Land Market Forces and LL
Linden Lab either is extremely smart, and has a plan and ulterior motives, or they are very short sighted and really are just making this stuff up as they go along.
Humps made an excellent post on SLU:
A few months back, (or however long it is since LL announced their new openspace policy/pricing), LL in one fell swoop almost ruined Sarah’s business along with many other landlords/estate owners. Who in their right mind would want to rent a quarter sim, with neighbours when for the same tier they could have an entire sim with privacy and the same prim count. Back then Sarah and her peers were justifiably annoyed. FUCK YOU said LL. This is how it is going to be….get on with it.
So ever resourceful, Sarah (along with many of her peers) completely altered their business model. Converting full islands into open spaces and buying new ones in order that they could salvage their business in some form or another. LL could not fail to recognise what was happening. It was after all the only viable thing for estate owners to do, or be left with empty regions which still need to be paid for every month. I would go so far as to say that LL actively encouraged this as the way forward for estate owners. They even brought in additional, new measures to help facilitate this… i.e. the transfer owner to payer option.
For them to turn around now and say that ANYONE abused the situation is a second FUCK YOU from LL. They have happily taken the orders (and the fee’s), happily taken the tier every month, so to say they were unaware of the problem this might cause down the road is simply naive. At best it is rank opportunism on their part.