Linden Lab, the studio behind the well-known online 3D infrastructure Second Life, is said to have fired more than 20 employees. They tinkered in the Sansar team at the Metaverse.
In the spring of 2017, Linden Lab brought Sansar on the market, an in-depth virtual reality-designed online infrastructure that users like Second Life should design. In the best case scenario, Sansar would have done for VR what Second Life succeeded in doing for the monitor: laying the foundation for its own digital world, which is constantly growing and developing its own ecosystem. A kind of metaverse, then.
The rest of the story is known: VR glasses did not sell as well as they were forecasted in 2016 and 2017. Especially social platforms like Sansar suffered from the low growth, because their operating model can only succeed with many users, a small part of which contribute their own content. Second Life sales funded Sansar's development: In April 2019 About 70 people worked at Sansar from 200 Linden Lab developers.
Because of the missing VR success turned Linden Lab's project more towards the monitor instead of VR glasses: "We now talk less about Sansar as a VR product than at the beginning," said Linden Lab chief Ebbe Altberg. "When Sansar first appeared, VR was hot, hip and interesting and we used that a bit for ourselves."
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In 2016, it seemed as if a big market could quickly emerge for a social VR world. At that time Linden Lab started with "Project Sansar" in the first beta tests. Today it is clear: The Metaverse dream is years away. Picture: Linden Lab
Sansar should be continued with minimal occupation
Two fan blogs now report redundancies at Linden Lab involving the Sansar team. Of the Sansar blogger Ryan Schultz refers to an anonymous source, according to which 20 to 30 people were released. From a second source, he claims to have learned that Linden Lab was sold - but he does not trust this source completely.
The longtime Second Life and Sansar blogger Wagner James Au of New World Notes confirms Schultz sources. He also cites insiders and reports more than 20 layoffs, including long-established employees who started their Second Life job and then joined the Sansar team. Sansar would continue in minimal occupation and could possibly be spun off into its own startup, says Au.
On demand, Linden Lab does not comment on layoffs. Work on Second Life and Sansar would continue. For 2020, "many new partnerships and functions" are planned.
In May, the Social VR platform "High Fidelity" of the second-life inventor Philip Rosedale the operation - despite more than $ 70 million in investor capital. Rosedale cited the slow growth of the VR market as the reason. High Fidelity should continue to exist as an open source version.