Linden Lab is playing Monopoly?: XStreetSL and OnRez now owned by Linden Lab

Well, it seems some Lindens have been playing Monopoly a lot lately…

As you can see in this post on the Official Linden Blog, Linden Lab has bought XStreetSL and OnRez, the two online marketplaces for SL stuff (clothing, avatars, houses, almost anything…), having this way the practical monopoly over multibrand online web-based distribution of SLgoods (some brands like Armidi have their own web based sale systems outside this two marketplaces and Apez.biz a small on-line distributor is still working). Not only that, this way Linden Lab is buying also the money exchange service of XStreet, the second one after LindeX. Linden Lab will build their new marketplace over the XStreet system, having bought OnRez only to close it.

I’m totally sure none of the residents will think this a good move for them, possibly some may be indifferent because are not users of those marketplaces, but now Linden Lab will have an incoming for everything, also for web-based sales, someway in the style of IMVU. Of course they can do their best for their business but we can choose not to agree at the same time.

Another big question is: “Why Linden Lab decided now to be into content sales when traditionally they preferred to let that to direct relationships between residents?” All this process have some shadows that, possibly, will never be clarified, and the reason that makes me think about this shadows is, basically, the fact that Linden Lab has bought OnRez only to close it.  For example, i think is not easy to understand this last movement without taking a look at IMVU business style, because IMVU controls all the marketplace of the system in monopoly, including the money exchange (they don’t have tier, so that is basically their incoming). Some SLbloggers commented also about the possible “bad economic state” of XStreet and how Linden Lab wanted to avoid another big issue in SLeconomy buying it, but this are only rumours.

You will find some more posts about this in the SLblogosphere, but i think Prad Prathivi’s one is really interesting.

So… what do you think about all this?

Image by Torley published under a Creative Commons license.