From an illegitimate complaint to a legitimate complaint

It's interesting that this story should break just after I'd blogged about the Bragg vs Linden Labs issue. As I've already said, I believe the Bragg case is without merit; he broke the rules and he got caught. Case closed.

And now comes Furnation, who appear to have been quite deliberately targeted for victimisation. It's well known that groups that love to have something to sneer at or go for often target the "furry" community and this appears to be a carefully laid plan to do just that.

You can read the details at this posting: The Shady Side of Second Life but basically, somebody came forward pretending to be wanting to donate to the community, and donated fraudulently obtained funds. They then hacked into sim administrator accounts not just once, but TWICE, destroyed items and tried to irretrievably destroy sims and basically sabotage the entire community.

Now you'd expect Linden Labs to be very hot at tracking down the perpetrator and banning them (especially if they can hash identify hacker's computers) - surely they could work out who had hacked the accounts, and hash-ban them, then unfreeze all the furnation accounts they'd frozen to stop the fraudulent funds being distributed, right? And then restore all the funds but the fraudulent ones, which they would seize. That would be the proper way to handle it.

But no. They failed to deal with the compromised account - TWICE - and then first froze, then confiscated the ENTIRE funds of the sim owner. Legitimate questions the sim owner asked were either ignored or fobbed off with "We can't answer that, because doing so would compromise sensitive information".

Just as I have no hesitation in delivering a blog-slap to Bragg for wanting his access restored after purposefully and deliberately committing fraud, so I believe that Linden Labs have not delivered ANY degree of customer service to the Furnation community in this incident. The confiscation of all the managers assets has left the entire operation in virtual-financial difficulty, as some of the virtual funds was stored in banks and used to generate interest that in turn was used to fund the operation. Not to mention alienating over a thousand users (yes, this particular furry community is BIG) and jeapardising the future of 9 complete sims.

We're not talking about trivial amounts of real world cash here either. Consider this: 1,100 users of an active community, the bulk of whom came to Second Life as a side effect of already belonging to the community. Furry roleplayers demand detailed avatars, which has led to the establishment of a thriving community of builders and scripters (the average avatar goes for between 800 and 1300 Lindens) plus all that that entails, such as premium accounts and land ownership.

Now, if Furnation decide to pull out of Second Life, that presence WILL be felt. NINE full sims, costing $200 a month in rent alone - $1800 PER MONTH lost immediately. Let's say half the furry community have premium accounts (furries by and large don't do things by halves - if they dedicate to something, they go for it fully) so that's another $10 per account per month. 10 x 550 accounts = $5,500 per month. So without counting any extra money that might be used to buy the virtual currency, Linden Labs are putting on the line $6,300 per month by failing to offer support and help and by being heavy handed. I ask - does this make ANY financial sense, particularly given the fact that it should be possible to track down the user who perpetrated the entire vandalism and hash-ban them permanantly.

I have no doubt if a group message went out saying "Furnation is moving from Second Life - please support us by joining us on a rival system" the vast majority - 80% or more - would close their Second Life accounts within days.

Surely it's not asking too much of Linden Labs to give some quality support to a big customer?