Title
Hello,
I am the owner of Spinach Games, Highflyer Games, and Sprawler Games, which are virtual casinos in Second Life, covering around 82,500m of land.
I opened Spinach Games in October 2006 after reading Second Life suggesting running a casino, lottery operator, and gamer at http://secondlife.com/whatis/businesses.php (they updated the list on 26th July 2007 but I have an old offline version). I have spend approximately US$15,000 on virtual land costs and buying games as well as working there up to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week.
On Wednesday, 25th July 2007, Second Life posted http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/07/25/wagering-in-second-life-new-policy/ on their blog despite they suggesting running a casino. This new policy effectively means that all my games are now worth US$0 because they are no longer usable or sellable. I effectively have no other option other than delete my games, sell my land for around US$2500 and ‘give up’ the US$12,500 & 1 years work.
Nevertheless, I feel that Second Life are severely wrong by suggesting running a casino and then telling us it’s against their policy, without any warning or compensation.
It was literally like this:-
At 4:04pm on July 25th:-
There was a suggestion by SL to run a casino and I had US$12,500 (real money) worth of games, most of which were resellable.
At 4:06pm on July 25th:-
It was not OK to run a casino and I was forced to close. My games are now worth nothing because nobody can use them.
I do understand that in real life, running a casino with no licence is illegal but because Second Life suggested it and because they use virtual money, and because there were many other casinos in Second Life, I presumed that it was OK.
I feel that Second Life should have given us 3months notice. I had just brought another 72 copiable slot machines for L$230,000 and 20 Solo games for L$55,000 but didn't even get chance to rez them.
I just do not understand why or what has made me lose US$12,500. I did as SL suggested.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
