Someone Sees Sense

A week ago we asked whether the Lindens would relent on the price rise on Homesteads.  Tonight comes the news that they have – that the price of Homesteads purchased before July 1st 2009 will be held at a price off $95 US for a year (rather than rising to $125, as had been previously planned).

The main points are:

• The planned Homestead price increase in July will be delayed for one year – until July 1st 2010
• This only applies to Homesteads purchased (or reactivated) before July 1, 2009.
• This includes any Homesteads that you currently own at the time of this post.
• It also means that if you reactivate a Homestead that you abandoned (not converted) after January 1, 2009, Linden Lab waive the setup fee to re-instate it.

However:

• All Homesteads purchased on or after July 1, 2009 will be at the USD$125 monthly rate as originally planned.
• This offer is only open to Homesteads bought before the July 1st 2009 date so if you want to take advantage of the lower USD$95 per month rate, you will need to have purchased or re-enabled your Homestead before the end of June.
• It seems that if you abandoned your Homestead as soon as the price rise was announced in October (and avoided paying the increase that came in on January 1st 2009), you cannot now reactivate your Homestead.

The news came as we were live on air with Designing Worlds – and we were able to announce it during the show, which seemed rather appropriate!  However, I must regretfully decide that we don’t have the clout of the BBC, where Government and Royal announcements are reputedly made deliberately timed to catch the six o’clock news!

Already people are on the discussion forum proving every which way to Sunday that this is a Bad Thing.  Or that the way things have been managed throughout negates it being a Good Thing.  Overall, I am clearly seeing it as a good thing – and once again, I’ll admit I have my own personal stake, being one of the people who was preparing to abandon a much-loved homestead, and now relieved that decision doesn’t need to be made for another year.  In fact, after the show this evening I was intending to go and buy a quarter sim.  For me, that is rather too close a shave!

What I am disappointed by is the fact that people who abandoned once the price rise was first announced are not getting the chance to reactivate.  A lot of stunning sims were lost then – and it would be good to give those people the opportunity to draw down their dreams again.  Is the problem that there was just too much land abandoned at that point, and the Lab fears the rush of people returning, plus the people anxious to board the helicopter before it finally leaves the Embassy roof?

The full announcement is available here.
When this policy of raising prices first came up, I raised the question of trust – and that still resonates today.  Trust was the main casualty of the Open Space debacle, and the ripples it cast are still spreading.  I would like to believe that Linden Lab can build a strong relationship with its residents again, something more than the continual sniping we see on the Forums.  But the disillusionment has sunk pretty deep.  Individuals like me are delighted at being able to keep our own sims.  The estate owners who have lost heavily on this are less happy – to say nothing of mainland estate managers who think their land will take another heavy knock.

Two things I find interesting about the timing of this announcement: its proximity to the Linden Lab Land Expo (and I am still interested to hear more about these new prefab regions), and its proximity to the launch of the Blue Mars Beta.  Many believe that Blue Mars represents the first serious challenge to Second Life; people did not flood out from Second life to the Opens Sims as some predicted; most Open Sims have huge problems (as we have discussed several times before).  But … people might have more interest in Blue Mars if it can offer security and stability – the stability being in technology and in pricing.  We wait to see.

And some of us will now be able to do so in our own Homesteads.

In the old phrase … for which relief, much thanks, Linden Lab.