline unbelievable. Even more… If Linden Lab is getting tier for all the full and homestead sims, why the hell would they need to maintain 6,500+ mostly empty Linden Regions? If I owned Linden Lab, it is clear what I would do:
- Reduce the Linden Regions down to almost nothing. Maybe a few hundred for welcome area’s, a large commercial area for new avatars, a 2nd Life educational area with info and classes on building and scripting, and possibly a separate red light district (probably not needed…see next items).
- Drastically cut the cost of tier for full regions and homesteads and maybe add a third type of region to choice from. Full region for around $100. Homesteads for $50. Openpace type of region $25. No setup fees for any region and no requirement to own a full region before you can own a homestead or openspace. region.
- Land ownership in 2nd Life is now only possible by buying a full, homestead, or openspace region. No lots… No buying anything on the Linden Mainland.
If Linden Labs did this… They would be rolling in so much business, they wouldn’t be able to count the money fast enough. Clearly, based on the numbers in the pie chart above, patrons and business what regions rather than lots.
Just my two cents…
Alec Inglis
5 Sep 10 at 9:54 pm
Whilst there is some scope in consolidating abandoned land , Mainland is still a very profitable part of LL’s holdings, in fact for each of the 3928 equivalent occupied regions LL earns US$271 tier per month (excluding any premium subs) , this compares with an average of US$210 for each of the 24925 private regions (based on my last Mainland Census in July)
P.S. I’m a She, not a He but thank you for the coverage.
Tyche Shepherd
6 Sep 10 at 5:48 pm
i think your two cents is pretty good. i agree, why mess with mainland at all? i suppose there is less support for mainland, although i must say i never did much support when i had sims, only a few tickets for things like once being charged twice for a sim setup fee
i think of something like GoDaddy of HostGator – they are tantamount to private regions, they don’t offer their own space you can rent out
i also think the $295 price point is a deal breaker. i don’t know if they would make up for a price reduction through a larger volume of say $105 priced sims. their cost has not reduced although servers generally have in the last 5 years
cloud computing seems to ne an obvious choice to me. at any one time there must be 1000s of empty sims that could go offline. i think i would be cool with paying $195 per sim and having to wait a minute for my sim to pull up if it was idle (plus i’d set it so that avatars would have to time out – i think it’s an environmental waste to leave your avatar logged in 24/7
in fact, LL could spin this “sim offline and avatar log offs” as being green. in the hospitality industry, customers will actually pay more to not have their linens washed daily and to have bulk food at functions. it’s a perceived value thing that actually is environmental that customers do value and pay more for
Ener Hax
6 Sep 10 at 5:49 pm
hi Tyche! i hope i did not refer to you as a boy, if so – sorry. people often think me a boy cuz what the hell kind of name in Ener? i was not very original in selecting my name – it goes back to an old dungeons and dragons thing for hidden power ups
so are you the beast of slgridsurvey? i see your numbers on the sl forum but am not sure about slgridsurvey – if so – thank you! they are very informative (as are your forum numbers and conclusions – which totally blow me away)
Ener Hax
6 Sep 10 at 5:56 pm
oh derr, had i hovered over your comment name, yes – you are grid survey!
thank you for sharing that info, it’s very interesting data =)
Ener Hax
6 Sep 10 at 5:57 pm