Actually I do believe that Gambling Ban (not that I support it) did make a big impact with SL when it come to marketing ground. The chart may only represents the user-to-user transactions, but most of them are actually shopping transaction. With something cut by more than 35% of the market is quite a damage, but not clearly enough to wipe us out.... but close. It's like having more than 35% cut on your income for where you need to pay off rental fee and such.

While there was some fear of market crash, some designers/builders/scripters doesn't want to admit such loss effect to market ground transaction would have to force them to lower their prices. Not that they should... If we all do, then we would lose about 35% or more of Linden$ value.

Ideally for them to do is losing their land/rental spots than lowering their prices for where they could make monthly/weekly saving. Estate owners would have most effect with their pricing. Thus, Real Estate owners would need to drop about 1/3rd of their sims. In LL's Monthly Staistics Data for Land, Island growth rate had dropped from 55% to 36% since the ban.

"To save your Linden$ value, best to lose some land than lowering your prices" has been set into most people's mind. Estate owners didn't like that, Anshe Chung clearly didn't like that either due to her new rental term and fee rules change.