Since the announcement of Openspaces 3.0 product pricing for Second Life (and the subsequent update to a reduced specification Openspaces 4.0 product), Linden Lab has seen its virtual world shrink for the first time on record with a net loss of 24.05 million square metres (a little less than 6,000 acres).
That's a net loss, so however many new simulators have been brought online since the beginning of the month, those gains have been canceled out by customers dumping land, and an additional 24 million square metres have been lost. During its Q2 2008 report, Linden Lab identified the (now deprecated) Openspaces 2.0 product as a primary growth driver.
It isn't presently clear how long this downward trend will last. So far, those net losses amount to just 2.8% of the total Openspaces 2.0 product that are actually out there on the Second Life grid. Many owners, however, have said that they intend to hang on to their void simulators for as long as possible, and dump them just before the jump to Openspaces 4.0 (or Homesteads 1.0) becomes mandatory. It remains to be seen if the Lab can shake off the chill and push those figures up in the latter half of the month.
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