Category: Musings

Draxtor Retires from Video creation but not Second Life

For approximately 18 years Bernard Drax,aka Draxtor Depres, has been making videos about Second Life. Yesterday he did a live stream announcing he wouldn’t be doing any more. He may upload more unreleased videos he still has, but he doesn’t plan to make any more.

I’m not overly surprised to hear this, after his monologue last month, regarding the closure of the Second Life Book Club islands.

Drax says he’s not “burnt-out” he just wants to change his focus in life, some self-care after many busy years. He intends to focus more on his family and himself doing such things as producing for his son’s band, since his background is in music. To me it’s sad news, but a totally understandable decision that I totally respect. Especially since Linden Lab withdrew their sponsorship in March 2024, which I think was a big mistake on their part.

However Drax isn’t leaving SL, he’ll be logging in to reply to messages and may well turn up if you invite him to any events you may be having.

Watch the Announcement Video for more details.

The channel will remain as a curated archive of videos documenting Second Life, along with the documentaries he produced, going back as far as the 17th May 2007.

Here’s the link to the channel: https://youtube.com/@draxtor

Related links:

Someone’s gotta write about it…The LindeX and more.

Yesterday there was another Linden Lab Zoom call. I’m not sure what subject to write about frankly, because several topics were covered,but as a fellow blogger said to me; “Someone’s got to, or what was the point?”

I was a bit confused at the start as to the purpose of the call,  because they were talking about the Lindex (Linden Dollar currency exchange). I don’t use Facebook or regularly read the SL Forums so I was unaware some creators have been worrying (complaining maybe?) about the market fluctuating. It’s a financial market, this stuff happens. The problem is (as I understand it) the market is stagnating, as in it’s been stable for too long. The physical world, with tangible currencies has had 20 years of inflation, Second Life hasn’t, apparently the exchange would realistically be nearer 400 than the 250 that it’s been at for decades. As a result the money creators make in Linden Dollars, is worth a lot less than it used to be when cashed out. This isn’t a new problem, the Lab have been struggling with it for some time. In  Brad’s words; “Covid saved us”. Meaning that when the COVID-19 Pandemic came along, there was a sudden influx of new and returning residents, who all needed to buy virtual cash, giving the economy a massive boost. Those residents now seem to have left again.

What’s the solution? It’s a bit tricky to say the least. If creators raise prices, customers are less inclined to spend and it won’t solve anything. If Linden Lab intervenes and sets the value of the Linden Dollar, residents will say they’re interfering. Customers don’t want prices to go up, neither does the Lab, it’d make the situation worse.

I’m no financial expert,so I can’t really speculate on solutions, but one thing that wouldn’t hurt is more people spending money,as in new residents.

One barrier to new residents actually buying anything however is store owners setting their security systems to kick out residents under 30 days old. How can you expand your customer base if you do that? I understand it’s a common practice to reduce spammers and griefers, but the situation the SL economy is in right now, those new residents are the most important ones. Don’t put your prices up, let more customers into your stores.

A few other points that were mentioned before I cease my rambling;

  • Creators that were having their products copy-botted will be pleased to hear that the most prolific offenders (that Linden Lab could prove) are in Brad’s words “gone and won’t be coming back. They got more than a stern letter.”
  • On the subject of the real-time transactions experiment that went tragically wrong; The more secure an account, the more likely those payments in real-time will be. I interpret that as maybe they might introduce them for accounts that have MFA enabled, but that’s just speculation on my part.
  • On new signups; The number of new accounts has gone up x10 more than previously. Of those residents, twice the number are staying around, but it still needs to improve. It just takes one bad experience, like being booted by a stores security system, to leave and not come back. Grumpity Linden gave an example based on metrics of new users arriving at a stores landing point then not going in.
  • Random stat revealed by Philip: The average avatar age of regular logins is 14 years old.

Basically we’re all old, getting older, and don’t have a clue how to keep the next generations from leaving after a few minutes on the mobile app.

Flickr Terms update for Everyone and especially UK residents.

This morning I received an email from Flickr saying there was a Terms of Service update that came into effect yesterday (24th July). My first thought was “what new restrictions are they going to implement now that’ll push SL folks out even more?”

Well the first major thing is a minimum age limit for account holders of 18.

What’s Changing For Everyone

The primary update is that Flickr will now require all new users to be 18 years of age or older to create an account. This change helps us align with evolving global online safety standards and ensures a consistent and safe environment for our entire community.

For residents in the UK, it gets worse:

For Users in the United Kingdom: Important Changes to Content Access

Due to new UK regulations designed to protect minors online, we are implementing a specific change for how content is accessed within the UK.

Effective July 24, 2025:

  • Access to content with SafeSearch turned OFF will require a Flickr Pro subscription.
  • This is because a Pro subscription requires credit card verification, which serves as age assurance under UK law.

So if you’re in the UK and want to see stuff that isn’t PG rated appropriate (which lets be honest applies to quite a bit of Second Life content) you’ll have to shell out for a Pro account.

The big flaw in that plan however is: You can open a bank account at 16 in the UK, or as young as 11 with parental involvement.

Further:


What this means for you in the UK

  • Free Users: SafeSearch will be automatically enabled by default. To view all content on Flickr, you will need to upgrade to a Pro account.
  • Pro Users: No action is needed. Your ability to turn SafeSearch off remains unchanged.

This change will definitely have a very detrimental affect a lot of people use of the site. Who I think will suffer most here will be merchants displaying their creations, all of a sudden they’ve lost the majority of their UK audience, and of course their UK customers that can’t see those adverts.

Another attempt by Flickr to try and push out Second Life and other virtual world content? Maybe, but that’s where we are now.

Farewell Second Life Book Club Islands

A couple of days ago I got a YouTube notification about a video from Draxtor:

ATTENTION BOOKSTERS: SL Book Club Archipelago is closing = we do a last walkthrough

Linden Lab are closing the islands that hosted the Second Life Book Club shows, that started April 2020 and finished November 2024, tomorrow (Friday 11th July 2025).

In Draxtors words:

“The Second Life Book Club Islands, which were a gift from Linden Lab. The agreement was that I would get these islands to conduct a weekly event. Author interviews, celebrations of the art of writing, and the joy of reading. And it was really awesome. We started in April 2020. And we concluded November last year. And now is the time to take these down because there really is no event anymore.”

Transcribed from this video.

I got up early this morning to try and follow Drax around as he did the last possible walkthrough of Island #4.

You can watch the different island walkthrough videos on his YouTube channel and all the episodes of the Second Life Book club in this playlist.

I attended many of the bookclub shows between 2021 and 2022 and watching some of the walkthroughs brought back fond memories. I have a large collection of snapshots I took at the shows, some you can see in this Flickr Album, but I will try to sort through the rest adding appropriate author and show details and make them available somewhere.

The Second Life Book Club should never be forgotten.  It was a prime example of the use case for virtual worlds. Of course you can have a book club anywhere, but only in a virtual world can you create a discussion space that resembles a setting from or inspired by the book and avatars that resemble the characters…every WEEK!

If you don’t watch any of the videos linked above,(some are quite long and everyones busy) just watch the clip embedded below; It’s the last 15 minutes of this mornings walkthrough in which Drax shares a few pearls of wisdom and a suggestion about reading that I think everyone should consider.

(Apologies to Draxtor for my avatar being a background distraction for a few minutes, before I realised I was in his camera shot.)

What am I trying to Achieve?

Earlier today I saw a post on Bluesky from a longtime Second Life resident and very empty club owner. I responded with a genuine query about what might encourage them to return more to SL, because non-returning residents and lack of new ones is a real problem for the platform. It was an interesting and enlightening conversation, until I messed up and mentioned something Brad had said (and the Lindens have been saying for years) about land prices vs fees. I just want to try to do my little bit to help, but here I was spouting a mantra that has annoyed myself and others for years, even decades.

As the exchange came to a close, they wished me luck in “whatever you’re trying to achieve”, which made me think.

This blog is meant to be about the fun stuff I do and find in Second Life. I look at my previous three posts and they’re related to what Linden Lab has been up to. While these things do and will have an effect on everyone’s Second Lives, it feels maybe I’ve become too “Linden-adjacent”, whatever that may mean.

The fact that two bloggers have actually said they wouldn’t bother joining the Zoom calls and would wait for my summary writeups instead, supports that.

A final note on the conversation that made me almost laugh at the unlikelihood (but validity) of it was “LL should be paying you and others in the program handsomely to do outreach”. (“program” being a reference to the SL Blogger Network that I mentioned being part of.)

Time to play now.

Ava Bloodrose,MA Education in Virtual Worlds

Thunes Buys Tillia – Don’t Panic

Last night there was a meeting with a collection of bloggers,creators and Linden Lab employees to discuss the transition of Second Life payment processing from Tillia to Thunes.

The acquisition of Tillia was announced last year. Strawberry Linden put some of the most common questions back then to Brad Oberwager in an episode of Lab Gab, that you can watch HERE. It’s worth watching because it outlines most of what has now happened,as well as conveying Brad’s excitement and enthusiasm for the venture.

Last night’s Zoom call was to bring people up to date and share the latest, so we could pass that onto our audiences/readers.

What happened?

Tillia got sold and a company much more suited to operating it acquired it. Thunes is a global financial services provider, Tillia was simply created to allow Linden Lab to legally operate it’s own currency (Linden Dollars) and process credit cards.

What’s going to change?

Immediately for most residents, not a lot. On Wednesday (or the next time you visit after that) you will be asked to check a box on the website, acknowledging the change of the company name from Tillia to “Thunes Financial services LLC”. In the future it should lead to more options for buying Linden Dollars and cashing-out to your bank or other accounts.

An analogy Brad used was a local coffee shop, that I’m going to paraphrase.

If you pay with your card the receipt may have a reference to “Square” (a common card processing company in the US), if the coffee shop changes their card processing company to for example “SumUp” (a card handler common in the UK) your receipt may have a reference to that company, but the price of your coffee doesn’t change.

So the change to Thunes is like that. Tillia is being renamed but all your details and transactions are exactly where they always were, like the name on the coffee shop changing, it’s still in the same place. (If they’d tried moving any of it, that would have been the risky part for everyone, so they didn’t.)

It’s possible you may have to re-enter your credit card details, or check some boxes to reconfirm payment or payout methods and that’s it.

The LindeX exchange remains under the control of Linden Lab, Thunes cannot change the price you pay for Lindens.

Right now you may be thinking “what about fees?”, and rightly so. Linden Lab intends to make fees more transparent, by showing you the fee breakdown. Showing how much of that fee they have to pay to provide you that particular payout option. This then allows you to better choose what method you want to use.

What happened in the call?

I’ve now taken part in several of these calls, but this one was different. I’ve seen Brad excited, enthusiastic,angry and range in-between. This time,as someone pointed out in the call text chat, he looked a little scared. Don’t be mistaken though, this was not fear of things going wrong with the switch over to Thunes; they’ve been working hard for months to make sure it goes smoothly. What he’s worried about are the emails he receives.  Every time he puts himself on the line to change something for the better in Second Life he usually receives at least 50 “You’ve ruined SL!” type emails, some of which get very personal.

Given the internal and regulatory scale of this change (think lawyers in 48 US States all having to agree to it), I can understand his emotions.

The example of the “Potato1” support case was mentioned, which Bloggers heard about last week during the call about account security.

So if your password is something like “potato1” please change it, for everyone’s sake. We don’t really want a forced grid-wide password reset on account of you folks.

A final point that came up around fees that charities have to pay (just like everyone else) when cashing out the donations residents have made. Those fees can’t be waived, someone has to pay them somewhere, and Brad said he may well do that, out of his own personal pocket, not Linden Labs. With a slight caveat of “maybe not if it was a Million Dollar donation”.

Avatar Account Security – Stop Self Hacking

Today there was a Zoom meeting held between the Second Life Blogger Network and Linden Lab, to discuss “account safety and security”.

As you’re probably aware by now, these meetings get arranged when the Lab has something in particular it wants to share with the Community and they know that lots of Residents don’t see or read the announcement blog posts(me included).

When I received the invitation email and read the subject matter my first thought was “they’re going to ask us to push MFA” (Multi Factor Authentication).

Which was correct, but not the main focus as I’d expected. I was hoping that at this meeting they were going to announce the introduction of recovery keys when setting up MFA, but no.

The main cause of account takeovers are people sharing their passwords. So the accounts aren’t so much being hacked, but as Brad Oberwager said in the meeting, they’re “Self-hacking”.

This is because fraudsters have gotten so good at social engineering. Basically becoming your friend and duping you into sharing your login details.

So there’s some simple DO’s & DON’Ts that the Lab would like to reiterate:

DO:

  • STOP sharing your passwords
  • Change your password (Can you remember when you changed it last? No? Change it NOW.)
  • Enable Multi-Factor Authentication in your account Dashboard

DON’T:

  • Buy Linden Dollars outside of the Second Life platform. (It’s always a scam and Linden Lab can’t help you.)
  • Click on links in chats (yes they could disable them, but can you imagine the backlash?)

All seems quite obvious really doesn’t it? Well yes, but people still aren’t doing these things.

Remember that the Lab could force a grid-wide password reset at any time. The reason they don’t (it would make things easier for them) is that there are people that have been logging in for a decade or more with a saved password they may not even know anymore. So change your password and keep it safe.

You may be wondering why you’re hearing about more account takeovers than you used to, as always it comes down to money. Linden Lab wants to make financial transactions as smooth and timely as possible, everyone likes things to be easy, right? Well the downside of doing real-time transactions is that you become a very attractive target to bad people, that are very good at what they do.

There’s a lot of trust in Second Life, which is great for community spirit, but when it comes to your account password, treat it like your bank details; don’t share it.

Linden Lab Official Post

(Yes, I did practice what I preached and changed my password.)

Linden Lab adds Phone Verification to Second Life Discord Server Access – A step too far?

I’ve been in the Second Life Discord server for some time now, since I was granted access as an Alpha tester for the mobile app. I was very pleased when they finally made the server public recently. To be able to post any messages in the server you now have to link your Discord account with a Second Life avatar account. I’d say that’s fair enough, it provides a layer of accountability that is reasonable.

That is of course until yesterday someone posted:

I verified with an alt

Which reveals a big flaw in that idea.

So what was the Labs solution? They added the requirement to “Verify Phone”, which is what I was presented with this morning if I wished to post in any Channel in the Discord mobile app.

While I understand they want to protect the server and themselves from misbehaving members, I think the mobile requirement is a step too far.  I think this step may put people off participating. Including myself.

Of course the Lab knows my real life identity, but I don’t think people should have to hand over a phone number to be able to use a Discord server. A well known blogger has the same requirement on their server and I just didn’t join on the grounds of that.

What makes this more of a joke is that today getting a phone number is almost as easy as creating an alt avatar account. Unfortunately Google Voice that offer free numbers aren’t available in the UK and equivalent services are paid for. Adding another security layer, that’s easily bypassed, seems unnecessarily futile and could negatively impact Resident  engagement.

Addition:

First reader comment received directly minutes after publishing:

they tell how much they value being anonymous and then they did that. Pissed me off big time

Second reader comment via Bluesky:

Great… I just joined the server a couple of days ago and now this happens – and I feel like leaving the server again. I honestly don’t want to add my phone number for verification

Third response received directly:

Just saw this – and just left the server. lol

From Bluesky:

I was able to chat 4 hours ;D – than they activated phone verification…. SOOORRYYYYY

Another comment via Bluesky puts a slightly different spin on the topic:

It’s more of a moderation used in and by big server all over discord.

This is to verify the account holder is human and not a throw away account used for trolling/spamming sure the system is not perfect but stops 97%-99% of unwanted behaviour.

Anyway discord doesn’t share this number with third parties

While this might explain things a little, the Lab should make this detail clear in the server description or rules text.

But the discussion continues some time later:

The official Second Life Discord server is so great that I quickly left it. I have no desire to talk to uneducated people who comment on topics they know nothing about. I don’t usually dehumanize, but what’s there is a zoo.

Firestorm Zero!

Tomorrow the 14th of March there’s going ot be a Roundtable about Project Zero (accessing Second Live via a web browser) and it’s roadmap going forward.

Last night there was a Zoom call with Philip Rosedale,Sntax Linden and the Firestorm Viewer development team along with a collection of bloggers.

We will be getting browser access to the Firestorm Viewer.

They hadn’t actually given it a name, because the name “Firestorm” technically belongs to the developers, so Linden Lab can’t call it that. However since both Linden Lab employees and the Firestorm developers have been referring to the project as “Firestorm Zero”, that’s likely what it’ll be.

There is however a catch…250L$ for 5 hours of viewer time. To clarify that’s a “bundle” of time, like mobile phone minutes. The 5 hours can be spread over multiple sessions over a period of time.

So why are they charging, while offering Project Zero access for free? It’s fairly straightforward, they’re matching demand with the Firestorm sessions. There is a capped number of sessions for Project Zero, so you basically have to wait in line for a session to be available. With the paid Firestorm sessions you get a virtual Windows PC, running in the Amazon Cloud, to yourself. Although obviously they may limit the number of passes sold initially to manage load. It will however be operating at a financial loss to begin with. Pricing is being based on what they expect costs to fall to as GPU market costs come down.

I thought the easiest way to demonstrate how well it works, I made a few gyazo video clips:

The blue loading screen took about a minute, the Firestorm progress bar took about 2 seconds.

My Homested, a mainland parcel and a CDS venue:

Cyber Fair:

Warehouse 21 Club:

In a crowded place like that, I’d normally bump at least one or two people on the way out, but that was so smooth, it was frankly better than my hardware. However what happened at the end of that clip was evidently the equivalent of a crash, you’re presented with a download page for the desktop viewer. (Edit 15/3/25: If you get kicked out, your browser will redirect to your Account Dashboard).

It wasn’t all smooth sailing to start with though, this was a visit to the same venue about 12 hours earlier and the login process showed more Firestorm loading dialog:

I described it as “like using SL on my old i5 laptop with 16GB of RAM” in an email at that time, I guess they took the hint and turned up the virtual host PC’s specs!

Tech bits we were told:

  • 1920 x 1080 Resolution video
  • Frame rate 30-60fps
  • Local chat logs won’t be saved, but IM logs will
  • Preferences will not sync from your desktop, (that might not be preferrable anyway on a different system) but any settings you customise on the virtual host viewer will stay for your future sessions. (I didn’t find this to be the case)
  • Login, teleport and loading times are expected to be much faster, but busy locations may still be..well…normal for SL.
  • Snapshots to Disk won’t function because the viewer is running on a remote virtual PC, so people taking photos will have to use “Send to Email” option or other methods instead. (Send to Flickr or Primfeed were mentioned.)

You will buy the bundles of time from your Account dashboard on the Second Life website and will have a link to where to log in from wherever you want. The passes are expected to go on sale on Friday 14th.

The question of whether access bundles may be included as perks with paid subscription plans was raised, it might be possible in the future. A question that I thought of and have emailed to Philip, is whether the bundles will have an expiry period in which they must be used. It’ll be interesting to see what gets announced at the Roundtable.

Community Roundtable Announcement post

Firestorm Zero Annoncement post

A Message to copybotters and Second Life Content Thieves

There was another Zoom Call with Linden Lab yesterday. This one was a little different though, since it wasn’t just the Blogger Network this time, it was Creators as well (90+ attendees). What’s so big that they want to tell all of us at once? Well, Content Protection apparetly:

This call will bring together bloggers and creators to focus on a crucial topic for the Second Life community: content protection. Protecting the integrity of creator work is at the heart of our platform, and we want to share updates and gather your feedback on this important issue. This session will focus on our commitment to and actions in protecting creator content in Second Life, including legal enforcement efforts, advancements in tools and processes, and our ongoing collaboration with the creator community. While challenges remain, we are dedicated to transparency, continuous improvement, and working together to shape a safer, more supportive environment for creators.

(quoted from invitation email)

What does it mean?

Well it means, lookout copybotters and other content thieves. The below doesn’t just apply to objects like mesh clothes or bodies, it’s any content such as animations that are included as well.

In the past Linden Lab hasn’t pursued instances of content theft, beyond a stern letter and a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) takedown order. Which obviously isn’t much of a deterrent.

That’s about to change. Dramatically.

From now on, if you’re found to be creating copies of other creators’ items, you won’t just get asked to take it down. Your Account will be Shut Down. You may have a store with a thousand items that you genuinely made yourself, it won’t matter. It will ALL go. That DMCA letter will be accompanied by a Cease & Desist. Meaning you will now incur liability for anything you do after that date.

They’re going even further though. If you are teaching people how to illegally copy Second Life content, the Lab will be after you too.

If you’re one such fraudster you’re probably thinking “I’ll just create another account”. But did you cash out some of those ill-gotten gains with any of your avatars? In which case the Lab knows your legal identity (required to process the transaction) and will go after the Individual person, not just the Avatar.

Here’s the contentious part of their change of approach; If you knowingly buy copied stuff (to maybe save a few L$) you could be in trouble too, potentially losing your account.

So the key points here are:

  • Linden Lab will now consider such practices as theft from the original creator and act accordingly
  • If people are creating, teaching others to, or buying copied content the Lab will be after them.
  • Account and all content will be deleted, even any legally created stuff.
  • Focus on the legal individual, not just the avatar account.
  • Action will be taken against websites hosting any copied content
  • If you upload Second Life content that you didn’t create, to another platform or game, you’re accountable not the platform and will be legally pursued
  • There will be a new category of support ticket added for reporting alleged instances of content theft
  • Open Source viewer doesn’t mean an Open platform
  • Action will have an “Immediate and Chilling effect” (Philip Rosedale)
  • Action from the Lab will be “egregious*, don’t be the one I find first” (Brad Oberwager)

*Extremely bad in a way that is noticeable

How are they going to know? Well if I told you their intended methods, they wouldn’t work.

Of course these things are complicated and there could be issues, but the key point for content thieves is this:

THE LAB IS NOW ACTIVELY LOOKING FOR YOU.