Linden Labs has announced changes in its pricing for XStreetSL.com listings yesterday, and the furor over it is still unfolding. In brief, the changes are:
- For every item listed for sale in XStreetSL, vendors will be charged L$10 a month.
- For every free item listed in XStreetSL, vendors will be charged L$99 a month.
These are in addition to the commission of up to 10% for items sold via XStreetSL that the Lindens already collect.
I won’t go into the alleged justification for this policy, as it’s laughable and specious. The comment thread for the post contains several alternative motivations for the policy; a power-play by large-scale vendors trying to drive out competition, a money-grab by LL desperate to squeeze money from the platform, and so on. All of these are plausible, each is more plausible than any of the official reasons for the change.
Whatever the motivation, the exodus from XStreetSL has begun.
As a vendor with products on XStreetSL, the new policy effectively wipes out my entire business. My top-selling item goes is listed for L$10. I sell, on average, one of these per month. under the new policy, I will pay L$13 a month to maintain that listing. Unless the policy changes, I see no alternative except to pull my listings from XStreetSL.com.
I’ll be looking hard at Apez.bin for the next few days, but at the moment it looks like an in-world storefront is the best alternative.
