Idea: Automated "Pay-As-You-Go" Rentals for Abandoned Mainland
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rottweiler Lednev
Subject: Feature Proposal: Automated "Pay-As-You-Go" Rentals for Abandoned Mainland
Hi everyone,
I want to propose a new system for the massive amounts of abandoned Mainland currently sitting empty across the grid. Right now, this land generates $0 revenue for Linden Lab, and the ticket/auction process to get it back into circulation is slow.
What if Linden Lab implemented an automated, "Rent Now" option directly into the About Land menu for any abandoned parcel? It would act as a highly flexible, convenience-driven system for players.
🏠 How the System Works:
Instant Activation: A player finds an abandoned parcel, opens About Land, and clicks "Rent Now." No land purchase fees, no upfront tier commitments, and no third-party landlords.
Pay-As-You-Go / Abandon Tomorrow: Renting would be purely flexible (daily or weekly). If a player stops paying, the system automatically clears the land via auto-return and puts the parcel back into the abandoned pool.
The 20% Premium Rule: To protect existing private estate owners and Mainland rental businesses from being undercut, this automated system would charge a 20% premium above the average local market value.
Inflation Protection (Rate-Lock): While the starting rent for an empty parcel fluctuates with the real-time market, once a player rents a plot, their rate is locked in. If local land values or inflation rise later on, the tenant keeps their lower legacy rate for as long as they maintain their continuous rental.
📈 Why This Benefits the Grid:
For Players: It is the ultimate convenience. It’s perfect for builders who need a temporary sandbox for a few days, photographers setting up a quick scene, or players who want to "lock in" a great rate on a hot piece of land before the neighborhood inflates.
For Private Landlords: The 20% premium ensures that anyone looking for standard, cost-effective long-term housing will still choose private rentals. It positions the Lab’s system as a premium convenience service, not a cheap competitor.
For Linden Lab: It turns dead, non-revenue-generating land into an instant Linden Dollar sink, pulling currency out of the economy while monetizing empty space.
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Oatmeal Linden
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Hello, and thank you for your feature request.
Incoming suggestions are reviewed in the order they are received by a team of Lindens with diverse areas of expertise. We consider a number of factors: Is this change possible? Will it increase lag? Will it break existing content? Is it likely that the number of residents using this feature will justify the time to develop it? This wiki page further describes the reasoning we use: Feature Requests
This particular suggestion, unfortunately, cannot be tackled at this time. However, we regularly review previously deferred suggestions when circumstances change or resources become available.
We are grateful for the time you took to submit this feature request. We hope that you are not discouraged from submitting others in the future. Many excellent ideas to improve Second Life come from you, our residents. We can’t do it alone.
Thank you for your continued commitment to Second Life.
Toothless Draegonne
Your problem: When the land is abandoned, it is de-parcelled. The support ticket you file to claim abandoned land involves the creation of a parcel. So there is no parcel to just grab.
As for a 20% premium rule, that would just ensure nobody uses it. The madlands already has insanity pricing to "buy in" to what should be included as part of your already-expensive premium account, especially when having a few blue pixels or a line of grey pixels next to the parcel you want.
Madlands penny-barons are a problem and not a solution. They do not need to be catered to. They make enough money from newbies who don't know it's cheaper to just get a premium account for a month than rent a madlands skybox that doesn't even come with full parcel rights.
Not to mention that "dead" land is also land available for people who might want to fly around, drive around and generally explore the madlands without running into griefer orbs.
rottweiler Lednev
Toothless Draegonne Your counter-arguments are formally rejected based on severe technical errors and economically non-viable logic. Let the record reflect the following corrections:
The Coding Myth: Claiming automated rentals are impossible because abandoned land is "de-parceled" completely misunderstands software engineering. Land consists of digital database coordinates. Linden Lab can easily execute an automated script to re-parcel a data block the millisecond a user clicks a button. Human support tickets are an outdated administrative bottleneck, not a technical requirement.
The Convenience Premium: Your claim that a 20% premium ensures a zero-use rate ignores basic market economics. Users gladly pay convenience fees for instant, frictionless transactions over slow administrative queues. This premium explicitly protects private landlords by framing the Lab's system as an elite, short-term utility rather than a cheap competitor.
The "National Park" Fallacy: Demanding that massive tracts of virtual real estate remain dead and unprofitable so you can personally fly around without hitting security perimeters is an absurdity. Linden Lab is a for-profit enterprise, not a taxpayer-funded park service for low-altitude flight simulation. Keeping corporate assets unmonetized to accommodate an unpriced leisure preference violates basic fiduciary logic.
Your objections rely on emotional grievances against landlords and technological defeatism rather than structural reality. The proposal stands.