Virtual Islands Pricey, Too

SL residents or business owners who want to set up a homestead in SL also are required to pay $9.95 a month for a premium membership.

Transactions related to land have boosted the virtual economy in the SL world, which Linden Lab oversees with its LindeX tracker. As of 10 a.m. EST Friday, a total of 1.23 million users were registered in SL, and those people exchanged $567,084 worth of virtual world goods and services over the last 24 hours.

But as one can imagine, longtime users didn't welcome the news with open arms. In the comments section of the Linden Second Life blog, residents vented their frustrations.

"What were you thinking, Linden Lab? You don't seem to realize that you are talking about real money here and, sooner or later, what you're doing will ruin you, either legally or simply in the lost trust of your residents."

---

"This will turn SL from being a well rounded cultural experience to an experience very much driven by commercial (malls, casinos, etc) interests."

---

"My theory is that Linden Lab just wants to attract huge corporations, since they are only ones who will be able to afford such high tier fees."

---

"I guess I just can't see the entire picture of how this will actually help Linden Lab. I think less people now will actually purchase islands, which overall will equal less money."

---

"Just when I'm on the verge of turning a tiny little profit, after investing THOUSANDS OF REAL DOLLARS HERE -- despite the irresponsible actions of your staff in stabilizing the platform, you decide to kill the economy."

---

"You keep making it harder and harder to earn the in-game currency to cover tier or at least mitigate it ... you've cut stipends, you've cut developer incentives. The only people who can make money are the very successful clothing or scripted object designers, which is a tiny percentage of the population. You are slowly making it impossible for people to justify creating content for you."

---

Following an onslaught of more than 500 similar comments from SL residents, Linden Lab responded by pushing back the date of the price hike.

"After listening to the community, we recognize that we did not give you enough time to react to the pricing changes. As a result, we are extending our old pricing for orders placed through the land store until November 15th."

Originally, SL planned to have the new pricing take effect as soon as the company ran out of a limited amount inventory it set aside at the old price. Now, any order placed before Nov. 15 will be at the old price.

The blog post concluded by thanking every resident for the "passionate feedback."

Linden Lab did not respond to requests from TheStreet.com for additional comment.

>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints