Yikes. Down nearly 10 million visits in some recent months.

Second Life Wesbite Traffic Down Nearly 50% Since 20...

i thought they were thriving cos pandemic

well in 2020 we made a bunch of linden homes alts

im surprised by brazil, is it not a pretty impoverished country

Brazil handled the pandemic poorly they are in crisis.

What Hamlet fails - AGAIN - to take into account is that the pandemic caused so many people to lose income. The decline in users and activity that came as a result the post-2008 financial crises is happening again. Then again, we're talking about Hamlet, so I'm not surprised.

M-Doll0809A : What's the evidence that a decline would be related to the pandemic, especially when so many other online games/worlds saw massive usage spikes during the pandemic?

Hamlet_Au : 1. Do you seriously think you could compare a relatively small company like LL to the likes of CDPR? In case you haven't noticed, CDPR enjoys a VERY cozy relationship with the Polish gov't, which gives it access to a steady flow of EU funds.

Hamlet_Au : 2. Do you seriously think SL, a VERY old sandbox platform, with an ancient engine that soldiers on giving fourth-rate visuals, can compete with modern games that i. combine social & competitive elements to keep users engaged, ii. employ the pay-to-win strategy to successfully hide how much they cost the users, whereas SL...

Hamlet_Au : ...is well-known for being a money pit for its users? SL doesn't stand a chance. It never did. And that's beside the point: in Clusterfuck2077 (which is a POS, actually), you've got a mission and you're supposedly doing something. In SL, you're playing house.

Hamlet_Au : However much many of us like to play house in SL, for most people it's LAME; they don't think Witcher 1, 2, 3, Fortnite, etc are lame. They view SL as lame, because it's all about playing house. No SL-like world stands a chance compared to such games. Not Kitely, not InWorldz, not even Active Worlds.

Hamlet_Au : In 2008, we had the financial crisis in the US. FACT. Regions started being abandoned at about the same time. FACT. Why? Middle-class people who were using SL lost their RL jobs and cut their losses. You never admitted that, even though people did point it out back then. 2010-2016 Eurocrisis: massive job losses in Europe. Impoverishment.

Hamlet_Au : Middle-class people saw their RL income (and, consequently, their disposable income) get slashed. They cut their losses. That's a FACT. When you have to choose between having a roof over your head and playing house in SL, you'll ditch SL. Who in their right mind would say "hey, in our household we're getting $2000/month, when...

Hamlet_Au : ...two months ago we were making $5000/month, so yeah, we can continue renting a homestead in SL and spending an extra $50-$100 on virtual clothing and cars"? People pointed that out. You never admitted that people's RL financial situation plays a role on whether they'll keep on throwing money LL's way.

Hamlet_Au : Also, I have news for you: SL is a MASSIVE money pit, with its land rentals, continuous shopping events and all. With less than a million active users, it needs people to spend the kind of money that'll leave LL well north of $50/month from each user's monthly expenses (land rentals, marketplace fees, subscriptions etc). Guess what?

Hamlet_Au : LL still gets that kind of income. Because a sizeable portion of SL's residents are way beyond what Torulf Jernström would call "whales". They're gigawhales. But there are also many lower-middle class users, whose incomes are lower, whose jobs are more vulnerable. And these won't be paying for homesteads and full regions for long.

Hamlet_Au : They'll abandon them when they see that the $100/month represents a difference between having electricity and not having electricity in their RL homes. There you have it. Perhaps your RL rent, utilities, and grocery bills are less than 20% of your net income. I do know, though, far too many people - in RL - who live hand-to-mouth.

Hamlet_Au : People who live payday to payday, juggling their bills, whose RL rent and utilities are more than 50% of their net income and who are facing fuel poverty (look it up) in the winter. If you tell them that SL hasn't had new sign-ups in the pandemic (which has obliterated many jobs, especially in places like Greece), and then tell them...

Hamlet_Au : ...how much an annual SL subscription costs, how much a homestead or a full region costs in SL, how much many people spend on shopping sprees in SL, they'll ask you if you're talking seriously. As for why other games get new sign-ups and SL doesn't, I've said it before:

Hamlet_Au : 1. They're not about playing house. 2. They're not old tech like SL. 3. They're fancy and flashy. 4. Some others (such as MOBA games) can be played even on machines that were crap 15 years ago. 5. You can get pretty far in them spending RL money only occasionally, at a rate of $10-15/month, a mere pittance by SL standards. And finally...

Hamlet_Au : ...SL's reputation, thanks to years of overhyping, crappy sensationalist / scandal-mongernig punditry, and years of LL "leadership" being friendly with the worst trolls and gossips, is tarnished. Ebbe would have to retain five top-rated PR companies to turn this one around.

Second Life usage rates didn't go down during the housing crisis, people definitely scaled back sim ownership and other big ticket spending, but it's still a free-to-play game.

I wasn't comparing Second Life to Cyberpunk 2077, but say ROBLOX which launched in 2006 and just had a massive IPO and IMVU which launched around SL and now has 12x more users than SL.

In any case I encourage you to post in NWN comments so the world outside Plurk can read your analysis!

Hamlet_Au : Also, IMVU (the closest thing to SL) managed to avoid the bad publicity SL got. Somehow, not having a Philip Rosedale overhyping it to death and signing checques he couldn't cash helped its reputation. Also, not having a governance team that turned a blind eye to vigilantes like the JLU and chronic abusers like a certain nogorious gang of...

...gossips and downright psychopathic stalkers whose leader was permabanned by Ebbe Altberg (who should have been CEO of LL from day one) did quite a few things for the sanity of its user base and - yes - its reputation. IMVU's developers learnt from LL's mistakes and cleverly avoided them.