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It turns out that most users would rather have a private island than live on a continuous continent where neighbors are always putting up eyesores. Linden Lab tried that. That's what Sansar is. It averages 13 concurrent users on Steam. Maybe some more who signed up outside Steam, but under 100. Sansar is a "VR game level loader", not a world like SL. Somebody creates a level map, and others can visit, but not change much. Sansar has a Star Wars prop museum, a Ready Player One prop museum, etc. They look great. You visit once, and you're done. Other VR game level loaders are SineSpace and High Fidelity. (High Fidelity just gave up, and "pivoted to enterprise".) They also have user counts in the 2-digit range, but worse content than Sansar. The hook for that market segment was supposed to be VR headsets, which turned out to be a niche product. Even VRchat, after a surge in 2017, dropped to about half its initial peak and is stuck at a few thousand concurrent users. Facebook Spaces? Whatever happened to that? Meanwhile, Second Life continues to plug along, with 30,000 to 50,000 users connected. That's about where GTA V online is, and would be 11th place on Steam if SL was on Steam. SL was maybe twice as big at peak, 7-10 years ago. Hence the legacy code problem. It runs, it's profitable, it has a significant user base, and it needs improvement. |