The day of The Jack-al

There was a strange moment tonight at Jack Linden's office hour, it was all going fairly peacefully, everything seemed fine and then someone asked a pertinent question, and we didn't get a straight answer, which left us with more questions than answers. The long and the short of it is that Linden Lab are upto something with 75-80 estates but they won't tell us what they're upto because it's all beta testing, allegedly.

The pertinent question came from Equinox Pinion: "Jack, how can Dreamland still put grandfathered homesteads on the grid..did you make a special deal with them?"

Then before Jack could answer, a follow up comment from Driftwood Miles: "Over 150 Homesteads dumped onto the grid . All at Grandfathered rates."

Interesting stuff, is this happening? Are Dreamland getting a deal, well we don't know, Jack was vague: "Equinox, as you know I can't comment on specific residents and what they choose to sell or not sell. We've a number of programs in place and in the works (we mentioned this in a blog post a while ago), to help estates. Some of those are still being defined, some are further on. In time we want all estates to get additional benefits and plans that allow them to grow more easily etc"

Now at this point tempers started to get a bit frayed, Jack wasn't denying it, nor was he confirming it, indeed like a politician his lips were moving and words were forthcoming but there didn't appear to be an answer. Jack then tried to clarify things: "Okay, i think i sounded evasive, i wasn't meaning to. So, let me try again. We talked before about needing to build programs for different kinds of estates that gave them help and support. And we have started that. That means that we are rolling out beta programs - eventually we want all estates to benefit in the same ways. The top estates are naturally where we started, but we've only just begun really. I think estate owners are going to *love* what we are doing with this, and most sizeable estates will have heard from us before the end of the year"

Jack did say: "It's not about grandfathering.. that offer closed." However that doesn't explain why Dreamland are rolling out these homesteads at grandfathered rates.

Now at this stage I'm thinking that they have cut a deal with Dreamland. Now, I'm not against deals, Dreamland own a lot of sims and it's standard business practice to give discounts for bulk buying, but what this deal is they've got going with Linden Lab, we don't know. Jack wouldn't say, so people will put two and two together and come up with five, but there is some sort of beta issue going on that has evolved from secret talks.

There was more from Jack: "The idea here is that we provide all estates with much better offers, and I seriously do expect that estate owners will be really happy over the next 3 months as this stuff rolls out. We made some good decisions internally about how we value estate owners and that will become much clearer. I think we're talking to 75-80 estates at the moment. But that will ramp up."

This wasn't at all reassuring and it's plainly evident that Linden Lab are again dealing in favouritism and deals with people instead of being open and transparent, I don't expect to know every nook and crannie of these deals, but these deals are plainly giving large estates an advantage over smaller estates and nobody is willing to explain why Linden Lab are doing this. To say this is beta testing is laughable.

Jack again tried to explain the thinking about these secret deals after more questions from Driftwood Miles: "We always have this balance to strike between needing to be a business and have business relationships with big customers, whilst also recognising that we have a commitment to the community to be as transparent as we can. That's a very tough line to walk. We don't always get it right, I think we'd be the first to say that actually. But we do try. Ultimately of course these programs will be public, and enjoyed by everyone. As they should be. But we have to get to that point of launching them first.

Talking to your largest customers is not FIC Driftwood. We talk to lots of groups, in lots of ways. We talk to developers, 3rd party vendors and solution providers and educators.. all sometimes in non-public ways."

I'm still not quite getting what's going on here, but I can't see it ending well for small estates. As I said, bulk buying discounts and better deals for larger customers are standard business practices, so why the need for behind closed door deals? Linden Lab could offer a tier discount to larger estates, one free island's worth of tier for 250 islands would give them a perk, but wouldn't do one iota of damage to the market in terms of competition. I'm a great believer in competition rather than monopolies but the way this looks right now is that we'll have huge land barons dictating the market and the competition simply unable to compete.

Just what is the problem with being open and transparent about what is going on here?