A homestead was the replacement to the old OpenSpace region, and the lab claimed it was necessary as unscrupulous people like Loki were using their low impact sims to host shopping complexes and high traffic gathering points.

The Lab decided that they were not making enough money so announced they would gouge all the players who owned OpenSpace. They said you could either sign up to a reduction in prims to an impossible low number or you could 'upgrade' to a new sort of region with the same number of prims, less agents and an unspecified limit on scripts but pay more.