Linden Lab Lays Off 10% of Employees

[Beebo Brink]

As for SL, it.s up to LL to try and bring people back. It'll be hard, but they're hopefully focused on that.

It's a sign of how long I've been gone that I have no clue what PBR is and why so many people are unhappy about it.

I can't even pinpoint why I left. Partly it was computer problems that strained my inworld participation, but mostly it was that I just ran out of juice. What I have noticed, however, on my rare forays back inworld is that doing anything in SL is difficult. Once it stopped being second nature to walk, text, shop, build, I remembered just how steep the learning curve for SL was when I first joined back in 2006, when my mind was significantly more nimble than it is today.

I remember attending a party back then and literally being reduced to tears because I just couldn't juggle the UI, the windows of PMs and public chat, and all the other streams of information that bombarded me. I stuck with it, and eventually absorbed enough to function with less effort, but these days I'm far less motivated to go through that all over again, and frankly less able to rise to the demand.

All of which is a long-winded way to say that SL can be daunting to newcomers. So good luck to LL.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

It's a sign of how long I've been gone that I have no clue what PBR is and why so many people are unhappy about it.

I can't even pinpoint why I left. Partly it was computer problems that strained my inworld participation, but mostly it was that I just ran out of juice. What I have noticed, however, on my rare forays back inworld is that doing anything in SL is difficult. Once it stopped being second nature to walk, text, shop, build, I remembered just how steep the learning curve for SL was when I first joined back in 2006, when my mind was significantly more nimble than it is today.

I remember attending a party back then and literally being reduced to tears because I just couldn't juggle the UI, the windows of PMs and public chat, and all the other streams of information that bombarded me. I stuck with it, and eventually absorbed enough to function with less effort, but these days I'm far less motivated to go through that all over again, and frankly less able to rise to the demand.

All of which is a long-winded way to say that SL can be daunting to newcomers. So good luck to LL.

This is an interesting perspective to me on why SL can be alienating for many people. I think part of what pumps up the learning curve in SL is that there is SO MUCH you can do in it and many people will initially stumble into things that don't suit them. Many young people who are already very used to chat apps might be more comfortable juggling a ton of public and private chats for example, but they might still struggle to figure out what else to do?? If you enter SL expecting a video game, it's kind of a laggy, clunky shitty one.

On the rare occasions I see SL mentioned on reddit or something like that it often boils down to "I logged in, things looked weird, I saw a furry and a bunch of afk people and concluded there was nothing to do." It's kind of like sticking your feet in the ocean and then concluding there is nothing in it.

From what I've seen, SL shines the most for people who are big into role play and escapism. ...which is probably not a huge portion of the general population. And even then, the learning curve is steep. Advertisements for SL don't really do much to help people find ideal RP communities for them or that they even exist.

 

[Khamon]

Agree and empathize with Beebo’s previous statements. I don’t understand PBR being a problem though because my client can simply not render it. Everything has be dowloaded, that is true and sometimes boggy, but my client is generally set to not process music, voice, or specialized textures such as PBR. Frankly, most avatars are grey in my world because the whatever that’s called is set pretty low.

Users seem to expect an ever increasing realism in Second Life as though its purpose is to replace their real lives. Or perhaps that only LL’s rhetoric. But when does it stop? How realistic does it have to seem before the bulk of our population are happily satisfied? Will we sacrifice our critical mass to pursue absolute realism?

 

[Essence Lumin]

It's a sign of how long I've been gone that I have no clue what PBR is and why so many people are unhappy about it.

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. People are unhappy about it because it tastes awful.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. People are unhappy about it because it tastes awful.

The value of Pabst is that it saves your body energy because it has already been processed into urine.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Agree and empathize with Beebo’s previous statements. I don’t understand PBR being a problem though because my client can simply not render it. Everything has be dowloaded, that is true and sometimes boggy, but my client is generally set to not process music, voice, or specialized textures such as PBR. Frankly, most avatars are grey in my world because the whatever that’s called is set pretty low.

Users seem to expect an ever increasing realism in Second Life as though its purpose is to replace their real lives. Or perhaps that only LL’s rhetoric. But when does it stop? How realistic does it have to seem before the bulk of our population are happily satisfied? Will we sacrifice our critical mass to pursue absolute realism?

I think SL's efforts to stay current have bled users over time but if they didn't do that, it would still look completely like a cartoon, so it's kind of damned if they do damned if they don't. I still believe that Linden Lab's biggest downfall by far is bad to non existent marketing. I really think a lot more people would be there if reached out to in the right way. If I was put in charge of SL's marketing I'd put a lot of emphasis on RP but also sexuality and an adult playground. ...which is something they are too "proper" to do, so they'll just leave a ton of money on the table forever.

ALSO, just fyi, the specific setting you have too low is maximum avatar complexity. Setting that to higher or no limit will mean you render more avatars.

 

[Wesleytron]

It's a sign of how long I've been gone that I have no clue what PBR is and why so many people are unhappy about it.
I can't even pinpoint why I left. Partly it was computer problems that strained my inworld participation,

PBR is changes to the lighting rendering model which might cause you computer problems that strain your inworld participation,

 

[Casey Pelous]

It's a sign of how long I've been gone that I have no clue what PBR is and why so many people are unhappy about it.

I can't even pinpoint why I left. Partly it was computer problems that strained my inworld participation, but mostly it was that I just ran out of juice. What I have noticed, however, on my rare forays back inworld is that doing anything in SL is difficult. Once it stopped being second nature to walk, text, shop, build, I remembered just how steep the learning curve for SL was when I first joined back in 2006, when my mind was significantly more nimble than it is today.

I remember attending a party back then and literally being reduced to tears because I just couldn't juggle the UI, the windows of PMs and public chat, and all the other streams of information that bombarded me. I stuck with it, and eventually absorbed enough to function with less effort, but these days I'm far less motivated to go through that all over again, and frankly less able to rise to the demand.

All of which is a long-winded way to say that SL can be daunting to newcomers. So good luck to LL.

Exactly.

My knowledge of the current state of the art of SL is based completely on random snippets from here. Something, something, mesh body, doesn't work with mesh head, something something, applier, something about layers that cover up something something, some sort of disaster with some viewer ....... etc. It's a lot like standing near racing nerds as they wax rhapsodic about the finer points of random expensive car parts (Headers! 389! Four-barrel!). (Sorry, Dakota.)

I'm sure if I had been consistently active through the years, this would all be as "simple" as learning to build with prims and do basic scripting was, but I wasn't and it isn't.

 

[Essence Lumin]

I think SL's efforts to stay current have bled users over time but if they didn't do that, it would still look completely like a cartoon, so it's kind of damned if they do damned if they don't. I still believe that Linden Lab's biggest downfall by far is bad to non existent marketing.

I think their biggest downfall for a new user is the shear level of complexity. How to even get dressed the way I would like is a difficult experience. That's for me but I haven't regularly logged in for a very long time.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

I think their biggest downfall for a new user is the shear level of complexity. How to even get dressed the way I would like is a difficult experience. That's for me but I haven't regularly logged in for a very long time.

You're probably right.... My opinion is bias since I've been a regular user for so long. But my statement is mostly based on the complaints I hear from people who tried it didn't see anything in there.... It does take some motivation to learn something with a steep learning curve, that's true.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Be Careful What You Wish for Department:

Upon reflection, I have to admit that the sleeker SL has gotten, the less enjoyable it has become to me. Sculpties, and then mesh, all improved the visual impact of SL. which was quite dazzling, but at the same time it made building and even just "being me" more difficult.

I loved making things, even though I was never very good at it. But then, I wasn't that bad either. I might not be able to build a castle, but I could build the bar where my social life centered. When mesh entered SL, however, the differences between that and what I could cobble together were stark and I was reduced to a consumer of other people's pretty objects. Fingers crossed that their vision and sensibilities aligned with mine.

Similarly, just putting an avatar together became exponentially more complex with the advent of mesh bodies and especially mesh heads. The result was a standardized beautification industry that made it even more difficult to be an outlier -- such as an older butch woman -- than it had been in early days, and it had been hard enough back then. I identified less and less with my avatar, and perhaps it's that which snapped my frayed ties to SL.

I've moved on to Sims 4, where I can build to my heart's content. It's an empty world, devoid of ties to real people, but it's a fun sandbox.

 

[Khamon]

My second life is a little green Ruth with system hair and skin. I did want to apply an anatomically drawn skin back in aught-four but was told by everyone that it was a creepy weird idea.Times have muchly changed. But yeah I was happy in cartoon prim world. We had grand imaginative adventures and contests and gatherings there.

The focus could have been on improving sim performance, triangle reduction (the prims are still way too facey), script improvement (was for a while), but all the development has been focused on realism. It was heavily pushed, even by the Lab, when we only had prims. I never understood that.

 

[Noodles]

This is an interesting perspective to me on why SL can be alienating for many people. I think part of what pumps up the learning curve in SL is that there is SO MUCH you can do in it and many people will initially stumble into things that don't suit them. Many young people who are already very used to chat apps might be more comfortable juggling a ton of public and private chats for example, but they might still struggle to figure out what else to do?? If you enter SL expecting a video game, it's kind of a laggy, clunky shitty one.

It doesn't help that there is just soooooo much left to user creation.

Which I love, but it means that every interface is going to be "a little bit janky".

On the rare occasions I see SL mentioned on reddit or something like that it often boils down to "I logged in, things looked weird, I saw a furry and a bunch of afk people and concluded there was nothing to do." It's kind of like sticking your feet in the ocean and then concluding there is nothing in it.

When I see it mentioned its usually "Remeber Second Life?" with the subtext of, "That thing everyone was into in 2009 or sonthen it died."

People don't seem to know it still exists, and is much better and nicer looking than in its peak.

 

[Noodles]

Agree and empathize with Beebo’s previous statements. I don’t understand PBR being a problem though because my client can simply not render it. Everything has be dowloaded, that is true and sometimes boggy, but my client is generally set to not process music, voice, or specialized textures such as PBR. Frankly, most avatars are grey in my world because the whatever that’s called is set pretty low.

I am not sure how much of it really applies, but there is a weird subset of gamers who basically are under the impression that anything that can't run "5000 fos at 16k resolution" is "complete trash" and is unusable.

(Numbers are an obvious exaggeration)

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I know PBR existed long before firestorm got it but relatively few people used it or were affected by it. The early adopters I know sometimes used PBR viewers and sometimes not. Once it hit firestorm it affected a lot of people on old computers who didn't know what to do and were very annoyed. Many of them might come back once it's more ironed out or they get better computers.

The main reason I'm suspicious that the TOS change is the main driver is that I heard VERY LITTLE chatter about it among communities that already banned child avatars anyway, which is much of the grid. Clearly this was very upsetting to a subset of SL, but the botched firestorm PBR rollout hit users in all communities and subcultures very heavily.

I also agree Soen Eber that the COVID bump wearing off is probably another major factor.

In summary, I do think the TOS update probably hurt more than helped, but I think the 10% drop in users is likely due to many factors.

I've been using PBR ever since it first became available. Until recently I was using an Nvidia GTX 560M gpu, bought in 2013, I think. SL ran OK for me. Not brilliantly, but it was perfectly acceptable.

 

[Daniel Voyager]

I'm still looking for those numbers. So far I've not found out away to get the web site to cough them up. I'm going to reach out to Daniel Voyager to see if he has them. I do hope you are right though and this is just a blip. I can see Second Life surviving a 10% drop with a recovery. I don't see it surviving almost 30% user drop in the space of a few months.

Since 2020 the Second Life daily user concurrency has dropped year on year. More since 2022 for some reason. 2024 has been rather disappointing to be honest.

It's not been a good year really for the lab with all that's gone on. 2025 could see a recovery in the concurrency numbers of some sort but I think it's going to drop further sadly.

The overall grid regions dropped under the 28, 000 mark recently and it's been flat during 2024 with no major peaks.

 

[Daniel Voyager]

Didn't the dailies used to be around 100K?

It's never got to 100k but it's reached 88, 000+ though.

> 88, 220 – 29th March 2009 at 1:28pm SLT – highest peak ever!

It reached 60, 068 back in March 2020 during COVID pandemic.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Highest Concurrency Peaks Since 2020

> 60, 068 was the highest peak for Maximum Daily Concurrency – 20th April 2020

> 57, 746 was the highest peak for Maximum Daily Concurrency – 29th March 2021

> 55, 737 was the highest peak for Maximum Daily Concurrency – 6th February 2022

> 53, 567 was the highest peak for Maximum Daily Concurrency – 30th January 2023

> 53, 016 – 19th February 2024 (so far)

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

I don't think that there's any question that SL's concurrency has taken a hit in the last 6 months or so, although it's nowhere near as dramatic as 10%. To really gauge, you'd need to compare month-by-month, year over year. I do know, probably from Daniel Voyager , that we haven't cracked 50,000 this year (I think it is), and that's new.

The fact that LL suddenly issued what was essentially an apology for screwing up the rollout of PBR, and announced that they were focusing immediately upon updates that would fix performance issues (in collaboration with Firestorm) suggests to me that they saw the drop, and attributed it to the problems a lot of users were having with the new PBR-enabled viewers. And they're scrambling to rectify that now.

Which is not to say that the ToS changes regarding child avis haven't also had an effect. But that affected a relatively small segment of the population, where the problems PBR was causing were really widespread.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

God, I can't believe I remembered my log-in for this place.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

None of which was put forward as part of a spin. You altered the text to put your personal bias concerning a subset of users on it.

So in short: Nice attempt at deflection/dodging owning your own words/bias.

And now you are spin doctoring yourself, because it does not matter if this was put forward as part of a spin by Madi or not. A flawed opinion is a flawed opinion, regardless of its underlying intentions - and I highlighted that flaw.

Nice try, bro, badly executed.

We should not forget about one business decision LL made in the past which can affect the popularity as well, especially in times of crisis/increasing L$ prices: the raise of the L$ exchange fee from flat to variable. This L$ buy fee is really greedy, and with L$ prices in world rising right now in some brands becomes more visible at what it impacts.